Outlines are boring to write up. You could do like me and write your story in a non-linear fashion.

Just take crossovers, half of the shit you have to write you sometimes don't feel like, jump ahead, write a future scene and jump back when you feel like it. Sure you're giving your story a specific pass, or an outline, but you don't have to fucking bore yourself by writing things up for months in the future and then writing them again for real. I do this super fast, a few hundred words on a scene and I'm out. It allows you to be more specific too.

But the downside is you could get sucked down into the future and be fucked when it comes to the stuff you actually wanna do. There's a reason I haven't posted a story.

 

Complete opposite to me dude. I love writing outlines - writing down great outlines for future chapters helps me get to them faster, keeps me focused on the big prize while working out the little things. Slowly building up something and then executing it in a later chapter, as earlier outlined, is one of the best things about writing to me: a feeling of accomplishing what you set out to do and having the story become fully formed. All great stories have great ideas to build up to, and the outline helps get to that. A good outline can be flexible too - using what you have and turn it into what you want by getting creative and just have fun without destroying the basic outline.

Also, I've posted completed fics. While you haven't posted anything. And outlining is apparently the reason. Opposites man, opposites.

 

That has nothing to do with outlines. That is caused by a) my laziness and apathy b) my constantly fluctuating computer situation- I fuck em up fast and c) busyness. My lack of the talent to sit down and write a 5,000 word chapter in one sitting can count.

 

Lol, my "outline" for LoM currently exceeds 20k words. And I'd say it's about half-complete.

 

My outlines are in .ODT on my PC: when I have an idea/thought that could be followed up on when I'm away from it, or if I'm in a program (such as a game) which makes it impossible for me to go back and add to the outline, I write it down in a journal/notepad that I have.

I also seem to pick up on the little details/thoughts when I'm distracted, eg, being a bastard with the zerg.

 

Uhm... have I missed something and there's been an announcement that this 'competition' is for real now? Or why is everybody apparently already starting to write?

/goes back writing.

 

You didn't miss anything. It's just that the contest is doing its job before it even become a real deal - it's making people write dark arts stories.

 

Ha! The powers that be should just start a thread like this every couple of months and not actually do anything about it. It seems to be working pretty well so far.

 

Lulz, yeah, just not an hp fanfic yet. I've only been writing those for less than a year, and both current projects are ambitious and will be quite long. It takes time, but I also haven't abandoned any hp stories yet either.

 

If this were to come to fruition, I would submit something.

Props for the idea guys.

 

If I outlined We'll All Fall at the beginning, then it wouldn't have been nearly as cracktastic and well-liked. The one-liners would fall short, and while it might have a bit more plot, it wouldn't have that off the dome brilliance that makes it so good.

That, and my inspiration to write Harry Potter comes in between 10 to 16 verses of prose. You know, that other thing I do.

 

Let me help with that.

Introducing (again), yWriter 5.

Create character bios, chapters, scenes with individual pages, no massive page of notes to read through when looking for something. List items and plot points, and search all of it.

 

I'm out of thumbs up so let me just say: :awesome.

I guess my notepad days are over

 

Although I personally haven't used it (yet), Scrivener for Windows (Beta) should be a good alternative considering its popularity on Mac OS.

 

Fantastic links! Thank you so much for posting these! I'm looking over yWriter5 for the first time now, and it looks very promising!

 

Hrmm, I'm a tentative in.

Then of course - my entry would be at most around 1,000 words, and while technically dark, not serious in the slightest.

 

This contest has to happen. Here is a list of the members who have expressed an interest in participating:

Perspicacity
Enembee
Rocog
The Santi
Nuhuh
Joe
Insane Juggler
Averis
Zennith
7ate9
MattSilver
Silens
bob3rt
Voice of the Nephilim
Grinning Lizard
Vlad
Kensington
Jeram
Celestin

Apologies if I missed anyone, but with that much talent willing to give a blind Dark Arts write-off a shot, it really needs to happen.

 

Oh, I didn't realize we had to explicitly state interest. I'm always interested in a writing contest.

 

Santi, if you are so edger to write something, you should work more on Harry Potter and the Boy Who Lived.

And you can add me to this list. I already have a few dark ideas.