Outlining Draft 3

I massively refactored parts of each POV: removing the first chapter, re-ordering the scenes, and/or changing the first quartile entirely. This removed repetition, resulting in more powerful scenes and a streamlined story.

I almost finished moving the detailed beats from each scene’s metadata to the main outline. This consolidates the beats of the story, allowing for a high level overview in a single file.

Plans for October

• Finish porting the scene beats to the main outline
• Add Questions/Promises/Reveals into the main outline
• Map side character relationships and the arcs’ tension levels as they change throughout the novel, to make sure they make sense
• Review the outline to make sure the arcs are clear and the beats are in the right order
• Get started on drafting/editing again

Stats

Again, the non-manuscript word count is somewhat inflated since I have multiple copies of the outline as I refactor.

Manuscript markdown files: 92
Manuscript words: 137491
Total markdown files: 462
Total words: 417252

My outline’s beat count has exploded as I add detail and track more things:

End of Draft 2.5:  958 beats, 65 arcs, 93 scenes
End of August:    1088 beats, 70 arcs, 99 scenes
End of September: 1804 beats, 70 arcs, 95 scenes

I’ll update the outline as I write/edit the third draft, which will let me see how the changes will affect the story as a whole.