m. c. de marco: To invent new life and new civilizations...

Via a mailing list: Johanna Harness contemplates a new kind of outline, Lazette Gifford’s phase drafting, just in time for NaNoWriMo.

I was attempting to do the pre-rough draft by writing more about each chapter. It was going okay, but the ideas weren’t flowing as well as they do in full rough-draft writing.

By breaking scenes into phases, the action flows. There may be 300 or more phases to be developed in the rough draft. Each phase becomes a writing prompt.

Gifford also presents good ideas about how to keep your writing on track for word count, how to set goals, when to add or subtract phases. Her short article is a gold mine of information.

Gifford reports speeds of up to 10,000 words per day using this method.

Update

Johanna’s original post, http://www.johannaharness.com/Johanna_Harness/Blog/Entries/2009/9/3_Phase_Drafting.html was merged into a later one, Phase Drafting (Novel Planning), linked above; the original post corresponds to the second half, subtitled Phase Drafting: September 3, 2009.