Outlines, Log lines, and so on

One of the most difficult things I have to do, as a novelist, is to come up with a short version of the book. This is, in large part, because I am a novelist—I have a hard time saying anything in less than 80,000 words—but that’s not

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Outlines and Revising Them

There are two sorts of outlines that writers do: submission outlines and planning outlines. A submission outline is my term for the one you send to the agent or publisher in hopes of selling the book. A planning outline, on the other hand, is a writing tool.

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The Submission Outline or Synopsis

There are several reasons why, for the last two posts, I have been using terms like “planning” and “pre-writing” and “notes” more often than “outline.” The main one is that the outline that the writer sends to an editor as part of a proposal is a very

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