✉ Outlining: Hell Yeah! - Cristelle Comby

Today returning author Cristelle Comby takes over our blog to tell us about outlining!

Her latest release is Evil Embers (1 Mar 2019, Cristelle Comby, 226 pages), an Urban Fantasy, book two of Vale Investigation series.

"I loved the first book in this series, and the second didn’t disappoint. I hope Bell continues to have more cases and adventures.
[...]
The world building is fabulous and the love the details. Cold City feels very real, as does the supernatural elements of the setting." ~ Anne Barwell, author

 "This is an excellent book.  I really enjoyed it, well written, easy to read, page turner, great characters.  Good job." ~ Sylvia (Amazon reviewer)

|| Synopsis || Teaser: KCR Preview || The Series || Author Guest Post || 2018 Author Q&A || About the Author || Giveaway & Tour Stops ||

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Outlining: Hell Yeah!

by Cristelle Comby

Outlining, to writers, is the process of setting out the main events of your book and working out the plot from beginning to end.  It is a plan of your novel before you begin to write.  It can be from a rough single page on how the plot works, or a series of post-it notes put into order for writing.

I personally take great care to outline the whole story before I even write the first word of a novel.  It is a document that follows me throughout the entire process.  It’s a very lively document: it undergoes constants edits, shrinks in parts, toughens in others.

The outline is like the skeleton of your manuscript; the words of your novel are the flesh that covers them.  Outlining helps you to:

• Know what to write next.
  There is no starring at a blank screen wondering what to write.  When you sit down to write, you know what to write about next.  You won’t get so lost and end up down a blind alley with your plot.
  
• Change your plot or incorporate new ideas.
  If you plan it out, you can see ways to enhance the plot and add in new ideas.  As you research, you will know where to put them in or what to change.
  
• Find out the problems and holes in the plot or characters. Work out how things are meant to happen before time instead of as you write. This may enable you to see gaping holes in the plot or some problem with a character.

And lasts, and more importantly, if you’ve carefully outlined your story, it means that you know how it ends.

I made the mistake, once, of starting out writing a story without having a clear idea of how it was going to end.  Some 300 pages later, I ran out of ideas and now, several years later, that story still sits unfinished in one of my desk’s drawer.

Moonlighting as Death’s earth-bound envoy, P.I. Bellamy Vale
specializes in the weird, wacky, and slightly unhinged..

Evil Embers
Available NOW!

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