These notes are from a writers panel at Live the Universe and Everything. Any misinformation is the fault of the note taker.

– Your task as a writer is to learn new things that can be applied to your process and fine-tune it through the years.
There are three ways writers approach creating a story.
– Intuitive writers are pantsters (writes by the seat of the pants.) they don’t have a plan on where it is going.
– Plotters aka story mappers. Those are the people before they write the first words they know exactly where they will go out and they know each plot and twist to get to the end.
– Hybrids: are pantsing and part plotting. Mix the two together.
– The type of story can influence how you define the story. Stories that are characters written lend to intuitive writing. Those stories are about people.
– Plot-driven stories are better thought out when doing previous planning i.e. mysteries, thrillers, and science fiction
– Hybrid is often represented in historical, historical romance; fantasy i.e. the hero’s journey.
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– When you outline a story it does reduce the writing time. You can write them faster. This is particularly useful in you have a deadline.
– Clue placement if very important in writing a mystery. She plans for clues or red herrings. She wants to manipulate the readers’ process. Clues also for questioners any story opens in the mind of the reader. Questions keep a forward momentum to keep the reader engaged to read the book. Ask different questions that will keep readers to keep turning the pages.
– The dreadful winking curser. It can cause your manuscripts to crash to a stop if you don’t plan a character to move from a to b.
– Wrote one book in 26 days it does not count the plotting that was done previously. She had an idea of a scene by scene.
– Easier revisions: when finished a manuscript what was the purpose of this scene. What are they getting out of it?
Publisher requirements:
– Publishers say send me a proposal. First 3 chapters and synopses that covers the major plot points. That is a story map or outline. Many publishers require chapter by chapter outline.
– Unforeseen circumstances; if you face a personal crisis it can hinder your writing.

Q: Does outlining story stifle creativity?
– If might at first. Or you might find it frees your creativity in a different way.
– You want to expand your skills as a writer.
– As you follow the p0lot line if you stop by at Vegas you might ask why stop at Vegas is relevant to the story. If you don‘t have a reason to stop we might not write that scene.
– Do outline following the advice of the book, save the cat.
– Story maps are never ‘done’ there is nothing that prevents you to not change it.
Story mapping process.
– Start out with a really cool idea. A man arranges fora rivel to be stun by bees. The rival is allergic to bees.
– Let the idea marinate
– -Record ideas. Will start asking questions. Can you target bees? Met with bee keep0ers. Start with a scene that starts living in your mind.
– Write a synopsis have each paragraph be a scene/event. When you have a plot addition of a grandmother to visit you then can add extra lines in a previous scene to prime it.
– Separate the synopsis into scenes and chapters. Editors often require it. To reduce writing time plotting can narrow your focus.
– You write a book.
In a spreadsheet
– One panelist will write one row in excel for each scene.
– She will add another column in the timeline of days.
– At the end of every scene documents how many words are to that scene.
– Change the color of the text by color assigned to that character. One viewpoint of a character. For romance, you need to balance the stage presence of the man and women or another character. Have a tab for characters to see how often they are used. This could also be used for story beats
– Some will use excel to put pertinent facts about each character and have a tab for each character.
– The steps you take are defined by you.
– The level of details ls defined by you.
– The tool you use is defined by you.
– We app.developerlevel.com