045: The W Outline

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The W Outline

Hello, welcome to an episode on the W outline. I made a series of Tiktok videos, I think, last fall mainly talking about the W outline. This is something that I found and was going to try for a new book idea I was going to try this W outline. And it's called the W outline because it actually you kind of storyboard on to the letter W. So it's literally a W, and I got tape and I put a W on my wall. And I put post it notes on it. And I was planning to go hard on the W outline like I had a whole stack of post it notes, I was gonna put a ton of different plot points onto this W structure. And I let's just face it, I'm not a huge plotter and I just could not get myself to do it. So I kind of scrapped it. But I did leave that W up on the wall for a while. So if you look back at a lot of my videos from last year, you'll see that W up on the wall. And I love the idea of it, and how flexible it is, so I wanted to do an episode on it. Because in my opinion, that's that's, that's kind of the best outlining method, right is one that's flexible, it can work for you, if you are a very detailed plotter, and you'd like to know a lot about the story, you'd like to do a lot of work before you start writing.

And the W outline is also helpful for people who are kind of in the middle more hybrid, or closer to being Pantsers, where you just want to know a few things about the story. And then you're going to dive in and start writing and see where it goes. It can be helpful for, you know, people who are anywhere along that spectrum, that spectrum. If you're a pure pantser, where you literally just want to like go into the story, start writing and see what happens, then this W outline might not be for you. But, you know, I guess you could say the same about any outlining method, if you are a pure pantser, who just wants to start writing right away and see where the story goes. So the W outline comes from this woman, Mary Carol Moore, and I'm going to link her website, I'll put her information in the description of this episode, because definitely want to give her credit, this is not something that I have come up with. And again, the idea is that you just put a letter W. And you can do what I did, where you take some tape and you put this on the wall and you get post it notes.

Or if you want to just do this on a piece of paper you can. So it's best if you do this by hand, get a sheet of paper, get a pen and make a big capital letter on the page, just make a big W on the page. So the points of the W those five points. And I'll include a graphic on Instagram of this, if you want like a visual representation of W outline, you can see kind of what this looks like. But if you think of the five points of the W, the letter, those are kind of the five most important points of the story. And for those of you who are familiar with the three act structure, and if you're not, don't worry, it's okay. The top three points are kind of what you can think of is like Act One, act two, and act three, they're not an exact match, you don't have to kind of like pull the three act structure onto the W outline. But there is some similarity. So if it's helpful for you to think about it that way you can.

So the first point, the top that very first mark, when you start making the W that is the catalyst, that's the triggering event to the story, what kicks off the story, what sets things in motion for your main character, then as you head down that first line of the W, things get worse for your main character, things get progressively worse. And this is where you kind of set up the problem or the conflict for your character. Right? So we're going down the conflict is present, things are getting worse, we know the stakes of the story. Then once we get to that bottom point where we start to go back up, that is the first turning point. And it's called a turning point because as you guessed it, things start to turn around for your character. Things start to get better for them. So maybe this is something where things just start moving in a more positive direction. Maybe they get some good news maybe something happens in the plot that just gives that character some hope, they start going in a more positive direction.

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So then once we get up to the third point, the middle point, that top point of the W we've been going upwards, things are getting better things are improving for the character, that's the halfway point of the book, then this is going to be some other kind of catalyst like a second triggering event for the story, it's going to be smaller than the first one, it's going to be smaller than the main catalyst that kicks off the action in the story. But something needs to happen, right. And that thing that happens is going to cause things to-you guessed it get worse again, so we're gonna go back down the W, things are going to things are gonna look not so great for your main character. We get some bad news, something happens. And then once you get down to that secondary low point, that is the lowest point of your book, you could think of that as like the all is lost moment things are bleak things are not looking good for your characters. Yeah, that's the the lowest point of the story.

So then once we have that, that second, or that that kind of low point of the story, then things start to go back up. Again, things start to improve. Maybe your character gets a big realization, they realize that they can solve a problem, they get some help something, maybe there's some kind of big change that they go through. And they get all the way up to that final point on top of the W. And that's the resolution. This is where things kind of wrap up for your story, right. So I know, it's hard to kind of listen to that and think through these different points of the W without having a visual representation. So again, go to Instagram, and I'll all kind of name these different points and what I'm talking about on a graphic so you can see it. My Instagram is at thekatiewolf so you can check that out when this episode is released. But, again,

I think the reason I like this is because it forces you to pinpoint five important events in the story. But beyond that, you don't have to do a lot of detailed plotting or deep detailed outlining. Now if you're someone who wants to do detailed plotting, you can do that on W outline, you can just get post it notes, write out scenes that happen, chapters, etc, and put them on to the W you can absolutely do that. And if you're doing this on paper, you could just make little notes like kind of create some points, you know, bullet points on the lines of the W to fill in the gaps between what happens in these big five plot moments, you know, you can you can definitely get down to the scene level. And every post it note represents a scene or every bullet point represents a scene so that by the time you get done, you look at your W you have the full book mapped out. So don't be afraid to do that. And I will again i'll link Mary Carol Moore's website in the description of this episode, you can definitely check her out. She has some YouTube videos I've seen where she breaks down this process and explains it more. And you can see her kind of teaching this and having a W behind her. So especially if you're a visual person that would that would be helpful.

But yes, that is the W outline. Again, just another tool in your toolbox. If you want a different outlining method, if you feel like you're looking for one that has some flexibility. This is definitely one that I would try and it's fun like even though I didn't see this all the way through to completion in terms of getting all of those post it notes up on the wall, it is fun to do this to to have the tape on the wall to have the post it notes. There's something really fun about that process. So you can definitely get in, get into that part of it if you would like. So that is the W outline. Good luck if you decide to use this and I'll see you next week. Thank you so much for tuning in.

Katie Wolf