On mega outlines, writing experiments, craft book club, & moooore!

Sometimes I put writing experiment polls up to y'all and one option blows the other out of the water. I kind of love when that happens, because I know that means y'all are just SO EXCITED for one of the options. It's always been an indicator that it's a really, really good idea.

Other times I put writing experiment polls up to y'all and they come back split as split can be. (I love these times, too.)

Such is the case with our drafting experiment!

So I'll actually start with More Words Than the Day Before (because, frankly, I think it will be a shorter experiment lolol), and then I'll continue within the same story using the 500 Words Per Scene Per Day....until I've written a little bit in every scene of the story.

I can only do this because, for the first time ever, I've created an outline monster. 10,000+ words, and still, somehow, growing. 43 chapters and an epilogue! So I have some good bones and I'm excited to put some meat on them, 500 words at a time bahaha.

This does lead me to a question I have for y'all! Which is: how long are your outlines *usually*? If you'd like to share what you typically "cover" in your outlines too, whether that's beats or chapter-by-chapter, or general motivations with a couple plot points, let me know! Also let me know what your biggest or smallest outlines have been.

For instance, my smallest is No Outline, because I'd often jump straight into the zero draft. (Though some people have debated me that that is, possibly, my version of an outline.) And this is by far the longest I've ever created. Truly a spectrum I've covered now!

Then again, on a Twitch stream the other day, several people mentioned trying to write 500-1,000 words per chapter as their outline! So yes, please do let me know where you fall on this spectrum. :)

Now I wrote the intro to this post about a week ago. I have since FINISHED the "More Words Than The Day Before" experiment, and I think I might have underestimated myself. It took longer than I expected for me to tap out, and part of that was because I had a plane, train, and automobile to catch to get to Colorado! Where there is snow! (Actually not today, it's mostly melted off. But the first day! SNOW!)

I cannot explain the gasp I gusped when cresting the first hill to see SO MUCH SNOW still blanketing the mountains in the distance. And a remarkably similar gasp when it actually began snowing where we're staying, for just about an hour, heavy flakes that stuck, dotting the earth.

I love the cold. I love the chill in the air, that sort of bite it has, but it doesn't matter because you're all bundled up in layers. The air smells different here, with all the pine, fresh and crisp. I'm trying to take as many long, slow breaths and really soak it all in while I can.

I thought I'd try to take the whole week off. Instead, I've been drafting up a storm. It's like the story's gripped me and won't release until I've got it all down on the page.

The one thing I'm realizing is that I need one last little hook. One more stake I need to raise for my three main characters. Enter a local bookstore, where I happened upon this oracle deck:

(You can see in the photo above, the snow has already melted away bahaha.)

Someone had JUST recommended this deck to me on a Twitch stream last week! I even still had the link pulled up for it on the Barnes & Noble website. (It was sold out on Amazon when I'd been checking.)

So it feels sort of kismet? (And of course, I HAD to support a local bookstore! HAD TO.) There are so many fun ideas for fantasy novels in here. The deck also has a whole section on how to use it for tabletop games and create a D&D world, characters, etc.

I have a couple new ideas now for how to up the intrigue, make my characters' lives a smidge more difficult, and I'm excited to see how I can fold them into the 10,000+ word behemoth I've already created.

That's it for me on the writing front!

For reading, I'm halfway through Finlay Donovan Is Killing It and I also brought with me I Finally Bought Some Jordans, the newest Michael Arceneaux, for those of you who like essays, and The Witching Year.

Also downloaded via cloudLibrary is our Crafts & Drafts book club pick for the two months, April and May, The Anatomy of Genres by John Truby.

It is a thick boi of a book and some feedback I got from last month's chat was that, for these thick bois, we need a little bit more time to read through them. (Myself included!) So we'll be looking at the end of May for a bonus stream to write and chat all things genres.

(I do recommend skipping around through the chapters/genres that you're most interested in first! Truby makes the point that a lot of these genres "cluster into families that share certain characteristics" but it's a CHUNKY book. I believe him that he'll build on what we'll learn as we go and the overlap between genres, but we only have so much time. Skip what you're not into! You'll have the rest of the Crafts & Drafts club to fill you in on what you missed.)

Alright, it's time for me to go outside and get a little cold. I hope you've all had an amazing April and I'll chat with you soon!! Happy writing!