Increasing Your Content + Frequency: Outlining Process [Writing Guide]
Tue Mar 21, 2017 11:23 pm
HOW TO INCREASE THE AMOUNT OF CONTENT YOU CAN PRODUCE
The Point Of Making Outlines And What You'll Gain
Why in the world should you bother to make an outline for anything? Well, have you ever went in to want to write, had a cluster full of unorganized thoughts and felt burn out trying to write something? Well, clearly you need an outline. It is a waste of resources on your mind and body to not have some type of blueprint to follow because you can execute nad create more content that way. (I should know, I've made somewhere in the millions of words over the past few years doing this)
Step One: Create Mood
You don't have to complicate this. You can either create something at the top of your word document program and label it as one of the following:
"My Characters Mood: Mana is feeling rather manic and wants to express that with her actions."
"Thread/Post Mood: This thread/post is meant to be somber and this post is to further hammer in that point."
It doesn't matter which, just pick something and don't over complicate it.
Step Two: Make Scenes
From here, you want to have a beginning, middle, and end. The reason I say that is because the three arc structure of storytelling makes it easier to naturally flow a post.
I.E. if this was an intro post, it would go something like this
"Act One: Introduce the scenery, describe the mood and tell any short backstory
Act Two: Introduce the character and their current state of mind + appearance.
Act Three: Have this character engage and find the other RPers character and initiate an interactive story."
I.E. 2 A post in a thread that has already began
"Act One: Have my character begin to express their thoughts and make sure to have them do bodily reactions + thought
Act Two: Observe the other character and react.
Act Three: Give the other character something to begin their post with. It can be an action, a special bit of dialogue, important story/plot information, giving them an item or ANYTHING that can help to advance the thread and stop them from having to put in all the work."
Do you get the point?
Step Three: Take away
You should ultimately have something to take away at the end of this. So, I'll show you one of my own as an example.
"Liu's Outline
Liu's Mood: Intrigued and wanting to explore people and the world in her search for all kinds of different liberation and enslavement that exist.
Part One
- Describe the setting of Demon World. That way the person has an idea of what type of environment they are coming into.
- Illustrate the mood and describe how glum, dreadful and outright ominous the area is.
Part Two
- Introduce Liu and make sure to write down her own thoughts about liberation, her travels through Demon World and how she looks
Part Three
- Find the other character
- Have her liberation power pick up on something that needs releasing from this character
- Have her become intrigued by this aspect and then engage
- Ultimately introduce her and allow them to begin the path towards evolving themselves and their powers through Liu's character development to come
Purpose: This post is to introduce the thread, give them insight into demon world, bring Liu in and allow her to be the catalyst for this characters progression and help them develop into a more full person and capable fighter."
Conclusion
By creating an outline for every post, you take the guess work out of trying to make a post and it allwos your mind to become less stressed and more focused as a result. In doing so, you can then produce more post; even if you already FEEL you have a handle on it without using an outline. I'd say expreiment and see how this technique works for you.
TEMPLATE TO USE
To make this easier on you, I even made a template to follow.
Character Outline
Character Mood:
Act One
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Act Two
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Act Three
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Overall Purpose: N/A
- Code:
Character Outline
Character Mood:
Act One
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Act Two
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Act Three
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Overall Purpose: N/A
Re: Increasing Your Content + Frequency: Outlining Process [Writing Guide]
Wed Mar 29, 2017 2:58 pm
Updated and added a template.
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