  The Five Senses I have a problem writing scenes and I tend to leave out important information thinking the reader can ‘see’ what I vision in my head. Kelly, my editor, advised me to think of the five senses: hearing, smell, taste, touch and vision.
When you are outlining, it’s important to think of the five senses and how you can incorporate them into a scene or plot. It’s one thing to say how great a festival was. It’s another to say our character stepped on abandoned popcorn while walking through the crowded festival and eating his candy coated apple. We will address this more in tomorrow’s lesson when we learn how to overcome writer’s block. Index Card Outlining Another brainstorm method is index card outlining. I find it best to use this method after I’ve used the bubble method. Get out your bubbles from day one. I am going to use the bubble from “What would my tiger see?” with the answers: people, other animals, balloons, spoons, trees. Get out about ten index cards. If you don’t have index cards, you can make them by cutting a piece of paper into four parts. Pick out your plot points. I am going to choose all five points: people, other animals, balloons, spoons, trees. For each index card, write down one plot point at the very top. For example, I would put “people” on one index card, “other animals” on the next and so on. 
Next, under each plot point, write down what action can happen under that particular point which would cause the character to experience that particular thing. For “People”, I could write: People - escapes zoo, sees people - walks in city, sees people - talks to people - sees people while boarding bus 
Do the same for the remainder points. When you are finished with what your character can see, do the same for the rest of your questions. One of my other questions is “Where would my tiger go?” with the answers: zoo, city, restaurant, bath, get hair done, dance club, play golf. Just as before, write one plot point down per index card. Then, write what actions can happen inside of each point. 
When you have finished incorporating all your bubbles to index cards, take a glace at each one and arrange them on a table in an order in which you think they could go in. Can you logically connect the dots in a way that makes sense? If not, rearrange the cards to see what they would look like. Keep playing and rearranging until you are satisfied with the order. Remember to number them so you don’t lose your order. Mixing Methods As explained before, some people feel more comfortable diving in to the advanced version and outlining each aspect of their novel. Other people feel that too much outlining hinders the creative process during the first draft. You can mix and match these methods. For instance, start with the bubble method, then use the index card method to help write your advanced outline. Or you can bubble in your head and skip directly to the index card outline while omitting the advanced outline altogether. Homework Take your bubbles and incorporate them into the index card method. Have fun! Come back and let us know how it went. Tomorrow we will talk about the method that everyone has been waiting for: Writer’s Block Outlining. You can use the previous methods, mix and match or omit them completely. The best part is it’s even more fun than the bubble method! See you tomorrow. No one has commented on this article. |
