Sci-fi readers and historical romance readers both have higher expectations on the books they devour. So, I’m going to start the tropes and trends for this genre with the strengths and qualities authors of this genre need.
Outlining
We touch on this outline beat sheet off and on throughout the outline course, but I usually don’t use it in its entirety. There are a lot of “long slogs” that I don’t enjoy pushing through. Most of my outlines will take a few beats from this one, but it won’t take the entire beat sheet.
I thought OneNote was nothing more than Notepad, honestly, so I never paid any attention to it. But when he showed me some of the things he’d done with it, I was impressed. I was able to organize his notes, and the notes I was taking from his book, into something coherent and something he could share with other authors, if he so chose to open his universe to other author teams.
It’s so very important to remember that an outline is a guideline, no matter how in-depth it is.
There are few authors who want just the basic outline. We do have authors outlining short stories and novels.
