Story outlining tips

This post came my way courtesy of the hive mind (Delicious popular bookmarks) and it was worth a mention: how to outline a big piece.

Meranda of Meranda Writes posts her outlining method here. It’s analog and oldschool, but effective…she writes each “fact” on a post-it note sliver and rearranges.

I did something like this when working on “Home,” but I had already written a draft. So instead, I printed out the draft and physically cut the paper into sections. Luckily, my first draft was organized enough that each paragraph or so was self-contained, so the cutting was easy.

I’ve also just discovered a freeware program called XMind which I’ve only been using for about 24 hours, but which I enjoy very much so far.