The Outline Begins
As I have done in the past, multiple times, I have restarted my outline (a more detailed description of why can be found under "The Reflection"). However, this time around I am making it public so it feels more official. When it was just a note (or multiple), it felt as if it didn't hold any weight and I could change it without any repercussions. Hopefully, by starting it a new and showing it to the world, my brain will give it more importance.
My idea for this outline is that each time I finish a step of the outlining process, I will update the page. For example, I began with a general summary of the three acts of the story. Each act will obviously need more detail, but the overall story is there. The next step is to break down Act 1 into a couple of sections rather than a single paragraph summary. From there, I will continue adding more sections until, eventually, each chapter has its own mini-outline. Once I finish the outline for each chapter, I will then write that chapter.
Don't want to go along this writing ride with me? Cool, go read the outline right now and you can claim you read the book when I eventually finish it. You're welcome for making it so easy.
Hopefully, seeing the story I want to tell is enough to keep you coming back for more. As I've mentioned before, this is my favorite story in history and it isn't one that is told often. At least not in the United States. I struggled for years with how best to deliver this, along with other historical stories, but I eventually landed on this historical science-fiction platform with Ptolemy walking us through the different events.
What is unique about writing historical fiction is that the history is out there and publicly available. This only leaves you with two options: keep the overall events the same but make minor changes to make the shortened story more compelling; or change the major events to create a completely original story. To decide this outcome really depends on what the writer thinks is more important/fun. Do I want the story to be known, or do I want it to be a fun "What if this happened instead? How would the world be different?" experiment. For the story of Robert Scott and the race for the South Pole, I definitely want to keep the events of the story true to reality. However, I'm not completely decided upon the events of other historical events that Ptolemy may interact with.
But that decision is future Ryan's problem.
For now, I hope you enjoy the living outline and blog posts.
