In preparation for NaNoWriMo‘s blast-through-a-first draft-November, I’m following K.M. Weiland’s roadmap on constructing an outline. I’ve outlined my last three novels, but each time it’s like starting from scratch. In any case, I like learning something new.

I began last winter with Weiland’s software, Outlining Your Novel, which is the computer version of her workbook by that name.

I didn’t like it initially, but I dug it out recently, and I’m finding it useful this time around. I’m pairing it with Weiland’s (free) Scrivener template, which in turn is paired with her book:

Children's Publishing Blogs - How To blog posts .

All this to say that reading her book this morning, she mentions using old calendars to establish a timeline for a novel. I’ve been working all month on a detailed timeline on Scrivener, but using printout calendars is an excellent idea. Ms know-it-all Google directed me to this useful site, and I now have color-coded printouts of the years 1549 to 1559 with the significant events highlighted. I especially like that I will be able to know the phases of the moon since this was all-important pre-electricity.


Four other blog posts on outlining that may be of interest:

The advantages of phase or scene outlining

The joy of being at the beginning of writing a novel

How to begin to write a book

A writer’s routine: on resisting an outline