Average amount of planning and outlining.

[RepresentingWrath]

I have a question for authors who plan their stories. You finished planning\outlining the story or maybe finished the first round of planning. Let's assume that you won't change anything in the future. How many words\pages worth of material do you get? A combination of all your notes, character lists, worldbuilding, etc. How much info do you end up with? Like, for example, twenty pages with fifteen thousand words? Or five pages and a couple of thousand words? Maybe hundreds of thousands of words of data?

 

[Ilikewaterkusa]

Depends on what kind of story im trying to write, and what themes in putting into it.

The million dollar idea story is like about 500 words.

 

[owotrucked]

I'm about to finish my 50k-60k word volume and I have around 28k words for my outline documents. It contains a lot of scrapped ideas, repeats with slight variations and ideas for future sequels.

I dont outline the content of chapter. Instead I allocate how many chapters I'm allowed to convey something.

I made some changes during the writing though. Even though I opened some story threads for sequels, I am about to close all the threads I've planned.

With a 50k words, I can't always conclude everything but I give new status quo that lead to open end. If you dont plan for sequels, epilogues far in the future can completely deal with loose ends.

 

[Cossimeri]

5-10 pages of notes. Though I normally continue to expand and refine my notes as a story matures. I don't wait till I know everything before I start writing, otherwise a project just stalls and I lose the desire to write it.

 

[Representing_Tromba]

I've done fairly well and most of my stories have been done with little planning. Though I do come up with the world, main characters, and endpoint for my story before I start writing. After that, I decide what rules the world will have and just start writing. From there I just throw random things in and write because it's fun. I'm probably part of the 5% that don't make a ton of notes and just do whatever I want. My main story had stuff from King Arthur to tripping balls with Greek gods and people enjoyed it.

 

[RepresentingWrath]

I've done fairly well and most of my stories have been done with little planning. Though I do come up with the world, main characters, and endpoint for my story before I start writing. After that, I decide what rules the world will have and just start writing. From there I just throw random things in and write because it's fun. I'm probably part of the 5% that don't make a ton of notes and just do whatever I want. My main story had stuff from King Arthur to tripping balls with Greek gods and people enjoyed it.

Good for you. However, you didn't answer the question.

 

[RepresentingCaution]

I keep a separate notebook for planning, and I don't generally fill up too many pages in that.

 

[Representing_Tromba]

Good for you. However, you didn't answer the question.

I don't take notes for jack shit. I just start writing and hope for the best. There is no data, just mental images of what I want. If I succeed then it was all by happenstance. It's not my fault that people think I do all this intricate planning. All I can do is hope to meet my weekly quota and that I stay within the rules I've implemented into my universe.

 

[CupcakeNinja]

as i am a veritable God of Writing, i don't need to plan. I simply have an idea and the rest flows from my fingertips with a wild, furious abandon.

 

[Temple]

OP starts his question with "I have a question for authors who plan their stories". And then people come who say they don't plan stories. He's asking for plotters to share their experience not for pansters. I'm also a panster so I'm just lurking here wondering why pansters are answering the question for plotters.

 

[owotrucked]

To assert dominance by showing off their massive ballz

 

[Biggest-Kusa-Out-There]

around 10k for characters alone, another 10k for key events, another 10k for worlbuilding (including magic system), and some 30k for the timeline the story takes place in (including an alternative future earth from where mc comes)

 

[Jemini]

My outlines are approximately 1 page long, around a few hundred words. That is, when I write them down at all. I do outline all my works on a per-book basis. Most of the time though, I tend to keep the points in my head without writing them down.

I only write them down when I need to pull some complicated aligning of time-line stuff. Which, considering I am basing several of my stories in the same universe, some taking place at the same time as one another, actually does happen more often than not. When those situations come up, that's when I will actually write down my outlines for each of the two respective stories in order to make sure the time-lines add up should the two stories cross over at some point.

Spoiler

I am currently trying to work out transferring a member of the main cast from one story into the other. Should be interesting.

 

[Lloyd]

All my planning is in my head.

 

[EternalSunset0]

I have a question for authors who plan their stories. You finished planning\outlining the story or maybe finished the first round of planning. Let's assume that you won't change anything in the future. How many words\pages worth of material do you get? A combination of all your notes, character lists, worldbuilding, etc. How much info do you end up with? Like, for example, twenty pages with fifteen thousand words? Or five pages and a couple of thousand words? Maybe hundreds of thousands of words of data?

Just a couple of documents with shorthand notes, but I don't know what you constitute as a page, so I can't fully answer your question.

I do keep stuff categorized, so I have a folder with "main characters," "allies," "classmates," "villains," and such. Some will be shorter than others, so I'm not sure if I can count those as pages. Then the character bios will have something that looked like a character sheet with their basic appearance details and base personalities. Then, there's docs on locations, monsters, and so on. Whatever character development tracks I have don't get written because I chat with my beta reader over it, and I can just pull up the chat history to see what we discussed.

The plot itself doesn't get stored in a doc, but I do have a doc for timeline of events so I don't forget since the story takes place over the course of a year but has a lot of "3 years before" segments that affect or serve as foundation for the active plot.

Rest assured, I don't write an encyclopedia or anything as comprehensive, but I do love the idea of making one of those in the future.

 

[CupcakeNinja]

OP starts his question with "I have a question for authors who plan their stories". And then people come who say they don't plan stories. He's asking for plotters to share their experience not for pansters. I'm also a panster so I'm just lurking here wondering why pansters are answering the question for plotters.

Cuz we can

 

[RepresentingWrath]

Just a couple of documents with shorthand notes, but I don't know what you constitute as a page, so I can't fully answer your question.

You can say how many words it is.

 

[CupcakeNinja]

I have a question for authors who plan their stories. You finished planning\outlining the story or maybe finished the first round of planning. Let's assume that you won't change anything in the future. How many words\pages worth of material do you get? A combination of all your notes, character lists, worldbuilding, etc. How much info do you end up with? Like, for example, twenty pages with fifteen thousand words? Or five pages and a couple of thousand words? Maybe hundreds of thousands of words of data?

As a more serious answer, I keep Cornell notes. Basocally bullet points of things I want to happen, and smaller points between them on how to get to said events. I havent FINISHED any stories, tho I do know how I want to end them.

In my main story, it doesn't work out as well because of my MC being such a fucking wackjob. But yeah. I always say I just wing it, but that's only on a chapter by chapter basis.

I've started a google doc holding all my notes. And a glossary of characters. Their likes, dislikes, appearance. Things like that.

Anyway, keep extensive notes. You'll need them.

Also, keep notes of locations and where they are relevant to each other. It's not exactly a map, but mhmm it helps.

 

[RepresentingWrath]

As a more serious answer, I keep Cornell notes. Basocally bullet points of things I want to happen, and smaller points between them on how to get to said events. I havent FINISHED any stories, tho I do know how I want to end them.

In my main story, it doesn't work out as well because of my MC being such a fucking wackjob. But yeah. I always say I just wing it, but that's only on a chapter by chapter basis.

I've started a google doc holding all my notes. And a glossary of characters. Their likes, dislikes, appearance. Things like that.

Anyway, keep extensive notes. You'll need them.

Also, keep notes of locations and where they are relevant to each other. It's not exactly a map, but mhmm it helps.

Definitely a more serious answer, though, to a different question.

 

[Anon_Y_Mousse]

Well usually it's barely hundreds of words since it's just this place has this or this character does that. I also jot down key dialogues so I don't forget.

Sometimes it does get long like that one character that has 72 distinct weapons that have to stay consistent. Somehow it took up a decent portion of the outline?


Edit: It seems you were asking people that plan out their entire story, I plan by "arc" and the ending, except the dialogue, I note down some that only appear towards the end.