Welcome to Gaia! ::

It seriously took me YEARS to find an outline system that worked for me; it's evolved into a sort of expanded snowflake type thing. Here's what I do:

Step One: Write down EVERYTHING you know about the story. Stick everything in chronological order. This is basically a bare-bones summary of your story.



Step Two: Once you have your basic summary done, go back through and add your specific-y details. I do this by adding letters to the numbers (1a, 1b, 1c, 2a, ...). This is when you can leave yourself notes about how you want to write a particular part of the story.



Step Three: Write your story! Because of how your outline is now structured, you are free to write whichever part you want; you are not limited to writing in chronological order OR jumping around and losing track of where things belong in your story's timeline.

One thing that I felt really held me back before I started doing this was my inability to write the parts that I wanted to write. With this, I can get all of my ideas out of my system whenever I want, rather than needing to wait until I overcome my writer's block about part 2b in order to reach the fun part in 3a.

I find this works better for longer stories than shorter ones; this has been keeping my thoughts organized for a few years now about a work in progress. It's a great help for me, I hope you find some use in it as well. smile

I dont outline at all. I just sit down and start writing...

Do everything except write.

That's the only way I can get over it.

haha. i'll try rereading it first. I just sat down to my laptop now. this way, i can also edit my previous writing.