Outlining Motivation

I haven’t done an amazing amount on the outlining of the book recently. My core problem is that I wasn’t happy with the direction of the narrative – which has been mentioned elsewhere.

My approach was to start the story off in a particular direction, and hope that it ended where I needed it to. It didn’t, and so I needed to re-write to ensure that I was telling the story that I wanted.

What I have done is I’ve taken the original outline, and am in the process of incorporating elements from previous notes/chapters that I’ve done. I think that this will add a little more depth to the original story and is all good….

I have sort of decided that the novel will be in three parts, each with three major sections/21 individual chapters. I’ve taken this inspiration from ‘A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess’ who did a similar thing. (NB – for those that have seen it, the film does not copy this structure across, something that Burgess was unhappy with).

This whole outlining process is flagging up to me that I think it’s a good idea. I need to have a structure in place to identify to me where the key plot points are, and what I need to do to get there. I am still sure that the re-outlining will result in a narrative that isn’t quite where I want it to be, but it’ll be a lot closer and that might be the key point.

Anyway, I’ve given myself a deadline of the end of September to finish this reoutlining process. This brings me about a month behind where I wanted to be, but I think that it’ll allow me to complete a first draft by the end of the year.

Book Review#4 – Tell No One by Harlan Coben

In many ways this is a good old-fashioned story book. It has flashes of excitement and plot devices to advance the narrative, but this is a story about people.

Book Review #3 – Nowhere to Hide / Company Man by Joseph Finder

There is a reason that there are two titles on the header. This title was released under both, but as I have just finished reading the 580-page Paperback version (Nowhere to Hide) this is what the review is based upon.

Outline News#3

It’s finished! I’ve written what I think to be a suitable outline for the novel. Now what I want to do is to read it through and see if it makes sense, chopping and changing as appropriate. I’d like to be able to do this by the end of the week (04-09-2009). We will see.

Book Review #2 – Power Play by Joseph Finder

I really enjoyed this book. I’ll tell you that right at the beginning to remove any sense of surprise. Which is nothing like the book at all.

The story concerns the senior executives of the Hammond Aerospace Corporation who find themselves in the Canadian wilderness on one of those off-site meetings to ‘decide’ things. The problem that manifests right at the beginning is an accident with their latest airliner, which unfortunately has managed to lose a few components during flight jeopardising orders in a cuthroat marketplace.