Developing Story Ideas, 3rd Edition

24 Story-Editing Your Outline

Having revisited your artistic identity, you can now think of finalizing your best outline. First, however, make a final pass at eliminating remaining problems, which the novice often assumes will disappear by expanding the outline into a full piece. Handcuff yourself to the nearest radiator and delay expanding it just a little bit longer, because there is some more very useful stuff to come.

Scene cards. Number each scene and gum its outline to a large index card. Line your scenes up on a table and experiment with moving, combining, and eliminating them.

Using Scene Cards

You can test an outline’s viability by turning it into scene cards (see sidebar). These break your work into movable parts, each with its function, ...