outlining a scene with my fave bullet point outline method // novel writing vlog
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- Опубликовано: 7 окт 2024
- This is my favorite method for outlining at scene-level, which I have developed over time and a real-time example of how I use it to outline scenes in my books.
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It’s always interesting to learn how other authors brainstorm/outline their work. Thanks for sharing.
Absolutely! Glad you enjoyed it!
This was such an approachable way to outline! I'm gonna try this. I tend to either feel overwhelmed that I shut down when I try to outline, or I get too fixated on details that I just start writing without outlining. This seems like a good balance.
Also Zion's laughter!! 😍 too cute!!
Thanks Erica! I should've mentioned that I don't *always* do this, it's more whenever the mood strikes haha - but I feel like it helps me a ton, especially when I'm feeling a little blocked! :) And thank you haha, he's the cutest! 😂
Hey Bethany, I really appreciate your transparency in not only showing the scene bullet outlining but also showing the creative writing side of drafting your scene out. Never seen someone actually show the connection between the two. As a newbie writer this was very exciting and encouraging for me to see the creative writing in process.
So glad you enjoyed it, thank you!
woah this is kinda how i also do it but usually per chapter, sometimes per scenes but most commonly per chapter. it's like laying out everything you see that are going to happen within a chapter whether that's small details, characters invloved or detailed movement between characters. 💓💓💓
I'm so glad you made this video!!!!
I've been trying to figure out how to get the meat of my story! I had the bread (the big picture) but the more intricate/intimate moments gave me anxiety because it's so much detail but you showing this is giving me so much clarity & some good ideas to process/ brainstorm
Writing a full length story is more stressful/anxiety inducing than I anticipated but you're helping tremendously!
Plus this is my 1st full length book
Also random but I think you should open a PO Box lol
I'd love to send you something ❤️
So glad you liked it, thank you! You've got this! And I have a PO box, but not sharing it at the moment, thank you though for offering! :)
I’m in the process of writing my first novel right now and I’m feeling validated right now after watching this. I have been doing a similar thing with my outlining. I have my overall outline in a separate document and I’m removing things as I complete that section. I use the bullet points and use the scene level outlining as sort of a guideline more than an exact plan but it keeps me moving quickly as I expand on the ideas.
The only thing I’ve not done that you’re doing is including questions in these bullet points. But if I’ve not named a character yet or described them I might add little notes.
I’m loving your channel though and finding it very valuable.
Thanks Bethany for what you’re doing.
That's so cool to hear! Thank you so much!
That's exactly how I do it, too :) Works like a charm, every time. It also eliminates the meandering at the start, when I write while thinking, and it helps me keep a conflict going in every scene, or pick an existing one up and escalate it.
That’s awesome!
This advice has been SUPER helpful for me.
I find myself constantly in a loop when I try to write as I go.
Breaking it down into bullet points really speeds up the process by a significant amount.
Yay! I'm so happy you liked it!
Thank you THANK YOU so much for explaining the outline and with examples to us! I so needed this. I've asked several youtube authors but they all never replied to me or clear enough for me to understand. I just want to know how to outline, not copy their stories or anything like that. And so, I am so so grateful to you for your help on this topic. Best wishes! ❤
This is awesome.
Finally got to the scene writing lense of the process (Save the Cat!).
Quickly became clear that with all the thoughts & questions flooding in as I wrote, & correcting every thing each time a minute detail changed what came before, I'd never make any real progress at an acceptable or enjoyable pace.
This was exactly what I needed.😁 Thank you!
This was so helpful! I often find myself staring at the screen and getting discouraged because I only wrote a few hundred words in an hour or two. Thanks for sharing your process!
Your assessment of the writing arena is so on the money. I had to learn a lot just to appreciate the things you talk about but wow! It's an echo of everything I and certainly a load of other writer's experience. I just love your video's. Baseball fans can't see your videos but I do. Thankyou so much for the fine video. This is all building up to a movie. I'll keep you abreast.
I love doing bullet point outlines! Great video!
Yay! Thanks Nohea!
I love this! I’ve never thought to do a scene “brain dump”!!
Def going to try this! 🎉
Ohhh gosh... Bethany I do excatly like that... but i do it in 2 sections... in one section i write bulletpoints for the whole story and another one, chapterwise... I write it in the index itself, so that it will help me frame that chapter smoothly... i think instead of writing and deleting it, if we write the bulletpoint it in index and keep it till the end, it will help in revisiting the entire story without going through the entire book
That's so cool, love that idea!
I love this idea. I'm going to have to train my brain a bit, after I had done the bullet point part it would be finished as it's already got the idea out.
Yay I'm so glad you like it!
I don't typically do this for scenes, but I have been known to bullet point the next few beats if I get stuck. So, I'll be writing and then won't know how to write what comes next so I'll start bullet pointing the next big scenes I'm trying to get to as a sort of post to reach for...and then once I write it, I delete the scene description. It's never been as detailed as what you show here...but it's vaguely similar
Oh man, I literally got stuck this morning with where to go next in my story and when I couldn’t figure it out I stopped to watch this video and now I think I might be able to use this to get out of this issue! Definitely God’s perfect timing! Thank you for this, I’m excited to try it!
Woohoo! Love hearing that, that's such perfect timing! :D
I love this. I had never considered outlining a scene. I'm an outliner but this will help me so much. Thank you!
Absolutely! So happy you liked it and hope it helps! :D
Thank you for explaining how to do this. Great suggestion!!
I really love this method. I’ve been using a very basic chapter outline but I think this brain vomit version will help me with my perfectionism. Thanks for sharing ♥️
So glad you liked it! And I hope it helps a ton! :D
I love when you mentioned morning pages, because I do something like that. I will just free write and get all of my thoughts down on the page and I might do that for several days until I have a very rough kind of outline and then I can work from there.
That's awesome! It definitely helps!
This is really useful! I start a story then fall flat at the first road block. Now maybe I can develop my stories by working further on in story and joining them up. Exciting!
Yay! So glad you liked it!
Thanks for sharing this helped me a lot 😊
I am really excited about this idea. Thank you so much for sharing. I’m going to give it a shot on a few scenes and I really hope it’s a method that works well for me.
Yay! So glad you liked it!
Love the video!! I’ve been trying to find a better way to outline and I’d love to try this method! Removing perfectionism is my goal as well so I can finally get the manuscript completed haha thank you for sharing the first draft. I get so insecure about my writing that it can hinder my progress, but your transparency during your writing process has been so useful and comforting
Thank you so much this video helped me. Lots of love from Africa.
So glad you liked it!
Ohmigosh that's how I work through scenes, too! I use a notebook, because it makes me slow down. I write the scene title at the top, then subtitle it, "Things to be Addressed:" and I even use bullet points. It's like freewriting, or prewriting, and it's so awesome to get motivated. Now that I'm in final edits, I pull my notebook out and title the page "Picky Reader Edits: Why Your Book Sucks" lol. Then I write down all the things a picky reader would point out and comb over them in edits. Love this video, keep up the awesome content! ❤️
That's awesome, and love your methods! Haha so fun!
I do something very similar, it’s not quite a bullet point outline but a few lines of text that says what I think I want to happen, for every chapter. I’m going to give this a go, it’s one step forward but maybe i will help me now that i’m going through a bit of a burn out situation. Changing things around might help
That's awesome too! I feel like as long as the method works, it's the perfect method, so do whatever works best for you! :D
Thanks for sharing this. I like seeing different ways authors do things 🙂 I use the Save the Cat scene level outlining and within this I do bullet points like you do. I came across the Save the Cat scene level outlining on Jessica Brody's RUclips channel and found it works really well for me!
These spoilers just made me even more excited to read!
Yayyy! Love hearing that!
I’m excited to try this method for the first draft of my debút novel . Thanks Bethany. Technically I’m in the second draft but I have to rewrite the first four chapters from third person to first person.
So glad you liked it!
Wow this is so cool! I loved seeing your process because I was curious about how your process worked and looked every time you mentioned it. I agree with you on how fast it makes writing. I outline the entire book this way. I dont use bullet points but I write kind of a deep summary of each chapter and scene and it helps so much. Instead of crossing mine out I will highlight it yellow once I write it. And I highlight it green if I don't use an idea (mostly because I'm picky and hate deleting anything so I hoard all my notes lol). It's interesting to see how similar we do this 😁
Oooh fun! That's a very similar method! So glad you liked it! :D
I do that but I never even thought about it as outlining!
Yay! So glad you liked it!
I've never outlined. I have a starting point and and end point. Then I just write. It's in the subsequent drafts that I sort out imperfections.
Nothing wrong with that! Everyone has their own method.
This is an awesome idea! Definitely going to give this a shot, as I have two books, that I'm reworking. I also noticed that it seems you write your drafts, as it's formatted for a novel. That is pretty cool, and I may give that a shot as well!
Yay! I hope you like it! And yep, I love the way it makes it feel more like a book - I have a whole formatting series if you're curious and wanna know more! ruclips.net/p/PL3IFBPbxQRypIBssmfDTmyFi68zmk5l-L
So helpful (: thank you.
This was so helpful. Thanks for sharing your process. I don't usually outline, but I think this could really help me finally tackle the fight scene I've been avoid...er... dreading ;)
I do something similar when I get stuck on a plot point or scene. I'll open a new doc and free-write whatever comes to mind. Usually it'll be a different pov, a scene happening elsewhere at the same time as the scene I'm working on, or even backstory if I'm stuggling with a specific character. In any case, it's like you said where I just write and don't worry about making it perfect. The mind is an amazing tool :)
Yay! So glad you liked it! And that's awesome, sounds like a fantastic method!
Thanks so much for this!
So glad you liked it!
Very helpful I loved every second of this thank you
So glad you liked it!
Thank you.
So glad you liked it!
Thank you so much!
So glad you liked it!
Zion “contributing” was hilarious and ohhhh so relatable!! 😂😂
This was so cool to see! I do something similar but I had never tried having it in the document and then deleting them as I write. I typically stick to a notebook but that can get a little confusing because sometimes I’ll jot an idea for the story somewhere else in the notebook and I have to take the time to search for it 😅
Haha thank you! I had to leave that in there lol 😂 So glad you liked it - and I've definitely done this in a notebook as well, then I just cross things off as I complete them. (But yeah I've also misplaced my notes, so I like the word doc better for sure haha!)
I do something very much like this, using OneNote to brainstorm before sitting down to write a scene. IT really is like describing a movie I'm seeing in my head.
That's an awesome method!
Love to see how other authors work.x
I haven't done this, but I do think in my head before I type. So I guess you could say my brain is my bullet points. The problem is I forget some of them. I think I will try.
This was very helpful. Thank you!
Yay! So glad you liked it!
As usual , inspiring.
Thank you!
this was super interesting! thanks!!
Glad you enjoyed it!
I do something like this. I use a bullet point format to brainstorm & outline my individual scenes. I already have a completed outline that maps out major events in the story, start to finish, before I go into the details of each scene. I pretty much use the same technique-- bullet point format on a sheet of paper-- for the major events in the outline (I don't use index cards /sticky notes to outline.). I found out a long time ago that I need to know WHAT I'm going to write about before I know HOW I'm going to write about it. I have trouble doing the "what" & the "how" at the same time. I get paralyzed starting from nothing.
This is an aha moment! I've got the basic beats outlined, but other than that, I'm pantsing. And it hasn't been working. This is something I'm itching to try.
So glad you liked it!
This is almost literally what I have been doing this week because I got tired of trying to do chapters outling for months
Haha that's awesome!
Thanks!
Thank you so much , so glad you enjoyed! :D
Another great video. Do you set your trim size (5x8, 6x9, etc.) before drafting?
So glad you liked it! Mmmm I'm not sure honestly, I think the pre-formatted template I use is probably a 5x8 but sometimes I change it after, I forget.
Hi Bethany are you also doing audio books
Not right now!
My book is ready to publish, can I first publish the eBook than do a print version later. It is my way of testing the market. If any concerns should arise, I can change it must faster.
Is it okay to have multiple scenes for a chapter? Or is that too much? I do want my chapters to be kind of short, but I feel like I always have a lot going on
Do you organize them by beats? And I'm not sure why but I thought you used Scrivener?
Well the beats are more big picture, and this is getting down to the details of a scene, so not really. But I do love the story beats! And nope, never touched scrivener in my life.
This might sound like a silly, dumb question, but doesn’t your document get laggy (for lack of a better word) when you’re writing on MS Word? It’s happened to me both with Google Docs and Word, annoying me to the point where now I only use Scrivener.
Nope, I don't have that problem. It sounds like you might need to update Word, usually lags like that are due to the tech having issues, not the program itself.
Do you do this for each chapter before beginning to write it, or do you bullet point a chapter and then write it?
Mmm, I don't always remember to do it if I'm being super honest, but when I do it always helps me write faster. I usually go scene by scene, but chapter by chapter would work too!
@@BethanyAtazadeh Thank you!
Hello Bethany I enjoy your channel you seem to know what you’re talking about. I’ve now had four books published, a forth is at the publishers now. I’ve come to the conclusion that there’s no point in writing books unless you can market them. My books are on all world book selling sites, but I don’t make any money. I’ve now hired a professional to promote my books. It’s going to interesting to see what difference this makes. The results could be interesting to your subscribers. I’ll let you know what happens.
Thank you! Marketing is hard work, no matter who does it, but I wish you success!