Outlining, Tangible vs. Digital (my hand hurts) [Writer's Blog #2]

Hello everyone, hope you’re doing well.

As I am writing this, I am on the train, heading to school for my class of the day. This morning, I finally decided to stop procrastinating and start writing the outline for the book I’ve been desperately trying to work on. Prior to this, I’ve only worked on outlining certain scenes that I wanted to include in the book, but had no overarching plot or direction on how the story should go.

I’m happy to report that that dilemma has since been solved and I am incredibly excited to share my process.

Normally, when I write outlines for scripts, I always note down whatever it is I want to portray via my trusty laptop. I open up the notes app on it and jot down every bullet point I want to include, and then I proceed to use that as a general guideline for the script.

This morning, because I was a dunce and forgot to charge my laptop the night before, I decided to jot down the overarching outline in a notebook, as opposed to doing it digitally, and I found the process incredibly therapeutic.

I was able to not only map out the overarching plot line, but I was able to delve deeper into each of the character dynamics and figure out where to put certain details at certain points of the story.

I know, this sounds incredibly elementary to get excited over, but when using digital mediums for creation, although it is more efficient, I find that we lose a lot of flexibility. When you type things out on your computer, you can only type things out. Sure, you can add in images you can pull off the internet, but something about writing it down on a piece of paper makes the entire process feel like progress.

Anyhow, some details I’d like to share about the book:

• The book I’m working on is a YA romance overall, but it explores a lot of different motifs and themes that you often see in other genres.
• The book will be written in 2 different perspectives: the female lead’s perspective and the male lead’s perspective. The two of them have their own storylines and these plot lines will intertwine with one another.
• At its core, the story is an enemies to lovers. Of course my first book as to feature my favorite romance trope, I wouldn’t want to disappoint anyone.

Updates on my pen name:

• Still trying to decide if I should keep my old pen name or if I should come up with a new one. I really like my old pen name, but at the same time, I feel like the name sounds a little too pretentious, but that could just be me.

Anyhow, that’s all from me for now. I’m really happy with how things are going in terms of progress. Don’t worry, I’m still working on scripts for audios and I have a lot of ideas stewing away, so get keen.

Thank you so much for reading, take care.