Hello everyone,

It seems as though most writers moan and groan when it comes time to outline or edit a story. I don’t mind either of them because I simplify them the best I can.

Not many enjoy overwhelming or tedious tasks and usually outlining and editing are both.

If you’d like to write a story with all the parts you usually get from crafting an in depth outline, I’m going to give you some suggestions. Now, if you’re what’s considered a pantser, I salute you for being able to do what you do without outlining first.

If you need an outline, but wish it were a much simpler task, that’s what I’m going to help. The same goes for editing. If you can’t afford the usually hefty price tag that comes along with a professional editor, I have some suggestions on how to lower that cost.

Let’s look at each one, outlining and editing, one at a time.

8 Steps of a Simple Novel Outline

A few sentences for each is all that’s needed to have a simple, yet thorough draft of your story.

1. The Beginning- This is where your protagonist is at the beginning of your story. Introduce them, tell readers who they are, and what they want.
2. The Blast Off- What sets the protagonist off on their journey? What event happens that launch them into the story?
3. The Journey- The protagonist’s adventure begins and they have trials, tribulations, new friends, new enemies along their path.
4. The Uh-oh Moment- The protagonist gets derailed. There’s a wrench thrown in their plan. Something big happens to threaten their ultimate goal.
5. The Change- The turning point or point of no return. The protagonist needs to change or step up their game to get what they want.
6. The Tragedy- The point where all hope seems lost, when it seems the protagonist could never get what they want. The bottom drops out. They may need to make a sacrifice to get back on track.
7. The Ah-ha Moment- The point where the protagonist realizes they’ve had the knowledge or power all along to reach their goal.
8. The Conclusion- This is where the protagonist is at the end of the story. How have they grown/changed? This is where you reveal that change/growth and tie up loose ends, answer any unanswered questions.

Now on to…

How to Save Money Editing:

Editors can be pricey, but having a great professional editor is vital to having a quality finished product.

Here are a few things you can do to lessen the amount of time an editor will need to spend on your book. By doing a few things yourself, you can still hire an editor, yet save a lot of money by doing the preliminary stuff yourself.

Self-editing Prep Work That Can Save you Money:

1. Read your story to yourself and mark any areas with poor grammar, punctuation, bad sentence structure, and areas you feel need to be omitted or rewritten. If an area doesn’t advance the plot, get rid of it.
2. Next, read the story out loud to yourself or someone else. Mistakes stand out much more when you read out loud. You’ll catch more that way.
3. Run your story through a program such as Grammarly. Their free program is great, no need to pay for the premium version. Grammarly can catch areas that you still may have mixed.

By doing these three steps in any order, you can save yourself hundreds of dollars on the preliminary editing.

Now you can hire an editor to polish your work which will require less time and effort saving you a fair amount of money.

Bonus Tip…

Put the feelers out to your friends, family, social media friends. I did that and discovered that one of my clients (I’m a Neuromuscular Massage Therapist) is a professional editor. We now barter work and I don’t spend a dime out of pocket. She’s a phenomenal editor.

In Other News:

• Please join my facebook group: The Ins and Outs of Novel Writing
• Check out my newly published book, The Orphanage, among other works on Amazon.
• Stay tuned for another post this week on another short story writing contest with fun prizes.

I hope this post helps you along your journey.

Happy Writing!