Weekly Update — 2 (Patreon)

Updates! 

Still working on outlines for my original fantasy works and loving the process. I've often talked about the ideal of separating prose from plot and I feel I've now found a sweet spot in that process. I'm still unsure exactly how best to communicate that process to you all, or even if that's a good idea. As far as progress tracking goes, I'm inclined to do it by index card count, even if it's not a wonderful tracking mechanism, it's still better than nothing.

One index card is generally equivalent to 200 words of prose (obviously can be highly variable, but that's the general idea).

Current total index cards on new project: 170 (Change from last week: + ???)

Total words written this week: 3,600

I use an ipad app called Cardflow+ for my outlining, which is so much better than index carding by hand. This way, I can keep hundreds of index cards :D All arranged nice and neat. All editable. And all the positions changeable at will, without having to worry about gluing cards onto paper and getting odd looks from the local waitresses at the local coffee shops.

This is what the new project currently looks like. It's actually a bit larger than that, but the program can only zoom out so far.

The three rows are the general outline, and the columns under each row are the more detailed, scene outlines.

It may interest you to know that I also outline individual DP&SW chapters the same way, although I'm not going to include them in the card counts for weekly progress tracking (they're just too transient for that).

Once I've finished the outline for this new project, I'm planning to take the lessons learned and apply it to the second book of Heroes Magic and Backpacking (Richard Struggle). I'd like at least three complete outlines ready before I start on my drafting/editing process again, both because overall story planning is my weakest area as a writer, and because I want a backlog of awesome stories to write.

And getting back to DP&SW — this Sunday I'll be releasing the first draft part chapter of the next chapter on discord.

See you then!

— J.M. Coombs