I finished the outline for Red last night, at around 2:30 AM.
Okay, let’s be honest. I finished the first draft of the outline. And yes, it was a struggle at times to force myself to write it out and really decide what happens from point A to point B, but I’m much happier with the structural foundation of the story now. I feel like regardless, I have a path to follow. I know what to write, and I can spend these last few days tweaking the outline instead of tweaking entire chapters later.
At present, it’s a 5,000 word document of notes and outline points. There’s actually – and I swear I didn’t plan it this way – 100 phases even. Zette’s phase outline is broken into 250 word chunks, which would be unfortunate for me as that would only be 25,000 words. However, I’m anticipating wordier phases than that because some were fairly general and covered larger bits of events. There’s 20-21 chapters currently, I anticipate each running 3,000-5,000 words, which will be more than enough.
However, I’ve still got some stuff to add, I think. I’ll review it again tomorrow and see if I need to, but I think there should be at least one more chapter – if not two – in the middle someplace. Not for the sake of word count, because in my mind a story is as long as it needs to be and no longer. But to set up some things that happen a little later in the book.
And then… there’s the ending. It leaves everybody in a bit of a lurch. Very little is resolved. And yes, this is meant to be part one of three, but I’m a little torn on how to handle this. Some of the questions posed at the beginning of the book are answered, which is ideal for an ending. But it’s raising many more questions, and I’m not sure if that’s going to fly.
What do you guys think? Have we been too strict to define the fact that a series book still needs to stand on its own and tidy up its smaller plots? Is there room for a ‘one huge story in three installments’?
