Reverse Outline: 1
Hi everyone,
I finished my reverse outline during the week and took the weekend off because it was Easter. I am very happy with my progress so far. For the next two weeks, I’ll be analyzing my reverse outline in terms of story structure, trying to make sure that it’s sound before I move on to scene level revisions. I have a long ‘to do list’ that I will be working through slowly, such as looking at chapter endings and beginnings, character arcs etc. Currently my list is 21 items long but I have a feeling it’ll grow.
Having finished my reverse outline, do I think it was valuable? Absolutely. I did dip in my manuscript here and there if the change was very easy. What I found in scenes (from my mini save the cat beat sheet), is that I tended (no idea why), to put my crisis (where everything goes wrong or my MC has a crisis of faith) BEFORE my midpoint. Now that’s not a big problem if you don’t want to follow the structure of my mini beat sheet, but I did, and thought I was while writing. Here is my min beat sheet:
STATUS QUO/SETTING:
INCITING INCIDENT:
PLOT POINT 1 (climax act 1)
MIDPOINT
CRISIS:
CLIMAX
RESOLUTION
My fix was simply to cut the crisis from its location and pop it into the right location and quickly fix any weirdness/continuity errors from that change. It actually was very easy and worked well especially since it was all messy words to begin with so I wasn’t worried about destroying the beauty or flow of the scene since the scene was at its ugliest already. What’s another boil on a boiliridden scene.
Another outline that I found useful was my turning point outline. Usually, I could spot my turning point pretty easily, however, I had difficulty finding the tension just before it and the emotion that lead to it. I added these in quickly as they were mostly absent.
Another outline that was useful was the emotion outline, especially making sure that the start and end emotions of the scene were different. It also helped me identify if there were any warring or conflicting emotions in the scene. If there were none, I spent time trying to figure out what my MC would be feeling right now and what other emotion might conflict with that.
The setting outline was also very valuable. Mostly to add in the senses which I did on the spot. I also tried to identify an object that the MC could describe in the scene that would tell the reader more about their life or personality.
Obviously, the goal, obstacle, outcome, dilemma outline was useful. It was sometimes hard to identify the goal of the scene. When that happened, I looked at the outcome and was able to work backwards. A few scenes will have to be rewritten because the goal isn’t very clear or the goal isn’t linked to the outcome and one or the other has to change.
The summary of each scene isn’t so valuable right now, but it will be once I listen to it all in one go (I haven’t got a chance yet). It should give me a fast overview of my story without having to read the entire manuscript.
Overall, I think doing my reverse outline was a good call. I have found it very helpful. I intend to do two revisions of the outline. And to add in the elements into the manuscript that were missing once I do.
See you at the end of April.
Happy writing,
Joanne.
