I’m a big believer in the maxim that planning is everything. Paradoxically, however, I’m also a believer in the maxim that a good plan today is better than a perfect plan tomorrow. This is how I ended up with a simple three-page outline for The Old Man, which I thought a vast improvement on the simpler seventeen or so bullet points for the story I originally mapped out.

Outlining Lock Out Tag Out.

The story for Lock Out Tag Out is substantially more complicated than The Old Man. Both stories are intended to have the reader wondering what is going to happen next – any story that doesn’t wouldn’t be worth reading – but while The Old Man takes place entirely at Blackwater Manor, the cast of characters and scenes in Lock Out Tag Out is substantially larger. Additionally, the plot is much more delicate in construction, meaning that missing out a step would impact the believability of the story. That would be a pity since I’m going to great lengths to give the plot some historical grounding.

How I’m Outlining.

Okay, let’s get into the meat of how I’m proceeding.

I’ve paid attention to a number of outlining techniques that you can find on YouTube, and I’ve been trying to combine them all – not so I can try them all at once, but so that if and when I decide that outlining one way doesn’t work for me, it’s not going to be much work to ditch that technique when there are others already in play.

I’ve gone all in here, I have sticky notes on a tri-fold project board, broken into the rough three-act outline, and I also have index cards with the exact same events and scenes on them.

The upside of the sticky notes is that they’re easily visible, easily stored and very simple to rearrange if a particular sequence of events makes more sense in a different order.

The upside of the index cards is that they can carry more information on them, such as the key characters present and settings.

It would be awesome to have sticky index cards, but I don’t even know if that would be a thing, or if there’d be a market anywhere else but me.

I’ve also got those same events and scenes programmed into the Scrivener manuscript, where I’m using the Label attributes to color code which of what I’m referring to as ‘Teams’ takes the lead in that particular scene or event.

When I talk about events and scenes, I may accidentally use these terms interchangeably, but not intentionally. For me, an event would be, for instance, the declaration of war on September 3rd, 1939, whereas a scene would be a walk through Coventry after it was bombed on November 14th and 15th, 1940. One shows something happening, the other shows something that has happened, perhaps as the backdrop of something else going on in the story.

As I’m drilling deeper into the outline, I’m also adding more background information to the characters and locations, and I’m continuing with certain other background researches which I won’t go into here at all because at this stage I think it might give too much away.

BI’ve been so busy over the last two weeks that I’ve done no real outline work at all, and I didn’t even have time to write a blog post last week. Meanwhile, a number of issues and thoughts have been creeping in about aspects of the narrative that need to be addressed in order that the story builds believably from normality as we know it into the dystopia that awaits both our basest natures and our best intentions.

Up Next…

In all practicality, there’s no way I’m going to be able to give Lock Out Tag Out any appreciable attention over the next month. I’m planning on just keeping it in my thoughts and making notes of anything that occurs to me in the meantime that could improve the story.

The plan for the rest of the year is to get back to The Old Man. I’ll be touching base with my second Alpha this coming week, but my priority now has to be running through the manuscript one final time. I intend to incorporate all of my own criticisms that I don’t think I addressed properly. The story will be decoupled from the Black Box Factory world – there’s no literary reason to have the two worlds linked, so it’s more work than it’s worth. I’ll also be concentrating on making sure my characters come believably alive.

I intend to do this on the fly, rather than as a read-through with a bunch of notes, which should hopefully expedite the process and have everything ready, including Beta interview questions, for a Public Beta by the New Year. I’ll post it on CritiqueMatch.com and let everyone know it’s ready, including a link here to the post page, if any of you are interested.

I’m making all this up as I go, and it shows, which is why I appreciate you coming along for the ride!

Have a safe and happy week everyone.

Categories: Lock Out Tag Out, Outlining

Tags: Lock Out Tag Out, LOTO, Outlining