{"id":8096,"date":"2021-08-27T17:20:57","date_gmt":"2021-08-27T21:20:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/runeskelley.com\/skelleyverse\/?p=8096"},"modified":"2021-08-27T17:20:57","modified_gmt":"2021-08-27T21:20:57","slug":"outlining-it-gives-you-superpowers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/runeskelley.com\/skelleyverse\/outlining-it-gives-you-superpowers\/","title":{"rendered":"Outlining: It Gives You Superpowers"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-41\" src=\"http:\/\/runeskelley.com\/skelleyverse\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/06\/r-avatar-e1443983880436.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"81\" height=\"81\" \/>The Ghost Series contains many wonders, some of which have made our planning more complicated. One wondrous element in particular is a pain in the butt: some of the characters are precognitive.<\/p>\n<p>Precognition is what many RPG rule systems refer to as an unbalanced power. If mismanaged, it takes all the fun out of the game. You end up with a player who wants to roll dice every time their character takes a step. The same basic problem can arise with fiction. It&#8217;s crucial to place heavy constraints on any precogs you let loose in your world, so they can&#8217;t just spoil everything. Yet, the ability to see into the future has to be of some value. They have to be right sometimes or else they&#8217;re not precogs, they&#8217;re just delusional. In fact, allowing them more power brings more potential for excitement and intrigue.<\/p>\n<p>What you want is a way to level the playing field, so you can match wits against precognitive beings and win. If only you, too, could gain the power to foretell the future.<\/p>\n<p>With an outline, you can! (You knew that was coming &#8212; hey, are you psychic?)<\/p>\n<p>There are those who complain about writing from an outline precisely for this reason: you already know how the story will go. We see that as a strength. You can focus on telling the story well, because you don&#8217;t have to spend energy inventing it as you go. You can do foreshadowing and recurring themes in a very intentional way.<\/p>\n<p>Here in the Writing Cave, there&#8217;s another way that we hold our own when our characters are supernaturally gifted. We gang up on them. A writing partner doubles the number of brain cells available when you need to come up with a way to surprise the precogs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Ghost Series contains many wonders, some of which have made our planning more complicated. One wondrous element in particular is a pain in the butt: some of the characters are precognitive. Precognition is what many RPG rule systems refer to as an unbalanced power. If mismanaged, it takes all the fun out of the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[323],"tags":[519],"class_list":["post-8096","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-plotting-outlines","tag-ghost-novel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/runeskelley.com\/skelleyverse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8096","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/runeskelley.com\/skelleyverse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/runeskelley.com\/skelleyverse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/runeskelley.com\/skelleyverse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/runeskelley.com\/skelleyverse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8096"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/runeskelley.com\/skelleyverse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8096\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8100,"href":"https:\/\/runeskelley.com\/skelleyverse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8096\/revisions\/8100"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/runeskelley.com\/skelleyverse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8096"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/runeskelley.com\/skelleyverse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8096"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/runeskelley.com\/skelleyverse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8096"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}