Writing Tips 5 - Outlining

I am very bad at this one lol but outlining before you begin can help you with a number of things and make life easier to write. Things like, less confusion and struggle of figuring out what your next chapter is about lol, a clear idea of where your story is headed, easier to keep the stories pace, you can figure out what to do ahead of time and see plot holes before you get too deep (super helpful), etc.

There's a couple of different methods you can use to do this, you can even just look up 'writing outline methods' in google but the one I used most often is called the snowflake method. I believe J.K. Rowling also used it when writing Harry Potter.

Now though, I almost exclusively use an website called Storyline Creator. It makes my life a whole lot easier lol. You can only have one story in there at a time without a subscription but if you write a lot, the yearly subscription is definitely worth consideration.

All of these methods are useful, but you can also just do what works best for you, or alter and mix methods together to best suit what you like.

An outline is just to help you keep your story line straight in a way that makes the most sense to you.