Outline Outlier?

The prose outline for Book 3 is complete, moving us one step closer to world domination.

If Jen thought the notes for Book 2 were disorganized, she had no idea what was in store! At least for that one we had about half of a synopsis already written. For Book 3 there was no such handholding. Jen started with only a plot rainbow, a blinking cursor, and twenty-odd pages of jumbled notes. Combing through old emails uncovered a few more details and highlighted the one really smart thing we did for this project: set up an email address just for our brainstorming notes. They might be hella disorganized, but at least they’re all in one place without anything off-topic.

Out came the hammer and tongs, and over the course of about 2 weeks Jen whipped Book 3 into shape. The synopsis is a bit shorter than the one for Book 2, even though there’s a ton of story. This implies that there’s a lot of detail yet to be fleshed out. Most of it should appear naturally as we write Book 2, so the next time we pick this up we should be able to en-hugen it significantly.

Which will be good, because looking ahead to Book 4, we’re expecting a whopper. We (read: Jen) strongly STRONGLY prefer it when all the books in a series are approximately the same size. If Book 3 turns out to be the runt of the litter by a significant amount, there’s no telling what might happen.

A writing partner is someone who humors you about your silly hangups.