Fiction Outlines And Emotion: 3 Tips To Write Better Novels

Let’s look at some tips which will help you to conquer fiction outlines.

1. Genre is your clue to emotions and your outline

Currently I’m writing an historical mystery. The novel started slowly and continued going slowly for 20,000 words. I hated my outline; the characters remained wooden.

Luckily this novel is #5 in an eight-novel series. (Discover why series are a good thing in Write HOT Mystery, Thriller & Suspense.)

Since there’s an over-arching plot for the series it dawned on me that I could bring back a character from novel #2. As soon as I installed the character with a single new scene and a few changes in other scenes, the novel came alive. Not only did the nascent plot start growing in all directions, the characters came alive too.

Here’s why: emotion. Somehow I’d managed to forget the importance of emotion. I lost the plot so to speak because I’d focused solely on the outline.

This contretemps reminded me about the importance of emotion. It’s a clue about fiction outlines in general — no matter how wonderful your plot and outline, without emotion you have nothing.

via www.fabfreelancewriting.com