Make your book a STAR - Part 2

How well do you travel in an unfamiliar city without a map or GPS? Not so well. As my graduate students can attest, when I write "wandering" on papers, the grade drops. Readers are equally intolerant of wandering words that confuse more than contribute to the story. Face it, your middle school English teacher was right: you need to outline before writing.  That's the "T" in my STAR system.

S = Start with your best idea

T = Tailor it with an outline

A = Accentuate the highlights

R = Research, Research, Research

Write or speak aloud the short version of your story from beginning to end. Make it like an abstract; 100-150 words. From that point, begin an outline. Microsoft Word and other formats have outline page template or you can type as you go ( my preference).

Remember if you have a section with only one subsection, either expand this to additional subsections or join the larger category.  Simply stated, if you have an "A" under a category, you also need at "B". Keep the outline balanced and your story will not have those odd drop-off points.

Stop whining about using an outline! Every nonfiction book starts that way - - - you see it as chapters and subchapters. Fiction books also need basic outline to keep the essence of the story on track. You have more flexibility in fiction, but that does not mean random.

If you need to brush up on outlines, go to Purdue University's Writing Lab.

More to come on the "A"