Outlining is one of the most important parts of writing any story, whether it be fiction or nonficion, and surprisingly, many writers struggle with it. Whether it be lack of research, confidence, or maybe a mix of the two, many writers either completely avoid the outlining process or fail tremendously at doing it.
A common claim many writers make is that outlining is too restrictive, not beneficial, or unnecessary. While that may work for some, I believe that learning how to outline and how to outline well can elevate any writer in their craft, as it helps see a story through the lens of storytelling basics.
As a writing coach, it is one of the most popular services I offer (likely due to the difficulty many have in doing it well). In fact, it's the very service that helped me go from part time to full time in my career.
Over the last few years, I have written over 200 outlines myself, along with evaluating dozens of client outlines. During this time, I have noted holes and mistakes I see in people's story ideas and the forming of their outlines.
In light of this, I recorded a podcast episode covering the common mistakes I often see in people's outlines. Below, I have included a link to the podcast for your enjoyment, along with a transcript of what I covered.
I hope you enjoy.
PODCAST PAGE:
Listen below or click the link here: https://buymeacoffee.com/michaeljaymes/coffee-talk-with-michael-jaymes-ep-10-common-outlining-mistakes
TRANSCRIPT:
(Note: this transcript is AI-generated and may not be 100% accurate. I have highlighted the main points for ease of skimming.)
"00;00;00;00","00;00;26;21","What is going on? Goombas. This is Coffee Talk with Michael Jaymes Episode ten. Can you guys believe it? We have hit double digits and in this episode we are going to be talking about mistakes I see people make when they're trying to outline a story. This is specifically going to be for fiction outlining. So I'm going to be talking about fiction outlining advice and different mistakes that you may be making that that hopefully this advice helps you avoid or helps you catch."
"00;00;26;26","00;00;46;24","And basically, I do a lot of outlining for clients. I'll actually get into more details about that in a moment. But through my outlining, I'm either reading people's outlines and giving feedback or I'm creating outlines for them based on, you know, what they have already. And I help them kind of like work through some of these problems."
(Skipped updates; listen to the podcast for those.)
"00;15;38;24","00;15;59;16","So that is the final update I have. Okay. We can now get into what you were here to talk about. We can dive into mistakes. I see when people are trying to outline their stories. So so first of all, questions that are not answered and some of these are going to seem very obvious."
"00;15;59;19","00;16;21;24","Who is the main character, the antagonist and the most important side characters. And you might be thinking like, obviously, like who wouldn't answer those questions? But you would be surprised by how many people don't really know how to define who their main character is. They might be able to say, his name's Jerry and he's a pizza man, pizza delivery driver, but they know nothing else about Jerry."
"00;16;21;24","00;16;42;00","So you really want to make sure you can define your main character. This means, you know, define their appearance, define what kind of personality they have, different struggles. They might have, you know, different things like that. You want to really be able to say, you know, who this person is, You know, define who their friends are, what they like, what they dislike."
"00;16;42;02","00;17;03;20","You know, write, try to write a paragraph about to page about them even. And you don't have to do this for every character, which I'll talk about a little bit later. But you want to do this for your main character, your antagonist, and the most important side beside characters, whether those are allies or different characters that play an obstacle role somewhere in the story and there are a large portion of the story."
"00;17;03;22","00;17;27;20","These are the characters. You want to answer this question for. Who are they? Right. I actually talk a lot about this in one of my recent YouTube videos. It's called Five Common Character Mistakes Writers Make. I just posted that about a month ago, so definitely check that video out. I talk about characters a lot. Obviously, I talk about characters a lot, hence the name the title five Common Character Mistakes."
"00;17;27;20","00;17;54;22","So next question you want to answer is what are the character's internal and external strengths and weaknesses? So you mainly need this for your main character, but you'll also want to consider those four side characters or the antagonist. Think about what is the strength and weakness of them internally and externally. You know, maybe your main character's external weakness is that they are physically not strong, right?"
"00;17;54;24","00;18;17;19","But they're external strength is that maybe they're a really good liar and they use that as a strength. And the story, you know, internal strengths and weaknesses is, you know, maybe a weakness is they get angry really easily. Right. But a strength can be that they can read people really easily write, you know, get down their hobbies, get down their personality, you know, really understand these characters."
"00;18;17;19","00;18;33;04","Right? So it kind of goes with the first question. So this next question is, what is the genre or theme? You know, both of these things matter. You need to be able to say, what is the genre in theme, even if it's very basic, like, you know, this is an action thriller or this is a romance or this is a fantasy."
"00;18;33;06","00;18;58;29","And the theme is, you know, love conquers all, or the the bully never wins or learning to trust others, you know, whatever it is. Like, it could be something simple right now that you further define later, you know, like it could be a mystery, but in your genre, but later you decide that it's an amateur sleuth mystery and you decide that it's a one room mystery, like it only takes place in one location."
"00;18;59;04","00;19;24;25","So those those are just examples. But make sure that you define what your genre theme is early on when you start outlining your story. Because if you don't define these things, then you can't. You can't figure out what your audience is expecting in your story and that's important because like, yes, you can write for yourself, you can write a story you want to write, but at the same time, it's important to consider what are people expecting for your story and who am I trying to please?"
"00;19;24;25","00;19;46;01","Like, you know, that's kind of a mistake I made with my own story. My story is like literary suspense and like, in a sense, like, yes, there's other books similar, but not too similar. You know, I, I write in a style that's very literary, where I'm writing like a drama, but it's suspenseful. It's like very fast paced, which most literature is not past me."
"00;19;46;01","00;20;10;06","So it's very different in that sense. It's two different genres meshing together and you can do the same, but you need to define that and decide that so that you can stay consistent with whatever you choose. The next question you want to answer that I think a lot of people miss is the setting. What is the setting? I have people that do not define their setting, where they define their setting, but they have things happening that don't make sense in that setting."
"00;20;10;06","00;20;28;19","Like an example is somebody set their story in the 1940s once and I think they had their character using their cell phone at one point. That's just an example. But like you need to ensure that you're setting bits for the story that your you are writing and that the details you're creating fit that setting right. The next thing is what is the plot of the story?"
"00;20;28;19","00;20;45;04","You need to have a basic understanding of what your plot is and if you don't have a basic understanding of your plot, then you know it's difficult to write an outline like you need to have some kind of concept, some kind of idea prepared. You know, you need to know what that premises. And next question is how does the story begin?"
"00;20;45;07","00;21;07;25","This is so important. I have people write outlines or show me outlines they've written asking for advice and they don't have a beginning. They just have like the you know, the problem at hand is that a girl is trapped in a tower and the knight needs to go save her. And they start the story with like the first obstacle he's going to face."
"00;21;07;27","00;21;27;22","But like, it's like, okay, but how do you get to that obstacle? How did he get to starting to go after the princess? Did he know the princess before like she was trapped in this tower? Like, did he see her get taken away? Was the did the king assign him to go after this? After his daughter? You know, like all those different questions need to be answered."
"00;21;27;22","00;21;58;18","So we need to know where does this story begin that's so important. We need to set the ordinary world. In other words, we need to set the ordinary world in order to understand the adventure and see the contrast we are creating With that, the next question is what is the climax of the story? And this is important to detail and know because if you don't know what you're building up to, it's really easy to lose focus and lose understanding of what the goal of the story is."
"00;21;58;18","00;22;13;25","If we don't know what the climax is, it can cause us to write aimlessly. It can cause us to write scenes that are not building up to a climax. So you need to know what that climaxes so that your scenes build up to that. And I'll talk about that a little bit more later when I get into Climax a little more."
"00;22;13;29","00;22;29;24","The next question you want to answer is how does the story end? And just like with how does the story begin? Like we need to know where the story ends because we need to know where the story closes. We need to know what kind of resolution we're going to have, or is he going to save the princess? If he does save the princess?"
"00;22;29;24","00;22;58;25","Or what happens because of that? Does you know, does he marry her? Does the king, like make him a leader in the kingdom? There is the knight. Save her, but end up dying in you know, in the process is a twist revealed where the king is actually corrupt. You know, whatever it is, we need to have some kind of ending prepared so we know not only what we're writing toward like the goal, but we know the outcome of reaching that goal."
"00;22;59;01","00;23;21;15","And then lastly, the last question you want to ask yourself, which most people like remember this one, But some people forget. Write down what specific scenes and ideas you have in mind that you feel must be included in this story. You need to write down like what you see happening, because if you don't include those now, then you might miss filling them in later."
"00;23;21;17","00;23;37;28","So it's important to, you know, I see this scene where he fights a dragon. I see the scene where he's lost in the forest. I see this scene where he kisses the princess, write all those down so that you can then organize them and build an outline around that. So then you already have a lot of the main scene ideas you want to work with."
"00;23;37;28","00;23;50;16","A lot of writers will try to they'll say, like, I have seen ideas, but they don't write them down and they just try to create an outline and remember them all. And they're like, it's not working. It doesn't have all the scenes I want, but they don't know how to put it in because they didn't start with that."
"00;23;50;19","00;24;07;27","So it's really important to write down the scene ideas you have. Consider which ones will actually work, which ones you actually like the most, and then start building an outline around that and consider, okay, where can the scene fit? And is this scene something that happens in the beginning or the end or in the middle, somewhere near the beginning, somewhere near the end, etc.."
"00;24;07;27","00;24;27;08","You know, trying to figure out what scenes and specific ideas you have that you want included now, so that when you start building the outline, you don't end up with this problem of not knowing how to fit them in. So those are the first things you need to do. A lot of mistakes happen when fiction writers try to build an outline without answering these lines specific questions."
"00;24;27;10","00;24;46;11","Make sure you answer those nine questions and then go into outlining. Hopefully that helps you with getting like the basics down because once you do that, it makes outline so much easier. You have a lot of your information already organized. Now you just need to fill in the physical plot and the emotions at hand, and that's what we're going to get into next."
"00;24;46;11","00;25;12;09","We're going to talk about some of the structure mistakes that writers make. All right. So now that we've answered those nine questions or now that you know, those nine questions that you need to answer now, we can get into structure, mistakes and different things that apply to the structure of the story at hand. So some of these I have already covered and I'm going to just like kind of go into a little more detail like this first one, for example, we're talking about premise, genre, tone and theme."
"00;25;12;09","00;25;30;26","They all affect the structure. If you don't have these four things clarified, then you're going your structure is going to be wonky. It's not going to be fully there. You know, it's not going to be fully developed. So that is the first point here. You want to ensure that you know what your premise, genre, tone and theme are."
"00;25;30;28","00;25;51;26","A lot of people make the mistake of just kind of like leaping right over the premise. It'll be like a guide for the story. It helps you clarify what you like your character, motivation and plot development is. And if you don't know what a premises, it's basically character plus action equals resolution. So to say your character, it's like you're it's usually like unique with an adjective or a descriptive word."
"00;25;51;29","00;26;12;11","Your action is some sort of conflict or problem. That's made known to provide progression. And then resolution resolution is the end that is made known through this premise. So if you've ever seen the movie Good Will Hunting, for example, the premise is a genius bind identity, right? You know, we have a character that is a genius. You know, that's a descriptive word."
"00;26;12;11","00;26;29;28","We understand what the main character is. He finds something. So that means he's searching for something throughout the story, even if he's not like searching it in. The searching is very subtle. It's it's something that he's hiding from people. He's not doing it openly. He's still searching. So a genius finds. And what does he find by the end of the story?"
"00;26;29;28","00;26;52;05","What is the takeaway or the story? Identity. That's what he's seeking, that throughout the entire story, he's seeking to learn about himself more. Another example of a premise might be if you've ever seen the movie Tender Bar, great drama, really recommend it. I haven't read the book. I should, but it's a fatherless boy receives guidance and that is a really great premise."
"00;26;52;05","00;27;24;01","Just and I think that premise is worded pretty well because, I mean, I wrote it myself a pat on the back. No, I'm joking. But anyway, I like how I worded it because there's such there's irony in it. And that's something that is really important in a premise. There's some kind of irony. Even with the Good Will Hunting, when a genius finds identity, it kind of juxtaposes that like even a genius, someone whose intelligence can't find, you know, their their knowledge can't fix the emotional issue at hand, seeking identity."
"00;27;24;01","00;27;52;23","Right. And in a tender bar, it's the same way a father knows boy receives guidance. It's about how this character that doesn't have a father is receiving fatherly advice. Right. So those are just examples of a premise for you, in case you were wondering, in case you didn't know what that meant. But it's really important to try to do and try to write your premise and try to figure out what that is and that will help you with genre tone and theme."
"00;27;52;25","00;28;19;26","Well, a lot. Something that people don't talk about a lot is tone. We already kind of touched on genre and theme, but one thing people don't really talk about is tone, and your tone is like the voice and the narrative style, the, you know, the mood of the story in a sense. And it's really important to maintain that throughout or at least show the build up or the change throughout to ensure that it aligns with, you know, your intended genre."
"00;28;19;26","00;28;48;12","So like the tone is very dark and it's it's almost creepy, you know, but it changes drastically throughout the story like butterflies and rainbows. Then obviously, you know, there's an issue, right? But like a lot of people don't consider what should their tone be. And I think it's really helpful to consider what your tone is when you're at the outlining stage, because if you think about what your tone is, then you can consider what kind of scenes you want to have that match with that tone."
"00;28;48;17","00;29;05;09","And obviously it could be vise versa. If you don't figure out what your tone is, then your scenes may help you figure out what your tone is, but it's just something to consider. And a quick caveat, something I want to say is that you don't need to do all these things in order to make an outline. These things are just mistakes that I see people make."
"00;29;05;11","00;29;20;23","Either they they forget something or they add something or they do something wrong. And I just made a list of them. So if this doesn't apply to you or there's a parts of this that don't apply to you, that's okay. You know, you don't have to try to add these things, but some of these things can be beneficial."
"00;29;20;24","00;29;42;09","Next thing I want to talk about is flexibility and detail. So sometimes people have the tendency to overload the outline with details and it ruins the outline. It makes it too difficult for them to follow, too difficult to even use. It's not usable anymore. Or on the flip side, to add to that, people also sometimes don't make their outlines flexible enough."
"00;29;42;09","00;30;04;18","It's lacking flexibility, so they might treat their outlines more like a strict, strict roadmap instead of like the flexible framework. It should be the example I usually give people. It's like if you think about, let's say I have to go, you know, I'm going to Vegas this week, so I'll use that example. I'm going from North Carolina, Greensboro, North Carolina, to Las Vegas, Nevada."
"00;30;04;18","00;30;20;19","Right. There are tons of ways I can get there. I can get there by plane. I can get there by bicycle. I can get there by car. I can get there walking, technically, right? So I can get there all kinds of different ways. But not only that, not only can I take multiple different ways, but each way I can take a different route."
"00;30;20;20","00;30;41;12","You know, I don't have to take a plane straight from Greensboro to Vegas. I can take a plane from, you know, Greensboro to Atlanta to Vegas. I could take a plane from Greensboro all the way up to Augusta, Maine, if I wanted to, and then to Vegas. I could take you know, I could take a bike and bike all the way around the perimeter of the country and then stop in Vegas."
"00;30;41;12","00;30;58;23","Right. So there are so many different ways I can get there. And that's how you need to picture an outline. An outline is a guide or a framework of like this is the straight shot to get there. But when you're writing your story, you don't have to take the straight shot every single time The outline is meant to be flexible, it ought to be flexible."
"00;30;58;23","00;31;22;23","It shouldn't be overloaded with so many details that you can't use it. Right? Summarize the most important scenes and you want to summarize the most important plot points. And that's basically it. And basically I tell people your outline should have the plot points. So like for my outline that typically have all the 12 plot points I use, which are very similar to like the hero's journey, I use 12 plot points and then I have transition scenes between those."
"00;31;22;23","00;31;41;28","So that's just an example to make sure your outline is flexible and isn't overloaded with details. I see so many writers make this mistake. All right. The next point I want to talk about is character arcs or emotional arcs. This is a huge one. I see a lot of people make this mistake where they write outlines that only focus on the physical."
"00;31;41;28","00;32;18;20","They don't focus on the characters. So this kind of leads to having characters that they don't have any development. They they can feel a little static or lack depth, and it makes difficult for readers to engage with that character over the course of the story, if you write it in that way. And the reason this is a problem when writing an outline is because your outline will semi reflect on what your writing is going to look like and if you don't incorporate the emotions, the emotional arc into the outline, then there's a good chance that your emotional arc is not going to be present in the story itself."
"00;32;18;20","00;32;43;17","So make sure that you know what kind of emotions your character is going to feel and make sure that's intertwined with the physical arc taking place, which are going to touch on a little bit later when I get to that point. Another mistake I see is that people either overly complicated subplots which kind of takes away from the main plot or they ignore subplots completely and there's no subplot taking place at all."
"00;32;43;17","00;33;08;12","So just to give a quick example, if you don't want my book to be spoiled, then you know, skip ahead like a minute. But my story you've got the wrong guy, has a main plot of C.J figuring out who is blackmailer is and telling him you've got the wrong guy. Right? That's the main plot. The subplot is resolving the conflict between him and his brother, resolving the relationship that they they don't have."
"00;33;08;12","00;33;33;20","They have a broken relationship. That is the subplot. Okay? That subplot is connected to the main plot because his brother gives information that helps him in the main plot. So there's a tie. There's like the subplot feels incorporated, feels important. Sometimes writers will either just not have subplots at all or they have a subplot that is super complicated and complex."
"00;33;33;20","00;33;52;16","So it takes away from the main plot or it's something in between. They make they make a subplot that has nothing to do with the main plot and we don't care about it. So those are the three kind of mistakes I see What subplots that I see and outlines a lot. And my main advice would be if you feel like you don't have subplots, like try to incorporate something."
"00;33;52;16","00;34;25;24","I feel like subplots are typically best when it has like a connection to the main character's emotion. Not always, but typically it's an emotional thing and they use what they learn through that subplot in the rest of the in the main plot of the story, if you feel like your subplots are overly complex, if you feel like that is becoming a main focus of the story, then maybe you should shift the focus, change what the main plot of your story is, or if you're making it overly complex, maybe you just have another story idea and you need to cut that subplot out and make another book with that one."
"00;34;25;25","00;34;46;23","Just an idea. Yeah, you need to have subplots in your outline, but I wouldn't try to personally. When I write an outline, I don't try to like make it a separate outline for my subplot. Typically, I just try to consider how can I weaves emotions in through a side quest that needs to take place or like maybe at one point in the story, you know, your character needs to be able to shoot about, right?"
"00;34;47;00","00;35;03;00","They need to be able to shoot a bow and arrow. Then you can have a subplot where they learn how to use a bow and arrow. And it may not seem relevant right in the beginning, but it plays a role later in the story, right? So that's just an example or like a subplot in Star Wars in a sense."
"00;35;03;00","00;35;25;09","Is Luke learning the force, like being trained in the force? If you think of Shrek, for example, a subplot is Shrek building a relationship with Donkey and, you know, dealing with some of his emotions about being accepted for who he is. So that's just an example of what a subplot will look like. A lot of times it's connected to the emotions of a character, not always, but those are the example that the top of my head."
"00;35;25;09","00;35;47;23","So hopefully that makes sense. The next mistake I see in fiction outlines and I try to help writers with is portray concessions. This is a huge mistake. I see all the time. I see so many writers that have weak. They have like a good idea. They have an outline with the main points and it's great, but their transitions between their points are just awful or not even present."
"00;35;47;23","00;36;07;10","It's like, okay, how did you get from here to here? Like, they'll, they'll have like their opening scene and then they have an inciting incident and then they have the adventure beginning and it's like, okay, you didn't connect it. How we get from opening scene to inciting incident, though it'll be like opening scene, like they're enjoying a birthday party at the park and then inciting incident."
"00;36;07;13","00;36;40;05","Father's dead. It's like, Well, how did we get there? Like the transitions are not there, so that is something I really you need to consider. Like you need to consider how are you connecting all of your scenes, even if it's very subtle, even if it's very slight, even if it's very short. I mean, to be something that connects your scenes, even if it's supposed to be surprising and bizarre and out of the blue, like you need to find a way that makes sense why they're connected in some way, shape or form, even if it's just connected by setting, you know, the character goes to a new location and boom, they see a dead body."
"00;36;40;11","00;37;08;05","That's the set. That might be the only transition you you connect it with. You need to have all your transitions there because it shows how the story is tied together. If the if the story doesn't have strings tying all the scenes together, these transitions, then they can feel like they're falling apart. And yeah, I just I really recommend working on your transition scenes, making sure you're building up to the climax as you're you're slowing down the story for the emotional moments."
"00;37;08;05","00;37;29;17","You are really like settling in different locations that we can take a moment to breathe. If you have something crazy happen and then you need them to sit down and try to investigate or get clues or talk things over and, you know, so on and so forth. But yeah, if you don't have clear transitions, the story can just kind of feel choppy and it makes it hard for readers to really follow."
"00;37;29;25","00;38;00;15","So if it's if it's choppy in the outline, there's a chance it might be choppy once you start writing it. And speaking of choppy structure, another thing that causes choppy structure is vague plot points or inconsistent structure. Inconsistent structure is when characters don't necessarily follow a typical structured route for their story. They might have, you know, for example, most stories will have a beginning, an inciting incident, and then an adventure begins."
"00;38;00;15","00;38;18;05","And then there's a midpoint climax, and then an adventure may continue, and then there's some kind of failure scene, a low point. They want to give up. All hope seems lost. And then there's a climax at the end where they rise up and then there's a conclusion, right? That's what most stories look like. But some stories will try to swap things around."
"00;38;18;06","00;38;40;26","They might have a failure take place much earlier. They may have their midpoint climax much closer to the final climax. You know, there's nothing wrong with moving things around, but do do take note that moving things around can be detrimental to your story and it can cause the story to feel very choppy if, like things aren't connected well, they feel disjointed."
"00;38;40;26","00;39;02;16","So make sure that your physical arc as a whole is cohesive and like able to be followed. And it makes sense and it flows well like other stories. And this also means that you shouldn't have big plot points. A big plot points are basically when you have like a scene where it's difficult to understand what's happening, you know, it's difficult to understand how this connects or progresses the story."
"00;39;02;20","00;39;23;00","So make sure that every scene, every plot point, there is a logical flow. You know, it keeps the reader on track. We understand what's happening. You know, we're going from point A to point B, the point C to point D, so on and so forth. Make sure it makes sense. The next mistake I see writers when writing their fiction outline is weak beginnings or weak endings."
"00;39;23;00","00;39;42;16","Basically what makes a strong beginning is that the opening is compelling. You hook us in the opening and there's an exciting there's an inciting incident. Now, you don't necessarily need to be so specific that you know exactly how engaging the opening is going to be when you make the outline. But there needs to be an inciting incident present."
"00;39;42;16","00;40;05;17","We need to know what that plot point is. If it's not present, then we don't know what kicks off this story. And just just to be clear, the opening scene is not the same as the inciting incident in every story. Sometimes the opening scene is the inciting incident, but not always. Typically, the opening scene is your hook, and then you have an interruption to your main character."
"00;40;05;17","00;40;22;10","You get to know them, and then you have an inciting incident, which I like to call the event of the story. So your event scene, you need to define what that is, because if you don't define what your event scene is, then you can cause a lot of issues later when you're trying to figure out where the story went."
"00;40;22;12","00;40;37;09","The inciting incident or the event is really what kicks off the plot. It's what begins the plot at this scene didn't happen. The plot couldn't take place. So if you don't know what that scene is, then how do you know what the rest of the plot is or why the plot is happening? Right. So make sure you have a strong beginning."
"00;40;37;09","00;41;03;03","You have a good understanding of what your opening inciting incident is. Right. And that goes for the ending as well. You don't know where the outline is going. It can be very difficult to write toward it. Right. If you if you don't know what your end goal is, then it just makes the story so much harder to close and this isn't to say you need to have the ending always figured out before you start writing the outline, but it does make it a lot easier in a lot of cases."
"00;41;03;03","00;41;23;01","So make sure you have a strong ending prepared or an idea for one, so that when you start outlining and then get to the writing process, it is easier for you to outline it. But if you don't have that, your outline can feel like it's just aimlessly continuing and wandering and going on and on until you're like, yeah, this is how I can end the story."
"00;41;23;03","00;41;44;09","You don't want it to feel like that and. You don't want it to feel like that when you write the story. And if it feels like that in the outline, it's definitely to feel like that later. One One piece of advice I would give is if you feel like you can't figure out what the ending is, you can wander a lot in the outlining process to get to the ending and then cut out all the wandering and figure out how to tie that up."
"00;41;44;09","00;42;08;15","Much easier, much tighter. Yeah. Ultimately you want it to be a satisfying conclusion. In the end, you want there to be a clear resolution leaving the story, you know, feeling like there's closure. You want to tie up any loose end you have, you know, reinforce the story's themes and character growth and and all that jazz. Make sure that you have, you know, when you outline the story, you come to a close."
"00;42;08;15","00;42;30;11","So, you know, this is where the story ends. Hopefully that makes sense. So those are all my points on structure mistakes that I often see. Just to go over them really quickly. Once again, I see structure mistakes that have to do with like not having a premise defined or genre tone in theme, sometimes outlines or aren't flexible enough in that cause the structure issues."
"00;42;30;13","00;42;58;02","Sometimes there's no emotional arc present. Sometimes the subplots are causing issues because they're either not present or they're way over complicated. Sometimes they have really bad transitions in between their main plot points. This leads into choppy structure and other things that lead into structure. Choppy structure is like vague plot points. And then lastly, sometimes people have a really weak beginning or a really weak ending which can cause issues for the rest of the plot."
"00;42;58;10","00;43;18;27","So hopefully that all makes sense. Those are the main structure mistakes. I see. This last section is mainly like I call it like a miscellaneous list. It's just like the last few tips, few pieces of advice I find myself giving a lot. They don't they're not necessarily structural tips or an outline like these can apply to writing as well."
"00;43;18;29","00;43;51;13","But these are things that I see when I'm giving advice or providing feedback on someone's outline. These mistakes, I see a lot of that. I'm like, Hey, you need to fix this before moving forward. So the first one is double magic. If you don't know what double magic is, basically when you have two different magic systems in your story and they are conflicting, or sometimes you see someone who fully integrate one magic system and then they have another magical ability or rule come out of nowhere that is inconsistent and it doesn't feel like it connects to the story at all."
"00;43;51;16","00;44;09;29","So to give you an example, maybe you have a story with elemental magic throughout. You know, people are using the elements to harness all their abilities and that's where their power comes from. And that's the type of magic they use in this fantasy world, right? But then let's say there's this one character that can do mind control that doesn't work."
"00;44;10;02","00;44;36;03","It doesn't work to just have one character not follow the rules of magic. It feels like a tool or like even worse, if they do have mind control and you try to put rules around it, how their mind control works that isn't connected to the elemental magic at all. That makes it worse. I've seen different writers do this, try to avoid this, try to avoid having conflicting rules and magic systems like stick to one magic system."
"00;44;36;09","00;44;56;05","Another place I see this often is where people will have a magic system defined early on in the story and then halfway through they just start throwing in new, new powers and new rules that make the story work. A lot. A lot of readers hate this. It can, you know, if they're learning like a new, new power or new ability, it can work."
"00;44;56;05","00;45;21;27","But like, I would try to tie it to the beginning somehow. Maybe it's and I like a better method than what they were already doing. Or maybe it's something they have heard of that they're trying to learn, you know, like don't just randomly drop like, here's a super effective ability that they've never heard of. And now I'm just telling you what it is now and they're going to use it like a doing that can be a little jarring and it can just feel like you're cheating the system."
"00;45;21;27","00;45;39;20","You're just like you're showing the author's hand in a way. You're kind of just dropping and dropping tools in where to make the story work in a sense. So try to avoid that. Another thing you can consider, like if you're finding yourself, like feeling like you're feeling like some of your magic just isn't making sense. It's not cohesive enough."
"00;45;39;23","00;46;02;16","A lot of times people don't have a hard enough magic system. They have like a super soft magic system. So it's making it way too complicated to make sense where like anything goes kind of thing. So like, try to limit the rule bending, try to like, you know, give a strong reason for why different abilities exist and make sure it's consistent throughout with all the abilities."
"00;46;02;16","00;46;31;06","Make sure that, like there's a reason that this ability is coming up in this story and there's a reason it exists. Otherwise it can feel like you're just randomly giving abilities to different people. So that can that can kind of help avoid double magic. Yeah, try to avoid double magic. Now, if you see in your outline that you have like different scenes where different characters are using magic that doesn't abide by the rules, or you just have a random, random magical ability thrown in there somewhere that doesn't make any sense compared to the rest of the magic or whatever it is."
"00;46;31;06","00;46;56;28","Try to avoid doing that. A really great example of this scene in movies is Spider-Man, The first Spider-Man made by Sony with Tobey Maguire. In the first one, we see about like 10 minutes in, you know, Peter Parker gets bit by a spider and he gets his his spider abilities. Right. But how does Goblin get his magic? How does a goblin get his abilities in his in the movie?"
"00;46;56;28","00;47;20;11","He gets his abilities from like Oscorp, like gas, like this. This chemical reaction thing that they create has nothing to do with the spiders. And because of that, you have two separate magic systems where people can get abilities from superpowers from. And that doesn't. That's it. It doesn't work in that story. But like, it's not as strong as if they both got their strengths and their abilities from the same source."
"00;47;20;17","00;47;47;17","So even if they want to use a magic system or something, but it came from, you know, the spider venom or something, I don't know, that would make more sense. So that is an example of double magic used in Hollywood and not, I would argue that they could have made it stronger by not doing it that way. The next thing I see as a huge mistake and I kind of already touched on this is undefined character arcs, which is basically where a character's personal journey or transformation isn't."
"00;47;47;20","00;48;12;16","It's either unclear or not fully developed. By the end of the story. It leaves a reader uncertain with how this character is supposed to grow or change over the course of the whole story. Typically, not every story, but in most cases like 95% of cases, your characters have some sort of progression. They have a they start with point A and you know, in with that point they have beliefs, flaws and weaknesses that we see early on and they change over the course of the story."
"00;48;12;16","00;48;38;04","Like you need to have that change obvious and present. And something I see in a lot of outlines as people, a lot on the physical and completely forget about the emotional. So this means that there's like no clear growth or like sometimes the development is inconsistent. Like sometimes a character just seems to like, you know, like they almost have like a they almost have like a personal intervention and they just decide they're going to be better as a person and then change."
"00;48;38;07","00;48;55;17","It's not like anything. There's like no catalyst to that change. There is no reason they changed or like sometimes there's a lack of inner conflict, like nothing's holding them back. There's no like fears or issues they're facing. They're just kind of like a good person. So like, these are just different problems I see with people within within people's outlines."
"00;48;55;17","00;49;19;25","When they first create no one, they completely forget about the emotional arc of their character and they leave characters undefined. So make sure that your character arc is defined, that it's very specific. It's very understood that this character deals with one certain issue and they overcome it by the end of the story. Another thing they see, which again I've touched on this a little bit, but sometimes people have events or scenes in their story that completely lack any purpose."
"00;49;19;29","00;49;37;29","These are the types of scenes that like they don't contribute meaningfully to the plot or the character development or the theme. Those are the three main things like your your your story has to deal with one of those three things either plot, character development or theme. I can give you an example of this in my story. So and you've got the wrong guy."
"00;49;37;29","00;50;04;07","This isn't spoiling much. Very first chapter is a hockey game. It is character development focused. It's not focused on the plot really at all, and it's just focused on building the character of who C.J is. Chapter two Mostly same thing building character development. There's a little bit of plot development there, but you're mainly building the character. Chapter three again, character development, but we're getting a little more plot in there."
"00;50;04;09","00;50;22;26","Chapter four is mainly a theme. It's a it's building up to that. That's where we see that the Maddox statement made in the story. And then at the very end of that chapter is when the plot, like the the event takes place, the inciting incident happens and the plot unfolds, the plot starts to begin in chapter five, Focus on the Plot."
"00;50;22;26","00;50;41;12","Chapter six is mainly focused on the plot. Chapter seven It's mainly focus on the plot. So like in the beginning, like there's different character scenes and one the Maddox scene and then we have a lot of plot scenes to follow and there's different character and theme thematic scenes throughout, but a lot of a lot more plot as you go."
"00;50;41;18","00;51;01;22","So like just, just to make that's just an example. But like every focuses on either the plot, the character or the theme or different aspects of each, and that's ideal. Like you want your scenes to focus on the theme, the character or the plot throughout the entire story. And if it's not focusing on one of those things, you should take it out."
"00;51;01;22","00;51;22;14","Like if it doesn't, you know, show any character growth. If it doesn't help us understand the theme more and give it more depth or it doesn't progress the plot, then it's probably not needed for the story and it can mess with the pacing. If you don't have that. So or if you're focusing too much like like for example, like the theme is supposed to be pretty subtle, so you don't have a lot of scenes focus just on the theme."
"00;51;22;16","00;51;48;06","If you're having tons of thematic scenes that aren't causing the plot to move forward, we're just like focusing on the theme heavily. Like that's not going to work either. I do have a YouTube video that talks about this a little bit. It is called How to Write a Scene, The three Building Blocks in every scene. And in that video I talk about like I talk about these three things, but I talk about them in the light of a specific scene."
"00;51;48;06","00;52;10;23","So check that YouTube video out if you want to know more about that. But yeah, make sure that when you are writing an outline that every single scene has to do with either the character, the emotions, the theme, and or the physical plot taking place. Just to add to that as well, I would really recommend that every scene has some kind of conflict taking place."
"00;52;10;23","00;52;29;01","So it's not just you're you're mentioning the theme, you're mentioning conflict taking place. So like so it's not like you're just mentioning the theme, but there's some kind of conflict that is showing us that theme or there's some kind of conflict that shows the main character's like personality. That's how you get to know people. That's how you get to understand things."
"00;52;29;01","00;52;49;14","The thematic statement and you've got the wrong guy. If you don't want to spoil like Skip ahead like a minute. But the thematic statement and you got the wrong guy is when Rodman says, and I think it's chapter four, he says that you can't run from your past forever. He says that the J and C says, you know, law can catch me because, like, he's joking because, like, you know, I'm not going to spoil it all."
"00;52;49;14","00;53;14;28","But that is a thematic statement that is made. And that statement is made because CJ's doing something he shouldn't be doing. So there's conflict in that scene that brings that theme out. Same with character development. In my chapter one, C.J is playing a hockey game and he's trying to win the hockey game with his little friends. They're playing street hockey, he's playing with the neighborhood kids."
"00;53;15;01","00;53;47;00","So because of that, there is conflict that is helping us understand his personality and then the plot. It's self. Every single time you have a scene take place that is focused on the plot, then there should be some kind of conflict going on. Right. And that helps us understand what that plot looks like. So make sure that every scene has some kind of conflict taking place that helps us understand the emotions of the character, that helps us understand the meaning behind the theme, and that helps us understand the the plot as a whole and what's going on in the story."
"00;53;47;00","00;54;08;18","I hope that makes sense. So just make sure that like there's some kind of conflict always taking place, like always problems or different things arising that cause the story to continue to move forward. And obviously you can have rhythm resolution scenes and things don't have to always be. There's not a problem in every single scene always, but like there should be problems in a lot of scenes because that's what develops characters."
"00;54;08;18","00;54;26;00","That's what keeps the story moving. That's what keeps us interested in the story. We like reading about conflict, and if you feel like your scenes aren't like very strong, the conflict is not there or it's not really hitting home on a character or on the plot or on the theme, then remove it like it's probably a weak scene."
"00;54;26;00","00;54;53;27","You probably don't need it. The next thing I want to talk about is the disconnect I often see between character growth and plot growth. And we've already talked about both these things, like how the plot needs to progress, how the character needs to progress, but something I see a lot of outlines miss a lot of new writers, especially miss this, is they make an outline that focuses all on the physical, all on the plot hand, and then they don't include their character's emotions at all."
"00;54;53;27","00;55;09;25","So they don't have, you know, their character feels very flat. And then they tell them that. They tell I tell them, like your character, the emotions need to be included. You need to have an emotional arc taking place. So then they include the character's emotions, but they feel very random. It's not connected to the plot. They just randomly throw in the character Sad here, they're happy here."
"00;55;09;27","00;55;32;13","They they get motivated here, you know, whatever. Basically what I mean is like, if there's a disconnect between the character growth and the plot growth, what I'm saying is that the character's internal journey, like their their struggles, their personal transformation, it's not aligned or interacting in a meaningful way with the external plot, like the events and the conflict and the resolution that's driving the story forward."
"00;55;32;15","00;55;54;20","So ideally, the story allows character's internal journey to influence and be influenced by the external events around them, and this creates unity in a narrative. This is what causes the plot and character growth to like, intertwine. So so like a lot of the mistakes, like y how you would see this is if you ever see your character growing independently."
"00;55;54;22","00;56;17;19","So like they just are deciding to make decisions without anything pushing them to or there's not any conflict around the mistakes or the decisions they make. There's no consequences around their their decisions. That is a key indicator that your plot is not connected to this character and the character's arc is not connected to the plot. Or it could be vice versa."
"00;56;17;20","00;56;43;21","You might have the plot progressing, but the character has no impact on the plots progression. The plot is just like building around them in most cases, your plot cannot move forward until the character takes action. You know, if you think about a when I'm teaching, outlining the people, yeah, one of your one of your first pivotal plot points is the event or the inciting incident, which I've talked about multiple times in this podcast."
"00;56;43;21","00;57;06;05","But the inciting incident or the event is basically where you have the the plot begin. This is where the plot arises. So for my story, you've got the wrong guy. This is where C.J finds the sticky note on his car that says Return what you've stolen or else. Now what if what if C.J didn't do anything? C.J did like didn't make any decision toward that note."
"00;57;06;07","00;57;21;28","He crumpled it up and threw it in the garbage can. You know, I guess that is a decision in a sense. He made a decision there but like his decision is crumbles it up, throws it in the garbage can. It doesn't affect him. The next few days he just goes back to work. He's Uber driving. It goes back to playing with kids."
"00;57;22;00","00;57;43;08","And then he gets another note that's like warning him again. But it wouldn't feel right if he got another note and he didn't even try to consider the first note. Right. Or like, what if he just started learning details about the situation at hand without even trying? They just start falling in his lap like his friend came to him and said, Hey, I saw the guy that left that note."
"00;57;43;08","00;58;03;09","I know what he looks like without even looking for the guy. Like that would be the plot progressing independently without the character's growth. Right? So instead we have C.J. react to the note freaking out. He feels followed, he feels watched, He starts, you know, he tells his friends the problem. He goes to the first source he thinks it might be from."
"00;58;03;15","00;58;18;04","And then he goes to another source where he thinks the note might be from. And he feels like he's at a dead end and he's freaking out. Then he thinks, You know what? Maybe I should stop freaking out and it's nothing. And that's when the next note comes, you know? So it's like, almost like, unexpected in a sense."
"00;58;18;11","00;58;43;27","So that's what you want to do in your story. You want to have the plot progressing with the character, the character needs to take action depending on the plot that's taking place around them, or the plot needs to be affected by the character's actions and decisions they make throughout the story. I hope that makes sense and is the example of this is like if you think of in Shrek, the fairy tale creatures being dropped in a swamp is a plot point taking place."
"00;58;44;00","00;59;04;23","Shrek had no control over that character's decision making did not cause that to happen, right? The fairy tale creatures just happened to fall into a swamp because they were ordered to be there by Lord Marquand. So Shrek then makes a decision based off of that plot point, based on the fairy tale creatures falling into his form. Shrek says, I'm going to send you back to where you came from."
"00;59;04;23","00;59;30;09","I'm going to go talk to this Lord Farquhar guy. Right then. Shrek decision affects the next plot point because Shrek makes a decision. He goes to Lord Farquhar, God, and when he's there, Lord Farquhar is like, Hey, whoever can kill the ogre is who's going to rescue the princess? And that affects Shrek next decision again. So Shrek now makes a decision to fight all the knights that are trying to attack him."
"00;59;30;11","00;59;56;29","And then that affects the next plot point because Shrek beat all the Knights. Now he is threatened into going to save the princess by Lord Farquhar. He has all the crossbows aimed at him, and he says, you have to go on a quest for me. And then I will give you back your swamp rake. So over and over, we see that Shrek decision making affects the plot, and the plot affects Shrek decision making, and they're intertwined one and one together, bringing unity to the story."
"00;59;57;01","01;00;14;12","I know I was like, along with his circle of explaining that point, but it's really important. This is like the biggest this is probably the biggest point. Like if you're going to take anything away from this very long podcast and that is the point to take away that is so important. And so many people missed that. I can make a video on just that."
"01;00;14;12","01;00;35;20","How people have stories that do not have character and plot connected. So many people think that they can be disconnected or you can have a plot driven story or a character driven story. No, like every story has plot and character aspects driving it. Like every single story, there's very, very few that are exceptions to that. You know, we're not going to get into details."
"01;00;35;20","01;00;57;01","You get what I'm saying. Let's move forward. Then next thing. The next point I want to make is and this one's a little controversial but some writers, some writers make the mistake of having too many characters in their outline. They try to describe way too many characters and doing this takes the attention off of building the plot of the story."
"01;00;57;01","01;01;15;19","It causes their their outline to not be as strong because their focus is on the characters and not on the story. It kind of like dilutes the strength of the story in a sense, because they might have a lot of detail for their characters, but they have like pages of notes on their characters and they have like a one page outline."
"01;01;15;19","01;01;33;18","I've seen so many so many writers do this. They have like they ask me to help them with their outline and they're like, I'll send you all my notes I have. And the first 20 pages as all characters. It has pictures, it has details about each of them, their backgrounds, their story, all this stuff. And it's like I always tell them, like, listen, I'm not trying to be rude, but a lot of this doesn't even matter."
"01;01;33;18","01;01;58;03","Like, this will be important for you to understand, but your reader will not care. This doesn't affect your outline, like your outline needs to be created apart from a lot of this because a lot of it's not going to affect how the outline works. My suggestion would be it's easier to change a detail about a character to fit the outline than it is to fit an outline based on all these different character descriptions."
"01;01;58;06","01;02;20;02","It's easier just to build your outline and then say This character works in this way, and if you have to tweak a different detail here and there in your outline, that's fine. But if you have all your characters created, you create this entire cast of all these all these characters, and then you try to build an outline. The problem you'll keep running into is like you'll try to build a scene where this character does one thing or another, and then you're like, that doesn't work because it doesn't fit this personality."
"01;02;20;06","01;02;38;11","wait, they would be in this setting, so that doesn't work anymore. how would I have to how would I get them to this place? Or that person can't do this ability or whatever it is. So I, you run into a ton of issues if you don't just create the story first and then figure out how you can fit their character personalities into it."
"01;02;38;18","01;02;58;06","So make sure you're not developing too many characters. You know, if you're developing your your main character and it's a few pages long, like that makes sense. Like you should do that. But like if you're developing a side character that plays like, you know, a role in half a chapter, you know, he's going to be in five pages of your 200 page book and that's it."
"01;02;58;09","01;03;17;08","And you have five pages notes on him like, that's a problem. You don't need all that information on that one character when you can't even develop the rest of your outline. Right? So develop the outline first before you do your character studies, before you really dive into getting to know all of your characters, you don't need to do all of that."
"01;03;17;12","01;03;35;19","I would say if you enjoy doing that, that's a good thing. Keep doing it, but just try to develop the outline first so that you don't struggle with the outline because you already did the characters first. The next mistake I see in people's outlines and that I try to provide advice on is when people don't have enough stakes in their story, they have stakes, but they don't have them."
"01;03;35;19","01;04;00;27","All right. You know, there's so many different stakes. There's rib eye stakes. There's the New York strip, there's the the T bone. You know, I'm I'm getting crazy. I've been talking on this podcast for too long. But anyway, when you're when you have stakes in the story, when you have different conflicts and different problems are arising, a lot of people have only one type of stakes at hand."
"01;04;00;29","01;04;20;07","They have like personal stakes, for example, they might have things that are personally affecting the protagonist directly relating to their goals, their fears, their relationship. And these are important. Like you should increase the personal stakes. You know, ask yourself, what is your character's like fear? Like, what do they not want to lose what do they desperately want to gain?"
"01;04;20;09","01;04;38;10","And, you know, if I you know, for example, if a character's goal is to uncover a secret, think about how their failure would affect their image or their loved ones, like maybe that's something that caused them to move forward and pushes them. And that's the stakes at hand that causes tension and causes your reader to be engaged with the problem at hand."
"01;04;38;10","01;05;03;28","Right? Those are personal stakes, but you can then go even further. You can think about how can I elevate the emotional stakes? You know, these are, you know, your character's personal growth or like their emotional journey, Like, are they struggling with depression, they struggling with validation, They struggle with feeling loved, like whatever the emotions are, this can be something that you confront through, you know, their beliefs, their flaws, their past trauma."
"01;05;03;28","01;05;21;00","Like those are emotional stakes that you can pull out of the stories. You have personal stakes, you have emotional stakes. And the difference between those two is like personal stakes are more like their status or how it's going to affect their life moving forward, where emotional stakes is kind of like just like the emotions they're feeling because of this situation."
"01;05;21;03","01;05;42;20","The physical stakes can be things that are like, you know, literal dangers that are like life threatening situations or a survival situation, or maybe they have to protect something that's valuable, you know, different things like that. Those are physical stakes, you know, maybe, you know, maybe it's maybe it's something physical, like their house can burn down or whatever, you know, whatever."
"01;05;42;23","01;05;58;23","But then you have moral stakes. You have stakes that they might be facing different ethical dilemmas. You know, you might have to you have to test what is your character's actual values here. Like, maybe they come to a point where they have to face the reality of do they kill the bad guy or not and they don't like to kill."
"01;05;58;23","01;06;17;28","You know, that could be an issue. Your character has to choose between maybe their goal and morality and maybe they make a mistake, You know, maybe they choose the moral path in the past. And that's something they struggle with. You know, that would kind of tie your moral stake to an emotional state because it's a it's a past trauma now, you know."
"01;06;18;00","01;06;38;17","So and then lastly, you might have social or societal stakes stakes that affect everyone. So maybe if you know, you see this in a lot of thrillers, if the main if the protagonist doesn't stop the bad guy, he's going to detonate a bomb that kills everyone under the pavilion or he's is going to go on a shooting massacre in this giant concert."
"01;06;38;20","01;07;07;01","AMPITHEATER Right. Or, you know, whatever it is you have in thrillers, you always have a societal stake at hand or very often. So those are just like a list of the different types of stakes you can have in a story. There's five of them personal, emotional, physical, moral and social or societal. And a lot of people make an outline and they just have personal stakes at hand, or they just have physical stakes and they don't think about all the other things that can play a role in building the tension."
"01;07;07;05","01;07;26;08","And the higher the tension, the greater the releases. At the end of the story, the greater that climax can be. So really consider how can I raise the stakes for my story to really be that much stronger? And if you write an outline and you only have one form of stakes in your story, it's really going to defeat the story as a whole and its strength as a whole."
"01;07;26;08","01;07;51;21","So really recommend considering how can you elevate the strength in these five ways, or at least a few of these ways? This leads into my next point where I see a lot of writers make the mistake of having an uneventful payoff, which what I'm referring to is like when you get to the resolution or the climactic ending of their story, I'll be reading their outline and it fails to deliver any emotional or dramatic impact to me."
"01;07;51;21","01;08;10;13","I'm expecting some kind of feeling of like catharsis after, you know, they built up all this tension, all these stakes. But the payoff is uneventful. Or maybe it feels anticlimactic take or it's not satisfying or it's a letdown, some kind of disappointment. And there's a few reasons why this might happen. It might happen because the buildup is not even there."
"01;08;10;19","01;08;33;00","Maybe there's no stakes. Maybe it feels flat. Maybe the tensions, too. Even all throughout. It's always high or it's always low. It's never like actually growing. Or maybe the story was way too predictable and I knew exactly how it was going to end. And so, like, there was no twist, there was no change that really engaged me. I was just kind of like waiting for the ending to happen."
"01;08;33;05","01;09;06;03","Another thing is like, since we're in the character's shoes, if your character doesn't respond to the climax in a certain way, then we respond to it either if they if it's insignificant to the character, it's going to be insignificant to the reader. And then another point is like if there's like an emotional disconnect so like if the payoff doesn't align with, with like my feeling or my investment in the character or the stakes involved, it can feel trivial or unimportant making it hard for me to like, care about the outcome and now be the same for your reader."
"01;09;06;06","01;09;29;29","This happens in a lot of about lines actually, where people say like, Hey, I have a full story. I have it all fleshed out. But for some reason something's not working and they don't know what it is. A lot of times it's their emotions don't match from beginning to end. You know, if your main character struggling with trauma early on in the story or they're struggling with fear of something and by the end of the story, they didn't they didn't overcome that trauma or fear."
"01;09;29;29","01;09;50;06","Maybe the writer didn't. They made this mistake because they, you know, forgot about that feeling or they carried the feeling of beer, but they didn't carry specifically the fear of da da, like whatever that thing they were fearing. And because of that, when we got to the payoff, they overcame fear. But they may have not overcame fear of that specific thing."
"01;09;50;13","01;10;13;03","And that can cause an emotional disconnect in a sense. So. So that's like a few of the reasons why the payoff might feel uneventful. So try to avoid having these try to make sure that, like there is a buildup taking place. Right. And that it's not too predictable. You have a twist in there where you have something exciting that that intrigues us."
"01;10;13;03","01;10;38;25","Right. You know, the character responds correctly and the emotions like our, you know, are followed through all the way from beginning end. Like those are the things that are really going to, you know, make the payoff that much more worth it. Right? If you have all those things, then when the tension is released, then we'll know it's off your your character will be excited or they'll be relieved or whatever it is, and we will feel the same way and they will overcome whatever that struggle is."
"01;10;38;25","01;11;01;16","And we will overcome that struggle with them in that sense. And then last but not least, I've touched on this a little bit, but again, this is one of the most common ones. I see a lot of writers make the mistake of having their lacking direction in their outline. They're stumbling around too long until something happens. This is a very common, especially in the middle of an outline."
"01;11;01;16","01;11;19;25","They might have a good event and inciting incident take place in the beginning, but then the whole adventure is all over the place and then they have a climax, the end and a conclusion. But the middle is just all over the place. They're stumbling around until like, it's almost like they're in a dark room, like trying to fish for the flashlight on the ground, keep kicking it around."
"01;11;20;02","01;11;34;18","They keep accidentally going to turn it on. But, you know, maybe the batteries fall out or maybe the button's not working. They have to keep smacking on their leg. And finally it turns on. Maybe it's flickering few times and then boom, the lights on. And now it's like, now it makes sense. But like, it took too long to get to that point kind of thing."
"01;11;34;18","01;11;58;09","That's what a lot of outlines can feel like at times. So when I say like it's lacking direction, I mean that like the narrative feels aimless, right? The characters are wandering without a clear goal or purpose isn't understood right from the beginning. And we don't stick with that purpose. If you don't have a purpose defined or a clear goal defined, it can cause the story to feel stagnant."
"01;11;58;11","01;12;22;05","It can feel slow, disjointed. The pacing is all messed up. It almost feels like a bore to read or tedious to read, especially like if you've ever read an old book. A lot of old classics struggled with this. There's a lot of writers that have like it's just a different form of literature, different time, but a lot of old books did not have the pacing of the fast pace that we have today."
"01;12;22;05","01;12;42;17","Like that seems to be more important in our type of market, in our type of audience. These days. Like I'm reading a book right now where the first 20 pages of this chapter have felt so meaningless. You've just been describing like their everyday, ordinary lives. And then he's going to get to one point where he says, and then one day this happened and it's like, Well, why didn't you just start with that?"
"01;12;42;17","01;13;01;18","Like, I didn't care about the last 20 pages and, you know, it feels stagnant, almost feels like a chore to read it. And that's how it can feel when you get to the writing process if your outline is lacking direction. Right. Another thing that I like may be lacking direction because we we don't understand the main conflict at hand or what's at stake."
"01;13;01;18","01;13;26;00","Maybe we don't know what's on the line, right? We don't know why this is such a problem. If the if character doesn't resolve this problem, then X, y, z. If that's not answered, then we might not know why this is a big deal in the first place, a way to kind of avoid this and of like the advice I would give is to first of all, make sure that you have like your structured outline, which is kind of what I provide, like the 12 points to an outline for somebody."
"01;13;26;02","01;13;55;14","But I would really ensure make sure your conflict is central. Like make sure every single like big plot point most of your scenes are tied to this comp, this central conflict like they all are leading up to this point. Another thing I try to ensure is that people have rising action. They're building momentum as the story progresses. If you don't feel like the story's building momentum up to different points, then you're probably not increasing the tension or the stakes at hand, which isn't making it feel as exciting as it could."
"01;13;55;16","01;14;16;01","And if you are building, you know, if you do have rising action, you are building momentum. You can build up this momentum to turning points where you have these key moments where the story drastically changes direction and it catches us off guard, it renews us, it refreshes the readers that were excited again, and it drastically causes the story to almost like a rebirth effect."
"01;14;16;04","01;14;43;11","It gets like new life so that we are re-energized and refueled to keep reading. And that's how you want your outline to feel when you get to main plot points like your your inciting incident, your reaction, your adventure, beginning the midpoint climax and the the failure, the motivation, the the the emotional climax toward the end. When you get to all these different plot points, you want like a feeling of of rebirth."
"01;14;43;11","01;15;01;17","You want this feeling of being energized to keep pushing forward. You want that for not just you as the writer, not just the character, but for your reader as well. So if that feeling is there, you're going to be encouraged to keep writing, your readers going to be encouraged to keep reading, and your character is going to be encouraged to keep moving forward."
"01;15;01;17","01;15;33;19","And that's how you want the story to feel. You want the feeling of progression to always be there. You can have setbacks at different points. You can have the story. You get stagnant purposefully for maybe a Chapter two, but make sure that overall the story is continuing to move forward and ultimately that will help it not be like you have a lack of direction or something else that can kind of take away from the direction of a story is if I kind of I kind of touched on this before, but like if you have subplots that are too complex or have too many scenes dedicated to them and we're like focusing too heavily on the"
"01;15;33;19","01;15;53;15","side plot and it doesn't really go with the main plot like that can take away from the direction of the story at hand. So make sure that doesn't happen as well. And like I said before, like you can connect the subplot to the main plot by making like the end take away of the subplot, affect the main plot or different parts of the subplot begin to interweave with the main plot in some way."
"01;15;53;20","01;16;12;16","So those are all of the notes I have for you. I know this was probably one of my longest podcasts, if not the longest. I've yet, but these are all the mistakes in all the points I want to cover on, like mistakes I see in outlines and the feedback I give it when people send me their outlines. Some if you didn't."
"01;16;12;20","01;16;31;20","So I hope that this is beneficial to you. I hope this helps you with when you're writing your next story outline, or even if you're not working on an outline, some of this information can still be beneficial. You And if you are someone who's struggling with an outline, if you are struggling with figuring out how to fix your story's plot or your character's emotional arc or whatever it is you don't know what's wrong with your outline."
"01;16;31;20","01;16;49;24","You want professional feedback, feel free to reach out. I'd love to help you. I'd love to get give you some advice and suggestions that apply specifically to your story. And yeah, if this if this podcast was encouraging to you, if you learned anything, you enjoyed it, please let me know by leaving a heart or leaving a comment or even sharing it with a friend."
"01;16;49;24","01;17;06;15","I would really appreciate it. It means the world to me when I see people are interacting with the content I put out and just like letting me know that they're appreciating it and, it's beneficial to them. If you want to support me further, you can buy a copy of You've got the wrong guy off the support page. You can get a signed copy."
"01;17;06;15","01;17;25;20","I'll send it directly to you. If you live outside of the United States, please message me beforehand and if you want to support me in another way, you can become a member on this channel. You can support me monthly if you'd like, and I'd really appreciate that. And just a reminder, new stuff coming, you know, podcast outline core is coming."
"01;17;25;22","01;17;57;08","There's going to be book reviews coming. And then lastly, the podcast, the podcast episodes where I talk about books that I'm taking notes on, those are all going to be so beneficial. Stay tuned for those. I hope you enjoyed a copy. While we discussed of these things and I'll catch you guys in the next one."
LINKS:
I hope you enjoyed this podcast/transcript.
If you are interested in any of my services, feel free to reach out. I offer consulting, outlining, editing, and a variety of other services.
If you are interested, I have some links below where you can further support me, along with some books on writing I would highly recommend. (The book links are affiliate links, and for no extra charge, I make a small commission if you use my link.)
Personal Links:
Books On Storytelling:
Opmerkingen