Episode 3: How Angela Outlines

In this episode of Unpublished, Angela and Daniel get into the messy, magical, occasionally panic-inducing process of outlining a novel.

Angela gives an update on writing the first chapter of Eros et Flamingo, including the particular terror of turning a book idea into an actual manuscript. From introducing a main character to building an original world from scratch, this episode digs into why starting a novel can feel so different from writing fan fiction, where the characters, settings, and emotional architecture already exist.

Along the way, Angela talks about worldbuilding, imposter syndrome, fan fiction as a stepping stone to original fiction, the difference between drafting and polishing, and why reading widely is one of the most important tools a writer has. She also breaks down her own outlining process, from Google Docs and timelines to color coding, chapter notes, shower thoughts, and the very real magic of discovering a story as you write it.

Whether you are writing your first novel, outlining a romance, trying to move from fan fiction to original fiction, or just curious about how a book gets built one messy draft at a time, this episode is all about finding the path through the creative chaos.

Plus, we discuss literary romance, comps, character development, why first chapters are so hard, and why using AI to shortcut the actual craft of writing misses the best part.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to Unpublished, a podcast that follows the writing of a book. I'm Angela Mattis.

SPEAKER_04 0:05

And I'm Daniel Stevens. So, Angela, I know you said last time that you had just started writing Aros at Flamingo. Can you give us an update? Is uh you still writing? How's it going? What's what's what's your status?

SPEAKER_00 0:16

Yeah, so I have been working very hard on writing the first chapter, and of course, I've been working on the outline, which you're never fully done with the outline, so we're gonna talk a lot more about the outlining process today. So I'm still definitely um in the mix of of getting my outline more fleshed out, but I have started writing the first chapter, and the first chapter is always kind of a beast.

SPEAKER_04 0:42

Uh wh why is that? Is it did you not know how you wanted to start it, or is it just hard to actually get into the writing and and write the first chapter?

SPEAKER_00 0:50

Well, in the first chapter, you have to really like hook people into the story, and you have to also at the same time be giving them lots and lots of like core information. You're introducing them to the main character, you're introducing them to the story, to the setting, and ideally you still want to be creating like there needs to be that like gotcha of like, oh, I'm really enjoying this. There's something that's pulling me in, let me keep going to chapter two, chapter three, chapter four. So, really the first story is like this little like power punch of all of this information that you have to figure out how to like shuffle into place to tell it the right way. And it's like the most complex puzzle ever. And so I right now am currently working on the first chapter, but I will admit, and for anyone else who's in this place, like this is the time when I think I have the most like fear and imposter syndrome and like hesitation of just like what have I gotten myself into?

SPEAKER_04 1:51

Uh oh. Like it's sort of like this has become real. I oh oh shit, I actually have to like sh put up or shut up sort of moment.

SPEAKER_00 1:59

Yeah. And there is like a huge difference between writing fanfiction and writing a manuscript. Um, I think we see a lot of people kind of make that pathway from fanfiction into writing manuscripts. And I kind of wonder if this is something that is very like, I don't think this is unique at all for anybody who's trying to write their first or even second or third manuscript that like it's kind of a terrifying process, and it is very like it made me so neurotic. Like I said before when I wrote my first um manuscript for many reasons, but I think one of the biggest things is like from my perspective, I came like I came up in fan fiction where when I'm writing a story, I don't have to introduce you to who these characters are. There's seven books out there, you know. I don't need to sit and like make sure that you understand that Hermione Granger's hair is curly and um that Draco is, you know, platinum blonde or whatever. It comes up, but it comes up very naturally because like I'm not thinking about it in terms of like, like I already know who these characters are. They're in canon, they're created. And even like I don't need to explain in as great of detail what Hogwarts is or whatever as I'm writing fanfiction.

SPEAKER_04 3:18

Is it sort of like the one part of writing a manuscript is living in the world, writing in the world, using the world, but the other so much more, or maybe not more important, but very important part that does not go into fanfic is creating that world, conceptualizing that world. Actually under st maybe not understanding, because I'm sure fanfic requires an understanding of that world. Maybe a different type of understanding because it's someone else's world. But creating that world is a completely different beast.

SPEAKER_00 3:48

Yeah, yeah. And it's like something I don't think I like even properly estimated. Like when I wrote The God of the Dead, I was writing to like mythology. So even all of those places had already been created. There was the underworld, there was the river sticks.

SPEAKER_04 4:06

So almost like a stepping stone.

SPEAKER_00 4:08

Yes, it was a stepping stone.

SPEAKER_04 4:10

That is a perfect little stepping stone across the river sticks.

SPEAKER_00 4:13

I've just been taking baby steps and now I'm deep in now I'm deep in the big wide ocean with Arrow set flamingo, where it's I have to figure it all out from scratch. But um even with The God of the Dead, I remember that I had a really hard time seeing it. So this is one of the reasons why I've kind of like put the manuscript on the shelf for a minute and I will come back around and um and like edit it and give it a lot more layers because I think it's been percolating in my brain a lot more for a lot longer. But I struggled so hard to really picture the underworld in my mind. And I was talking a lot to, I worked with, I know I had talked about my friend Jenny, who's like a she has a master's in the classics, and um, and I did a lot of research, and I was really like just Googling all around trying to find whatever I could find. But it's like it was really nebulous. Like, what is like you could and you could go in so many different directions with it. Like the underworld could be this like dark, seedy, grungy place, or technically, Hades is also like a god of opulence, and so um you could have gone in the direction of making the underworld this like sort of like dark but like luxurious opulent place.

SPEAKER_04 5:24

Like hedonism to the bad extreme, yeah. Like Versailles.

SPEAKER_00 5:29

Well, actually, it's sort of defining kind of like Versailles type hedonism because I was sort of struggling, and then I went to to Paris as you know, I just scampered off to Europe. And I was at Versailles, and literally, I don't even know what time it was here in the United States, but I was like texting Jenny like a mad woman, like, I feel like I'm in the underworld, like I think I found it. And I was taking pictures and video, and I like I meant to be at Versailles for like one and a half hours, and I was there for like a whole half day, just like walking all around and taking, you know, just taking it in as much as I could because I was like, this. And then I went to the Louvre, and I also was like, okay, if the Louvre and Versailles had a baby, this is Hades's palace. And so I came back and I had just like added so much more in about like what it like looked like inside these opulent rooms and all the stone carvings. And I feel like I could even like I created this whole kind of like outdoor, indoor space where it's like the the the long halls that are the kind of like the the social places where everyone kind of comes and mingles and like the nymphs are you know out in like little like clusters trying to trying to find, you know, gods to bone, basically. But I like really wanted to give it this feel of just like everyone is like glamorous and gorgeous and it's like incredibly like like I made a whole like glass ceiling that was kind of like the um, you know, I don't remember what it's called, but like the like it's a place in Paris where they always do the Chanel fashion shows and it has this like extremely ornate glass ceiling and it's all these like domed ceilings. I was just thinking about it so much and I was starting to like visualize. So that really helped me with the God of the Dead to like sort of find the place where things happen, like where I was like putting it in place in my head. So I've been thinking about that a lot with Arrows at Flamingo because you have to just build from scratch. And even if you have been in places, you have to sort of like you have to figure out how to take somebody who's reading what you're writing and not overdo it where they're sitting there and they're like, okay, cool. I understand. Thank you. I know what this room looks like, please stop. But also, so they're like in the moment and experiencing everything then that's going to happen in the scene. So it's really, really hard when you're coming up with all of that from scratch. And when you're in your first chapter, like I don't know my characters the way I will know them in 10 chapters. So like I'm going through the act of like getting to know Sal at a more cellular level. Then like I've been thinking about her for a long time, but now I'm like, okay, I need to tell, like, our first chapter opens with her. Of course, I feel like it's a very it's not like a big spoiler, that it opens with her as she's she's taking out one of her marks that she has fallen in love with. And so I'm kind of telling the story of how she kind of worked her way through killing him, basically, and then also how along the way she fell in love with him. And then as I'm doing it, I'm like scattering in these little bits and pieces. And I kind of came to this is like a perfect example of one of the things that you settled and like, oh shit, how do I do this? I was like, how do I like the story is written from Cell's perspective, it's written in um the first person. And it's like, okay, well, how do I then make sure that like we know what her name is? Because would she have given her name to anybody? She's tracking down a mark, you know, like she's working a job. She's not gonna have, she's not gonna be showing up being like, hi, I'm Celitria, you know, and no one's gonna be calling her by her name if I even have her have a conversation. So I like kind of made this thing up where maybe I won't spoil it, but I made up a thing. I had to figure it out. It was like a little puzzle I had to solve for how I could introduce her by her name in the first chapter and like introduce the fact that she's a killer, and like just like you just start from complete and total scratch, and then you have to figure out how to slowly like titrate information in while keeping people engaged is hard. It's like so hard.

SPEAKER_04 9:34

I mean, uh, yeah, finding the right amount of explaining, yeah, balancing between underexplaining and having people not really understanding, or like you were saying earlier, overexplaining and having people like, okay, we get it, move. Yeah, really.

SPEAKER_00 9:47

Yeah, come on, girly girl. Um, yeah. So luckily, I mean, I practiced that a lot when I was writing Moon River, and I was really pleased because I wrote this whole big long thing of like a wedding scene, and I made sure that I just made it feel as much as like you're at this wedding. And I did get some comments back of people really being like, I felt like I was there, like I felt like I was in the crowd at the wedding, and I was very accomplished. Yes, I love when that happens because I don't like put in my author's notes, like, here's what I was trying to do, guys. So when people come back and comment around and tell me, then you know, it's like one of those that's my little gold star, like, okay, good, I'm on the right track.

SPEAKER_04 10:24

So yeah, when the connection happens as intended.

SPEAKER_00 10:27

Yes. But the imposter syndrome is real, and I think if again, kind of something that I've been thinking about, a message to anyone else who's writing, is that the books that we've read, I always have to remind myself anything I'm reading has gone through major amounts of editing and iteration and professional editing. And um, so you're reading a final product, and that's kind of a blessing and a curse because I don't know where it started. Like it's not a thing that a writer would be like, hey, like you can read the first cut and like here's like here's what it was. Like every once in a while, maybe you can find that content somewhere. But for the most part, that's such a closed, like black box process where it's like, as I'm writing, I'm obviously trying to write something that is going to be publishable, that is going to be something a literary agent would be interested in, trying to put together something that feels like a book that you know, we've all not specifically like I'm not trying to copy any books that have currently been written, but I want it to feel like, you know, you know, when you read something that's really crappy and you're like, oh, this got published. I don't want it to be in that kind of category. So I'm like trying to make it at a certain level of quality, but I don't know my targets, and that's hard. And so I think it breeds a lot of imposter syndrome because the only example I have is something that's already been through this like process. It's like you're getting the most perfect version of something, and like, you know, you're getting the master painting, but you're not able to peel back the layers and see how many, you know, all of the sketches.

SPEAKER_04 12:03

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was thinking more like you're looking at a glazed piece of pottery comparing it to your lumpy form you're still making. And it's like, I know how I can see how I can get to that, but I shouldn't compare step four with step thirty.

SPEAKER_00 12:19

Right. So it just breeds this kind of imposter syndrome of just like, oh my god, I'm not like, is this as good or or not? Like, am I good enough? Could I do this? And I kind of I remember with my first manuscript because it kind of hit me like a ton of bricks. I didn't think it was gonna feel that way. And then I was feeling it again this time around, just like in these last couple of weeks. And I always kind of have to pull myself out of the moment and just be like, stop, like, first of all, you're this is fun, you're doing this for fun. Like, I and this is kind of even where like outlining comes in really in my favor in this point because I'm outlining things that are gonna be happening in the future, and I know I said this on our previous episode, but like I'm so excited to write like this big middle chunk that I know is gonna happen. I'm so excited to write these scenes that like and I'm excited to write these scenes that happen towards the end and like these things that are going to be these big like crescendo moments of the story. So I have a little bit of a carrot where I'm like, I gotta get through this because I gotta but also I need this to be good enough so that when we get there, I can write it as good as I want to. So there's kind of that piece of it. But also, like I've just been really like snapping myself into place in the first chapter and just being like, all right, like what do you want to tell in this first chapter? What are the points you have to hit? And I've been kind of going through and just like iterating through and iter like it's probably going to be the most edited chapter. I think with The God of the Dead, it was the most edited. I at one point completely scrapped the whole first part and redid it. And this point again, I don't hopefully won't scrap the whole thing.

SPEAKER_04 13:55

But um Will we find out if you do?

SPEAKER_00 13:57

Will you I don't think I will though, because I think I really like how it starts and it makes a lot of sense. And I feel like we even as I'm writing it, like things are blooming and growing in my mind, like things that I hadn't really been thinking about until I was suddenly and this happens all the time. Like you think a whole thing through and then you go out and you actually write it and it takes you in different directions. And that has already happened in the first chapter where I kind of was like, all right, we're gonna hit these points, and then I have gotten into it, and I'm maybe I would say maybe like a quarter of the way through the first chapter, and even already I'm like totally adding, changing, updating because I like I know that like I'm already seeing it kind of blossom into and I like where we're going. I think it's getting better and better, but I'm doing something that is helping me get there. And this is also another very hot tip, and it's so funny because I was gonna talk about this already, and then something happened yesterday that was one of those, you need to talk about these things. So what I am doing right now that is helping me immensely as I get through this may seem a bit counterproductive, especially when I talk about imposter syndrome. But hot tip for anybody in general, you should be doing this. But this is really, really, really helping me as I make sure that my first chapter is at the level that I need it to be at is I am reading. I am reading a ton. And I start reading, I mean, I've been reading already just a lot because as you go through the process of querying, one of the big things that you have to do, and honestly, this kind of annoys me, I'll be perfectly honest, is you have to provide comps and like comps comparisons. So I am like a you know stubborn brat, and I'm like, this was my idea. I don't need to go explain to you how it's like all these other things people wrote. Like, I don't know, I don't have time to go read a bunch of, you know, other books and see if they fit. So I get a little sassy about it like that. But I I get it. Like, so I've been thinking about that a lot because I didn't do that with The God of the Dead, and then I got to the end of it, and I was like, well, I don't want to just go out there and be like, I'm just like Madeline Miller, you know, like I'm just writing the next Cersei or something, but it's Hades. Like, I wanted so I kind of was like in a scramble and it was really stressful for me. So I was like, let me get ahead of this this time. So I've been reading a ton just to kind of even center myself and say, like, what kind of book is this going to be? What kind of genre is this going to be? And it's kind of something I've learned from the query process. Like, you need to really snap into place in like what kind of genre and what kind of what are your comps, sort of.

SPEAKER_04 16:34

So, like, what have you been reading lately? Like, is there specific stuff you're seeking out, or are you just kind of absorbing everything and just seeing what there is?

SPEAKER_00 16:43

Or well, it's kind of funny too, because I have been reading a lot of different books, but kind of falling into a similar genre. And I actually didn't have the word for this genre, but I just saw this literally on TikTok. Someone said, um, these following books are romances that read like literary fiction. And I feel like it was like that big aha moment of being like, oh, duh, that's what Aroset Flamingo is. It's a romance that reads like literary fiction because we'll tell the story of how you know Silitria and Aaron meet and how they get to know each other and where that leads them to. But it's not just like some trope heavy, like, oh, cat mouse, or like enemy to lovers or whatever. Like, we'll explore a lot of like thematic elements and a lot of like who they each are as people individually and how those parts of them that are very unique to their own selves kind of like fit with each other, and how they kind of slowly get through some of their like bias or get through um, you know, just they're both complex kind of people, and they're both very different people who have a lot of weird similarities. Like, they like how often do you want a first date? And you're like, oh, we both kill people for a living? Cool, it's a starting place, but also at the same time, there's a lot of things that are different about them, and it's going to really dive more deeply into the nuances and the reality of like finding someone who's the right person for you in all the ways that you maybe didn't expect or didn't know that you should be looking for. Um, so I really want to explore that, and I think that that kind of depth and those like themes will bring us into that romance that reads like literary fiction category.

SPEAKER_04 18:28

So Can I one second? What do you mean by literary fiction? Isn't isn't any romance novel, quote unquote, literary fiction?

SPEAKER_00 18:38

No, there are a lot of different genres, and I don't really even know all of them. I don't it's like not something I sit around and like study deeply, but there is a huge difference between and I don't want to like call anybody out specifically in case they thought their book was literary fiction, and I'm sitting here being like, no. But like, so like a Harleck Quinn romance novel is not literary fiction.

SPEAKER_04 18:59

It's something that's more kind of like Well, but if it has characters, if it's telling a fictional story, is that not literary fiction? It's literature, because it's written word and it's fiction, it's a fake story. Well, I don't I guess I don't understand why the who who usurped the term literary fiction to mean something so specific other than any story written down.

SPEAKER_00 19:19

You're bringing up an interesting point that I have never really thought about, so I don't have like a solid answer.

SPEAKER_04 19:23

Yeah, sorry. As an outsider to the book world, that doesn't seem to make any sense to me. Calling a subgenre of literary fiction should be all of fiction books, right? No, because I think like um I think that's it just like a hoity-toity word that people use to mean like elevated.

SPEAKER_00 19:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 19:44

Because it has the word literary in it instead of just fiction. Okay, okay.

SPEAKER_00 19:48

Yeah, so like you as a somebody as a reader, and like we're seeing a lot of interesting trends and patterns in the publishing world and in like the reading world because of things like book talk and bookstagram, and also because there are a lot of people who are now getting into reading because they've been exposed to it differently. Like when you're in school, you're really getting told to read. Like, I have been assigned to read Heart of Darkness like three times. That is an impossible book to read.

SPEAKER_04 20:15

Oh, I liked Heart of Darkness in high school, though. I was the dork who liked the things they told us to read in high school.

SPEAKER_00 20:20

Right, but like I am a voracious reader, and I had literally just like googled it and then listened in class when people were discussing it, and that carried me through the other two times I got.

SPEAKER_04 20:29

I remember, I remember I got to read Heart of Darkness as extra credit. It wasn't even assigned to us, and I had to I got to read it, and then I had like a discussion with my English teacher, and that I got extra credit for doing that.

SPEAKER_00 20:39

So like I was like, honestly, when you think about it, for someone who isn't really into like reading books and literature, that like you are the one who's like, but I read Heart of Darkness. It's like a conversation for another time.

SPEAKER_04 20:51

It's like I know. Oh it's not that I don't like, I just like it. I find other things as my natural thing to go read as nonfiction at this point. I don't know. Well, anyway, to kind of continue to do that. I can still appreciate good literature. I can appreciate literature.

SPEAKER_00 21:06

Literature. But to kind of close the loop on what I was saying is that I think that there are a lot of people who are introduced to reading in that way of like, you have to read this book, you don't have a choice, and you have to do a report on it. So there's like this negative connotation towards it, and now they've kind of dipped their toes into reading again, but they're coming in with books that are more like fantasy or they're more of like books that are just very trope heavy, low stakes, easy read that to someone who is who I don't want to say like someone like me, but like someone like myself who has generally been reading a lot more of like like when I'm looking for book recommendations, I'm looking at like the Booker Prize shortlist. I'm looking at what's, you know, been considered for pulsers or what's won a pulser. I'm looking at what's on the New York Times bestseller list, but I'm also anything that's getting buzzed, like I've read. I've read Twilight. I've read all of those things. But as I'm reading them, like I'm I will never call any specific writer or book out when I have a negative thing to say, but I will give myself the um caveat that I can quote Robert Pattinson. And he he I just saw this in like a clip from an interview yesterday where he was like, I read the Twilight books before we started filming, and I was like, are we sure that this was supposed to be published? So there is levels, and I appreciate that there are people, and I'm not, you know, speaking down to anybody's reading comprehension or their interests or likes, except to say that I understand that like even I sometimes just need to go and read something that's gonna be like, you know, I sometimes I need that little like popcorn, I guess I keep calling them popcorn reads, like those very like keep it moving, keep it going, keep the plot along. Like we don't need to have some big deep think about this. I don't need to come out of this book being like, like, oh no, I feel, you know, that I have this whole big, huge understanding of the world and all of the different people that live within it. Like, that's a beautiful kind of book to read, and it's really critical and important that you include those things in your diet of reading. I guess that's how I'll write it. That's how I'll say it. It's kind of like a diet, like you have things that are more protein heavy and things that are more sugar.

SPEAKER_04 23:19

I was gonna say maybe something that, you know, I'm also a lover of movies, of film, of great film. And it's sort of like the difference between film like a film and a movie almost. Like, like I love, I will, I, you know, I am here for a for a indie foreign language movie from somewhere, you know, that you have to read subtitles and it tells harrowing stories, but I'm also here for a crappy horror movie or like a funny comedy, like white chicks. Let's let's the the great cinema.

SPEAKER_01 23:49

I was gonna say, dang, I think that what you should categorize yourself as is insufferable. But then you came at me with white chicks and I lost the thread. Exactly.

SPEAKER_04 23:59

I mean, it's all about loving the whole spectrum. And I so I guess I will, you know, now that I'll see you, I assume we'll kind of give some examples. Maybe you can show me sort of like these literary fiction you're reading compared to things like Twilight, which I would argue is both literature and fiction, but we'll have to agree to disagree with the book genre world.

SPEAKER_00 24:19

I don't know. I don't I'm like, don't go down a crazy tangent right now, Angela. Reel me back in. Um no, the books that no, the books that I'm currently reading right now that I do feel like fall into this category are Good Material by Dolly Alderton and The Wedding People by Allison Esbach. And I feel like they're both doing something that I'm trying to achieve, which is they are telling stories that are very like relationship-driven, very dialogue-driven, very like like in uh specifically I'm reading like the wedding people right now. I'm kind of I kind of am reading mul multiple books at once. So I'm probably about a quarter of the way through good material and a quarter of the way through the wedding people. And what I'm feeling as I'm reading them is like I'm really getting to know Andy and good material, and I'm understanding really deeply like the intricacies of his relationship with Jen and why it wasn't working and why it was falling apart, because good material is the story of like Andy as he processes a breakup like of a relationship he was in with Jen for multiple years, and it really kind of upheaves his whole life, and it has like a a kind of pacing that I think you find in literary and more of like a literary work where it's it's slower and we're really in the uh details of his day-to-day life and really how he's thinking and feeling and reacting to this breakup. So I think it falls into that literary fiction category because it's not just like boom, boom, bing, bang, boom, here's all these things happening, you know, it's kind of like we're really living through it with Andy. And then the wedding people is the story of Phoebe, and she goes to this really fancy hotel in Newport sh because she's gone through like this horrible divorce, and she goes because she's going to it's like her beautiful place that she saw in a commercial, and she wants to go there for kind of one last hurrah and then kill herself while she's there. And when she gets there though, she realizes that she's the only person who has come to the hotel who is not an attendee of this big huge wedding, and she kind of like runs into the bride, and it's so far what I'm gathering is that it's kind of like this relationship between her and the bride, as they like they keep kind of running into each other, and the bride is also like this sort of like spoiled, like she says she spent a million dollars on this wedding, and so she kind of has this audacious like you are not coming to my wedding and killing yourself in this hotel. Like, I will not put up with that. But we're really, really getting to meet Phoebe and understand how she's you know, like you I'm only a few chapters in, and like what I've really been it's taking me a long time to read the wedding people because I'm really, really thinking about how it's telling me Phoebe's story kind of slowly while interchanging the things that are happening in the moment where Phoebe it starts with her going to the hotel. And like there's so much detail, there's so much in both of them, there's so much detail, and I'm just really, really like soaking up how they're introducing me to these stories and these characters. And it's one of those things where like I'll be reading and then I'll like be like, okay, and I'll set it down because like my brain will start thinking, and I'll be like, I need to have Sal do this, or I need to be so it's really helping me tell that story to be reading other people's work, and it's funny because coming full circle. I just randomly was like on TikTok and I was I saw somebody talking about like Southern Gothic novels, and it just sort of was like like a little light bulb thing went on where I was like, oh pay attention. And they were talking about um William Faulkner's Absalom Absalom, and I was just like curious because I thought it sounded really interesting, just sort of like the like the plot of it, and I like googled, it was sort of this is a bit of an aside, but I like googled it to see because sometimes those like older books they're written in ways that I just like get so bored so fast. So I looked to kind of get like a summary sample of it. Um, and it was sort of funny because Faulkner, the sample that I read, he's just talking about why they used a certain kind of blinds in the room and how it like reflects light and how you don't see dust moats as like it's like so so so granular and detailed of this one little thing. That part of me was like, sometimes when you're trying to get really good at writing a well-detailed scene, maybe you also need to like shoot the moon a little bit. So I I bought it and it came in the mail, and the thing that it said on the back was just kind of apropos of nothing, I guess, when you consider. But a William Faulkner quote that said, Read, read, read, read everything trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master, read. You'll absorb it, then write. If it's good, you'll find out. If it's not, throw it out the window. And I was like, holy crap! Like, how timely, how perfect for this moment. And so I guess that kind of unless you have any other questions about how I'm doing right now where where I am at in my writing process, I feel like that's the perfect way to kind of close the chapter on on this one and start diving into our outline.

SPEAKER_04 29:30

Yeah, no, let let's start talking about outlining. Let's tell it teach us how to outline, Angela.

SPEAKER_00 29:35

Okay. All right. Are you ready, students? Um so I feel like outlining is one of those things that it's like it's however it works best for you to do it. If you are someone who really, really needs to go and like like I've done a few different things when I was figuring out timelines. And I know that there are some tools out there, like there's plotter, there's scriveners. I personally don't use them. I just use Google Docs in my own bare hands, I suppose. But one thing that I have done when I was timelin is I will kind of like create I've created Google Sheets where I just like create timelines and I'll have the characters in all of their ages, because there was one that I was writing that like jumped back and forth. I think it was crushed, maybe I don't remember. But yeah, I was like jumping back and forth between three years. So I was like, if I talked about someone's age, or I also will be like, you know, like if there's like a kid at all in the story, I'll like make sure that if I am in one scene where it's like later in the story, I'm writing that kid to not be like six months old if they're actually a year, you know, because kids develop so fast there's a lot of changes.

SPEAKER_04 30:50

Yeah. So it's just sort of like a a Bible or a holy book of reference stock of everything, so you can always just quickly say, okay, what have I established? What have I created? And and and never get any facts wrong.

SPEAKER_00 31:01

Yeah, I mean that's the goal. For well, I don't know actually, because I've done it different ways where I will have sort of like so like with the Google Sheet, that was more just my timeline. And it was just putting like the high points on the timeline. Um and like kind of and I I use it when I'm trying to think through pacing or like how many years should it be before this, or like whatever. I will kind of go look at it. Like I need to see it, so I'll I'll create the timeline and then I'll kind of be playing around with it. And I probably, I mean, for every story, I create a timeline, at least some I use it more than others, but I at least like have this thing I'm looking at, and it's just like I use like that timeline as a tool. But honestly, what I'm doing the most when I'm outlining, I create a Google Doc specifically for my outline. Although I have found honestly, just from an efficiency perspective, now I just use different tabs in my in my like manuscript document.

SPEAKER_04 31:57

I feel like your inner your inner corporate project management side definitely is leaking into your your author passion project at least.

SPEAKER_00 32:05

I honestly I feel like um I feel like that's another thing that has taken me from the like through the journey of getting to being able to write, is that I mean, I don't want to go into too much detail on what I do for a living, but at the same time, I have to think through very much like the progression of things and like the iteration of work as I'm planning out you know, projects and things that I'm managing and I'm thinking about like you have to be very, very, very detail-oriented. And I've worked in technology spaces, which is even more challenging because you have to understand what you need to configure, and then like if you configure something incorrectly, or if you do one thing one way and the rest of the process bottlenecks there, yeah, like it's just very, very delicate for how you're building out like processes and things that you are then building with into technology. And I felt my brain changing as I was learning how to do that work. I remember feeling the shift. And I also had a stint where I was doing a lot of reporting and I was really learning Excel. And with Excel, I was working with like huge data sets. So I couldn't just get to work. I had to sit and be like, okay, I know I need to pull together a report that shows XYZ.

SPEAKER_04 33:24

You had to design your world first, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 33:27

So I was like, all right, I need XYZ, I need 15 reports that I need to pull out of the system. And five of those reports don't match up the data properly. So I need to go and clean through that data. Like, it's just a whole thing, and you have to figure out what your progression is, otherwise, you're gonna get stuck. And I do that all day long, every day. I'm thinking about like how to bring a lot of different pieces in together and make it make sense. And so my career actually really has given me a lot of those, a lot of that like way of thinking and a lot of those tools. So for me, I think, yeah, like I'm thinking about how I can do this efficiently. I'm thinking about what my best process is, and I've seen a lot of iteration along the way as I have been figuring out my outlining process. So I've started with things where I've had like, I remember I used to call it like my writing desk, and it would have like tabs for the outlines, tabs for ideas, tabs for like dumped dialogue and things like that in case I wanted to use it later. But I've sort of like slimmed that down a lot, and now I've gotten to a point where I do everything in one Google Doc. I have one tab that is the actual work, like the actual manuscript or the actual like work in progress or whatever for my for my fix. Um, and then I have another tab that is my outline. And what I'm doing in my outline is like I started by trying to actually put chapter numbers, and then I would spend so much time editing the chapter numbers as things shifted and changed. Because I think the biggest thing to understand is that your outline is a living, breathing thing. Like, I don't write every day, but I probably think about my outline or add to my outline or change things in my outline every single day. And it's really, really helpful because I'm a big time shower thoughtter. I had a huge shower thought just this morning and was like, I gotta wrap this up. I gotta go write this thing down in my outline before I forget. And like um, I wrote something into my outline at three o'clock in the morning the other night. And um, so like I'm my I'm not thinking linearly when I'm coming up with the story. So it's really helpful to have an outline where not only is it like it's not too ticky-tacky that it's taking me 15 minutes just to figure out where to slot something in when I have a quick thought, like it's very high level and it's sort of in these chunks, and it's just I always write chapter break and then I write whatever, and I also highlight, so if I have like dialogue, I don't highlight it, or if I'm like writing something that I feel like is like what would actually be written into the chapter, I don't highlight it. But if it's just like high level, like I want this chapter to have XYZ thing, then I'll like highlight it so I can kind of when I go back and see, I can see what are the things that I need to just like look at quickly and then what do I need to actually work into the writing? So like it's really not anything that complex. And actually, I pulled some things from my outlines because I really want to stress how much it is whatever you want it to be, I suppose. Like it's whatever works for you. Some people I think need the security and safety of feeling like I know every single chapter to a T and it's very, very detailed, and that's totally fine. Like, some people probably need to write things down, some people probably need to have sticky notes and stuff. I'm not like that at all. I just have my outlines and I'm like kind of cleaning through and cleaning through and adding things. But like, as unfortunately, another thing that I do is I delete my outlines as I finish the chapter. I just delete everything out, otherwise it gums up my document.

SPEAKER_04 36:48

So, because I'm like, I have like the like I take the whatever is highlighted and I put it sort of like like at like the top of your header basically or somewhere so you can just constantly look at it.

SPEAKER_00 36:59

Well I have so one of my tabs is the finished, is like the actual work, and the other I have another tab where I'm like writing the chapter out. So I will copy and paste like the outline bit from that chapter into the top of that tab and then be writing everything underneath it. And so I make sure I have all my bits and pieces from whatever was in my outline, and then when it's like a full completed chapter, then I drop it into the manuscript thing. And that really that process comes from just the fact that I used to have betas, and so they would like be going in and reading the stuff when it was done. But it just kind of works for my process where it's like I like things that are clean to go into the final document, and then that final document, when I say clean, that's kind of an oxymoron because I will edit the living daylights out of that document forever and ever.

SPEAKER_04 37:42

But that's like your living rough cut, sort of, of the actual manuscript, not any of the work product needed to go to okay.

SPEAKER_00 37:50

Exactly.

SPEAKER_04 37:51

Do you have like a larger, less detailed outline that you keep of the entire story? And uh I mean, I know. No, that is the outline. Okay, and so you just you you only have a kind of like a rolling outline as you're going, you only keep the portion. Oh, okay, okay.

SPEAKER_00 38:07

Yeah. So um, like here's an example of something that was an outline for an entire chapter or like a major section in a chapter. Moon River, my fan fiction that I just finished, was telling two storylines at the same time. So, like, I had to have the most like you would think I had this crazy detailed outline, but I really didn't. I was just thinking about it so much and cleaning through it, and I would have like an idea of what I wanted for each section. And like, there's a storyline that's happening two years in the future, and a storyline that's happening simultaneously in sort of like the present day. And things that are happening two years in the future are sometimes breadcrumbing things, and like they kind of bread crumb back and forth. Like they'll have a conversation about something in the past, and then you'll sudden you'll see that chapters on the line, you'll see a whole scene that occurs because of something that happened in that conversation. So I really did have to kind of like my outline is sort of funny because you would think I would have gone in the direction of having this like super, super tight, very detailed. Like, I maybe would have gotten to the point where I was storyboarding or putting stickies on a wall or something, because this story was so complex. Writing this whole like these two major storylines that are happening concurrently, and also kind of like to the, you know, they're happening to the same characters, and also those characters I had to show, like two years later, they almost feel like different people because like so much growth has happened in the main storyline. So I had to like even think about like, okay, they've become these people two years later. I'm showing the growth of how they get there. Like, I have to get to a point where the roads converge and their relationship, and it all feels very like seamless and organic and realistic. So it was this big behemoth. And to be honest with you, my outline, like I just sort of thought through like what's happening in one timeline, what's happening in the other timeline. I color-coded them in my outline, and I knew that like I kind of made some decisions to make it easy for myself that like each chapter would have the beginning would be in the future, and then it would be what was happening in the present time, and on like only two occasions you had another snippet of the future at the end that would kind of tie the whole thing together. But that was kind of a rare event because I wanted readers to get into the vibe of knowing that they were gonna start the chapter one way and finish it in the past, so like that whether they realize it or not, they were like, we had a pattern, we had a rhythm, and then I planned out both of the timelines and both of the storylines, and then I was color coding, and then I would just continuously clean through and clean through and clean through. And I got in Moon River, I had an entire massive story change, like in the back half. I was not planning this like huge it's a spoiler, so if you would like to go read Moon River, I will kind of be vague about it. Um, but like there was this huge, huge, huge thing that had been coming up a lot in the comments. Um, that, you know, because I was posting chapter by chapter on AO3 and having a lot of readership, so I was having a lot of people come and be like, I think this happens, or I think that's gonna happen. And people kept wanting this one thing to happen. And I was like, no, that's not on the plan. That's not, that's not it. That's not where we're going. And it got to a point where I was like going through my outline and I kept on, I was kind of having this like, but what if? Like, what if I went that direction? And then it's funny because I ultimately decided, yes, I'm gonna go that direction. And it answered so many questions that I was still trying to figure out.

SPEAKER_04 41:38

Like it was meant to be.

SPEAKER_00 41:40

It was meant to be. It was like, why would they do this? And then when I decided to go that drought that route, it's like, oh, they would do that because of that. So it all really came together in the end.

SPEAKER_04 41:50

So, like the outline got you there, but still sometimes inspiration just strikes and like, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 41:55

Oh, yeah. I mean, okay, so let's circle back to that after I read to you what my outlines actually sound like and then what it becomes. Okay. And like my outlines are very, very like sometimes if I have a real picture of a scene and I want to not forget any details, it will be a little bit bigger of a section. But I have found that if I outline, if I put a whole ton of my outline, when I actually go to write the chapter, it stresses me out. It's like there's just too much, there's too much I need to read through, too much I need to clean through, and I'm a little bit like, I just like let me just get to what I'm trying to do, like move out of the move out of my way. Okay, so for example, these are things that I have written into outlines. So this was one in crushed. I wrote Draco and Hermione, the Pining, The Wanting, The Kiss, and the Push Away needs to be a scene where there's, and I put in all caps, a tear dripping down her cheek. Like I had seen this whole thing where the character was feeling so heartbroken and they were at a wedding, and like these two characters who are realizing that they are in love with each other but don't feel like they can be together, are the best man and maid of honor in a wedding of their best friends. And so they're up on the altar, and I knew I wanted them to be like in so much pain of having finally gotten to this culmination of like, yes, I have all these feelings for you, but I also they're both like rival star lawyers going up head to head against each other in this like big legal battle, but like it's a conflict, you know, we can't be together. So I knew I wanted there to be this whole thing where like they're watching their friends profess their love and getting their happy ending, and they're just like miserable. And she and he's looking at her and she just has like a single tear dripping down her cheek. And then I wrote, like, I mean, I'll write things like some big kiss and push away scene. They still fight, they still bicker. And then I put like a little, I was I put a little bit of like dialogue in that I probably didn't use, but like I got scared, I got my heart broken. I need some time to think. Please just let me think. I said they have an intense thing where he's like fighting with her to not see it like it's just going to become toxic between them and to give them a chance. So I'll like sometimes kind of tell myself, like I'll write it like I'm writing. A note to myself, and then I'll add in little bits of like dialogue. I had another one for Moon River where I had kind of just like gotten this flash in my mind of what I wanted to see in a certain scene. And I and I have such a strong idea, especially when I get towards the end. I know I've said a couple times before that like I always see the ending so so so clearly. So I spend a lot more time working on my outline and kind of jumbling through things in the middle of the story. Like I will even say for Aroset Flamingo, I have the beginning outlined where I really feel like I have a strong hold on what I'm gonna have in the beginning act. And like the second act where like the first act is going to end right when Sal and Aaron meet, and their whole relationship I have vague decisions made, vague things mapped out, but like I don't ever feel a need to have my whole entire outline so like formally created because I think and I change and I grow and things pop into my mind and I get ideas and things shift and transmute, and that's part of the process, that's like part of the fun of it. So I have like very, very basic, basic, basic. I know XYZ things happen, but like as I'm writing and as I'm continuing, that whole section will blow out and become its whole big own living, breathing thing. But right now it's very like gray to me. But that's happened before I've gone into an entire chapter and been like, I don't know what the fuck is gonna happen in this chapter, or I've gone into a chapter and been writing it and like not realized that something was going to happen until it's just like coming out onto the page and been like, oh, okay, all right. Like, like one of my favorite chapters I've ever written. I went into it and my outline had said something like the character was in a previous marriage that was an arranged marriage with like a Russian oligarch, and she fell in love with him, but then they couldn't get pregnant, so he just kind of like drops her on her ass, and she's it's the day of their divorce, and she's in a bar and she's drinking martinis and getting drunk and crying. And the scene that came out of that was one of the most heartfelt. Like, I like fell in love with the character so much as I wrote this scene for her because it was just so like like I could feel her heartbreak so much as I was writing it, and like that's never happened to me. I've never been in that situation, but like I just like wrote this whole thing of how she sort of is like bitterly looking back on it, but also having this sort of like, I'm not the I think she says something like she's like, I'm not the heroine. I'm like at my best, I'm someone's wife, and at my worst, I'm just a nasty mean girl. Like, she's kind of like this like difficult character, and she sort of has this like, I know that I'm not the person who gets the happy ending, and it was just like this like raw moment for her that just made me love her so much, and it was almost like I it just like came out of me. I don't even know where it came from.

SPEAKER_04 46:59

So it's almost I'm imagining kind of like a metaphor for your outline, and like it's this treasure map, and at the end is the X, which is this your great, wonderful, crafted, finished manuscript, and it's written kind of in pencil, like vague pencil. There's like a a little bit of a trail, you can see it, but then as you go, you take a magnifying glass and you really inspect what's going on, and you're committing into pen that trail, and you're you're expounding on details, making sure you're getting past certain obstacles in the story, making sure you're hitting certain beats, but always going towards that endpoint. And then once you go past it, you know, the the map just sort of gets thrown away.

SPEAKER_00 47:41

Well, no, I would say I keep the map, but it's like when I actually am on the trail, I maybe didn't realize that like an owl was gonna be hooting at me and I'm like gonna be freaked out for a portion of it, like, or I'm gonna be walking through at nighttime, or maybe I walked past something that's not quite the same as how it looks on my map. And or maybe, you know, sometimes that helps or hinders. There's all kinds that's a perfect example. Thank you. That's a good analogy.

SPEAKER_04 48:05

And you're you're taking your little notes as you go, like, oh, remember when we came to the you know, the skull statue, we had to we had to push the left eye, and those are sort of your notes about like, hey, I established this character is X years old, and it's just like notes to keep yourself, you know, safe in your journey, sort of like not conflicting with yourself.

SPEAKER_00 48:24

Oh yeah. I definitely do that sometimes where I'm like, especially because I have written a lot of things where they live in like Paris, or even just things that are like, you know, in the Harry Potter world, you're there's a lot of like Latin of like writing spells and things like that. Yeah. And so I have those little markers that I put in there just because it's like I get so annoyed of having to control F throughout my doc and be like, what did I call that? Like the magique ecological blah blah blah. And I'm like, what the fuck did I come up with? And then I have to like try and find it again. So again, an efficiency thing.

SPEAKER_03 48:56

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 48:56

But yeah, no, it is really interesting. Even as we talk about it, I feel like I sometimes I feel like I'm being a little bit scattered because it is sort of a scattered thing, and like the part of writing that is so much fun for me is taking that little tiny bit and then going into that first phase of like writing the chapter end to end and then putting it into my doc. And then I almost feel like like sometimes like I call it sketching because I kind of like as I'm writing out the chapter, I'm like sketching it out because like that first version of it is not that great half the time. That even like that first idea or whatever, and then it's like for me, the fun and the magic of it all is in the editing. Like, I will edit, edit, edit, edit, edit, and I will sit there and I will read chapters over. By the time a chapter would get posted onto AO3, I would have read through it fifty times, maybe, or like read through sections of it and just like or I might go and I might read something else and it like inspires me, and I come back and I'm like adding things in and changing things. Like I really, really love the editing part. I think that's for me like the most heartbreaking thing about this whole AI wave is that like people are using AI to do the editing for them and to do outlining and to do some of these pieces that are like, no, like that's where the magic is. Like the magic is in when you first are outlining through, and like there's so much, like I have had so many magical moments of cleaning through my outline and being like, oh, oh my god, I think this happens, or like, oh, I didn't even okay, like let me slot this in, let me move this around, or like, oh, like that like wonderful breakthrough moment of like when you have sort of like the spaces in your outline that are a little soft and you're like, oh, cross that bridge when I get to it, and then you get to the bridge and you have like you have that relief of being like, oh fuck, yes, it turned out so good. This part that I didn't that I was worried about. So like all these beautiful moments and all these things that happen, it's like you're first of all, fuck AI, it fucking sucks. Um, it's ruining creative like we could maybe we will have a whole episode about me just talking shit about AI. And honestly, if you're somebody who's writing and you're using AI, you're not a writer, so just maybe go back to reading. Like, I will be a bruh about it because it is so, so, so damaging to creativity and to the writing community that people think that they can use AI to do this because this is what the actual craft is. This is the craft, and I will give a prime example of this. So, in my outline for Moon River, this is the line that I have put for I knew this was gonna be like a whole scene I was gonna write, but I put just one line in and it said, or it was like something that popped into my head, and it was it said, a face that had smirked, etc. etc. Now was reduced to timid fear. Like that was just what I put in my outline. Like I obviously it was like a half baked, I literally put etc. etc. in there twice.

SPEAKER_04 51:45

Oh, that's not the final draft.

SPEAKER_00 51:48

Yeah. Um no, what it became was, and this is just kind of a snippet out of this whole scene that's like this gut-wrenching scene, it said his eyes found Draco. Eyes that had cut him down with such disdain so many times, they show him with wild terror now, the frightened, hollow look of a man marching helplessly to his end. So, like, it started out as just like etc. etc. A face that uh I wanted it to be like a face that had once, you know, like a like eyes that had to be a little bit more than a few years.

SPEAKER_04 52:17

The same emotional journey is there.

SPEAKER_00 52:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 52:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 52:20

And then now, you know, the those same eyes shone with wild terror now. The frightened hollow look of a man marching helplessly to his end. And it took me a lot of iteration, and maybe even that's not I don't know. Maybe someone's listening to me say that and they're being like, babe, you think that's good? You know, I could have taken this even further. I don't know. But that's what it became in the story. This like little snippet. But the journey in between, like you said, was like, that's what it is. That's what writing is, that's where the craft is. That's what you're constantly like to Faulkner's point. That's what you're constantly needing to like read, read, read, think, think, think. Get better, get better, get better. Because maybe I would read this in 10 years and be like, his eyes found eyes that had cut him down with such disdain so many times. Like, what the fuck? Like, good lord, woman. Like, who knows? I might look back and be like, my my sweet girl, I love this for you, but we've grown. And that's how it should be. I should look back at everything I've written at some point in time and be like, ugh.

SPEAKER_04 53:18

Yeah, and I mean, I think that's obviously everything's always a work in progress. We're always going to be super critical of what we've done. But it sounds like you've kind of you've got your process figured out and like outlining is a very important part of this whole process. But that then and but now you're starting to get into like, oh, what happens when I actually use this outline? So is that sort of what isn't? Can you is that what we're doing next time? Yes, oh my god.

SPEAKER_01 53:42

Did you look ahead in my in our doc?

SPEAKER_00 53:45

Did you look at my outline for this podcast? Because you literally just set me up for what comes next. So thank you, Daniel.

SPEAKER_04 53:51

I wasn't looking at the outline, it was just so natural. But anyway, tell us what comes next.

SPEAKER_00 53:56

Wow, I love that.

SPEAKER_04 53:57

You're welcome.

unknown 53:58

Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 54:01

So as I'm starting to really start writing, what is coming next is I need to get to know my characters. I need to develop all of the characters who are gonna be, you know, of course, Sal, I need to develop Aaron, even some like sub-characters, and really think through all of the little bits of development that go into them. And sometimes it's as simple as just knowing what kind of foods they like or where they live. So that is the work that I'm starting to do. I have I'm developing the development. So um we will talk more about that next time.

SPEAKER_04 54:35

Yeah, it sounds like you've got probably a lot of work. I mean, I can't imagine having all those character crazy characters, assassins and everything, rattling around in my brain. That sounds like you need to get them all sorted. Uh, it sounds like a lot of work, and it sounds like I'll let you get to it, and we'll see you next time.

SPEAKER_00 54:51

See you next time.

SPEAKER_04 54:59

Unpublished is an Ish Media production. We do not make any guarantees of publication for listeners or hosts of this podcast. If you have questions or comments, send us a query at yaps at unpublishedhepodcast.com. That's Y A P S at unpublished the podcast.com.