Re-Outlining MY WIP, Part II: Plot Grids and Scene Outlines

A couple of months back, I wrote a blog post about how I’m re-outlining an old WIP before writing the second draft. In that post, I promised to write another post on how I write scene outlines. The time has finally come to fulfill that promise. It has taken me longer than I expected to finish the outlining process for what I’m calling Project Urban Fantasy. Partly because the publication of Comes with an Attitude* (my modern Pride and Prejudice retelling) took up a lot of my time, and partly because I spend a lot of time researching and brainstorming to make sure that my plot works and makes sense. So let’s continue where I left off in my last blog post—with an updated list of steps following the first five steps I had finished by that point.

How I’m Re-Outlining My WIP

Over the years, I’ve learned (sometimes the hard way) that writing is so much easier if I have an outline. My latest writing project, a soon-to-be-published Pride and Prejudice retelling Comes with an Attitude was the easiest book I’ve ever written, and I attribute that for the large part to the extensive prepping and outlining I did before I started the first draft (granted, it did help that I was following literary genius Jane Austen’s already existing outline!).

My next writing project most likely won’t be as easy. I’m getting back to an urban fantasy novel I started in 2021. I wrote the first draft during NaNoWriMo, and even though I did have some kind of an outline, it wasn’t enough. While the first and the third acts of that book are in a tolerable shape (at least in terms of the outline and the order of the scenes), the second act is a complete mess of disconnected events and scenes. That means that before I can start the second draft, I need to sort out that mess and come up with a functioning outline.

I’m hoping that this blog post will be helpful if you (like me) are a recovering plantser who wants to improve an old project or if you’re a pantser and you want to reverse outline a project before starting the second draft.

(Disclaimer: there’s nothing wrong with not outlining a book. If you can finish a book without an outline, awesome! There’s no right or wrong way to write. I just happen to be one of those writers who works better with an outline.)

Writing Goals for 2025

It's almost the end of January, and it feels a bit late to do a post about my writing goals. But honestly, I've been busy making my goals a reality, so that's a win. Without further ado, let's talk about how my writing went in 2024 and talk about my goals and plans for 2025! Big things are happening and even bigger things are in store for 2026...

How to Write a Synopsis for Your Novel

Did you know that you need a synopsis if you plan to publish traditionally and query for an agent?

I wrote a synopsis for my current work in progress, Project Prehistory, a year ago while working on the third draft. That synopsis is of course not query-ready, as the novel will undergo some major changes yet, but I found it a good exercise to see what the essence of the story was and how I could condense it into a short summary. This is what makes a synopsis a helpful tool for indie authors as well! You get to see the “bare bones” of the story, and that can help you identify if there are any problems in your novel. Or if you’re a plotter, you can write a synopsis already in the planning phase, before writing a more detailed scene list and starting to draft the novel.