last night I got to thinking about novel writing and outlines. I’m a believer in them. My buddy Charles just gets the idea and some characters and dives right in. I responded to a blog post in J Alan Erwine’s blog as he’s about 10,000 words into a new novel. I used to write the way Charles does but about 50,000 words in, I’d get stuck. I wrote “Ace” and “Rouge” without an outline. I needed to know what the Pros do. So I asked J if he works from an established outline or like Charles just dives in. So far J has yet to answer me but he will. I asked Robert J Sawyer the same question about outlines and he says some Pros outline the way I do and some the way my friend Charles does. RJS just dives write in as well. Charles is in the middle of a 15 Chapter story and it sounds like he’s got about 150K. RJS responded this morning with a link to his story outlines from his website. His outlines are nothing like my outlines. Mine are scene by scene structures showing places and times. I think I’ve got enough going for my next novel “Green Alumni” without going into a full fleshed out outline. I think it slows the writing down. For GA all I need are character sheets. I can straiten out the other stuff later on.

I’m really getting into Julie E. Czerneda’s book and it’s giving me some ideas for another novel idea. It’s a cross over between science fiction and medieval fantasy. The world is a medieval fantasy world with science fiction elements resting under the surface. In other words, the world will be medieval culture but people will be going around with pocket computers high tech weapons talk of other worlds that sort of thing and a few surprises.