How to Outline Your Novel
Writing a Good Novel
Writing is an individual endeavor. I don’t mean it can’t be done jointly, but it is usually done alone; therefore, the ways people choose to write tend to be individualistic as well. One person may insist on writing every day in complete solitude. Another may only sit at the keyboard on weekends, and they may blare music while typing. Writers have preferences on plotting, developing characters, and many other things, but no preference is perhaps more argued than the choice of outliner versus pantser. With that in mind, let’s look at something that baffles many people: how to outline your novel.
On the outlining side of the argument, writers insist that you can’t produce a book that flows logically unless you start off knowing where the story is going. On the pantser side, writers argue that they let the characters decide how the story progresses (or something to that effect).
We may discuss the pros and cons of outliner versus pantser in another post, but for now I’m going to discuss how to outline your novel (which I think is paramount to writing a good novel); in particular, we’re going to focus on the merits of an outlining app I have come to love.
Index Card Review
I published my first book in 2012 and have been actively writing since — with the exception of two years following my strokes. A lot of things changed after the strokes, but one thing that didn’t was my firm belief that a good book needed a good outline.
There are plenty of writers who will disagree, writers who call themselves pantsers (as noted above), but I’m not here to argue that point because the pantsers are convinced they’re right, and I’m not trying to change their mind. I’m simply here to show the outliners an app that will help the process tremendously.
It has always baffled me that outlining apps are so difficult to find — good ones that is. None of the writing apps have one that I would call good. Even Scrivener, a writing app I swear by, has only an inadequate outlining tool. It’s the best I have seen, but it’s still not good enough. My quest for a good app continued until I found Index Card for the iPad (screenshot below).
The best thing about the app is how easy it is to rearrange cards. If you need to adjust the order of a chapter/scene, simply drag it where you want it. So in the screenshot above, if I wanted the chapter on the bottom right, “Why’d You Do It?,” to come before “What’s Your Alibi?,” all I’d have to do is drag it and drop it to the position I want. On the iPad, this is accomplished even easier because it’s done using your finger.
This is what you see in the app when looking at all the cards/chapters. The titles are in bold followed by the text for that chapter. Notice that a horizontal line shows the transition from one card to the next. Also note the *view* options at the top left side of the screenshot (left of *projects*. The option on the far left (the one highlighted in the screenshot below), shows each card and a sample of the text as in the first screenshot. The option in the middle shows a continuous flow of text as depicted in the screenshot above. The third option is not shown here, but it separates the screen into columns with cards going across from left to right.
The Projects tab does just what you’d think. It shows you what projects you have and which one is active. It also shows the link you have to Dropbox (assuming you set that up). In addition, it lets you edit the names of your projects or rearrange them in other ways. The top right options include a preferences tab, and the ability to export your project/s, save them to Dropbox, or open them in other apps.Another unique feature is the notes option shown next to (left of) the save button in the top right. This screenshot shows the reverse side of an index card, and that’s what happens when you press the notebook icon while typing on a card. You can take as long a note as you want. It makes it ideal for novels and especially series.
As you can see from the screenshot above, the dictation on the iPad works nicely, but it’s something you have to get used to. In the first sentence, I forgot to tell it to put a period after the word card. If I had done it, the word following would have been capitalized and all would have been fine. The more difficult part of learning dictation is instructing the app when and where to place punctuation, or when to insert a new line. That takes a little practice.
Index Card is amazingly powerful though. You can even add photos with the touch of a button. It’s fantastic.
My biggest disappointment was that the app is not for the MAC, however, it is for the iPad, and it is easy to export your work to a number of apps: Scrivener, Dropbox, email it, copy and paste, etc.
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