How to Plan and Outline Novels (Using Scrivener)

Learn the Step-by-Step "Story Beats" Process That Two Bestselling Writers Use To Publish 1.5 Million Words a Year

3.55 (710 reviews)
Udemy
platform
English
language
Media
category
instructor
7,781
students
2 hours
content
Sep 2014
last update
$39.99
regular price

What you will learn

Plan your entire story from Day One starting with a no-fuss, stepwise outlining process ... but WITHOUT locking yourself in and cutting off creative expansion as happens with most outlining methods.

Learn how "casting" your characters the way Hollywood does will give you amazing shortcuts to understanding their personalities, appearance, and mannerisms.

Use "location scouting" (complete with online, image-based research) to effortlessly build your story's locations and world (even if your world isn't on Planet Earth).

Find your book's central nuggets by working "narrow to wide," beginning with a single, simple sentence.

Effortlessly craft a story summary, book description, and boiled-down "elevator pitch" with no extra work as you follow the process.

Use Scrivener's native organizational features to keep everything together and searchable, right where you need it whenever you require it.

See how the deepest stories can come from the very simplest of ideas -- and learn how you can make a great story from just about anything.

Description

In this course, Smarter Artist co-founder Sean Platt will show you the step-by-step process our 3-person bestselling author team uses to plan and outline over 2 million words per year of high-quality, reader-loved fiction without hassle, delays, or the frustration most writers face.

The most important thing any independent author must do to sell more books and make more money is to "write, publish, and repeat," getting new work to market fast. In this course, we'll show you how to get faster while making your stories richer, deeper, and flat-out better.

Through ten videos and just under 3 hours of content, you'll learn a pre-production process we call "story beats" -- a way of planning that combines the thoroughness of traditional outlining with the flexibility and high creativity of "seat of the pants and trusting the story" writing. Having the very best beats in place before writing will take the frustration out of daily writing because you'll always know your characters, their world, their motivations, and their conflicts. You'll know what they look like, how they act, and what they're up to.

Sean will show you this process using our favorite writing program: Scrivener. He'll show you what to put where, how to use images and the different sections to define your project, and how to show up at the desk tomorrow ready to kick butt and take names.

Content

An Introduction to Using Scrivener for Beats

An Introduction to Using Scrivener for Beats

Synopsis to Outline

Synopsis to Outline

Character Planning and Development in Your Outline

Character Planning and Development in Your Outline (Part 1)
Character Planning and Development in Your Outline (Part 2)
Character Planning and Development in Your Outline (Part 3)

Scouting Locations for your Story

Scouting Locations for your Story

Story Construction and Writing Your Beats

Story Construction and Writing Your Beats (Part 1)
Story Construction and Writing Your Beats (Part 2)
Story Construction and Writing Your Beats (Part 3)

Further Learning Resources

Further Learning Resources

Screenshots

How to Plan and Outline Novels (Using Scrivener) - Screenshot_01How to Plan and Outline Novels (Using Scrivener) - Screenshot_02How to Plan and Outline Novels (Using Scrivener) - Screenshot_03How to Plan and Outline Novels (Using Scrivener) - Screenshot_04

Reviews

Alexis
August 17, 2023
Some good information, but the focus is more on example...and using a book they've written and ask in the lessons to please excuse the spoilers. There are errors in the videos, inconsistent "legal protections" regarding some of the pictures and names they use for notes, and the lesson has clearly been abandoned for a while. Three stars for the good information, but only three stars because of the low quality of the course and course creation.
Rodger
January 30, 2023
I'm enjoying it and it meets my expectations, highlighting ways to use Scrivener I hadn't considered before, such as the time stamp for collaboration and the author journals. Sometimes the teacher tends to meander, though,
Vickie
August 30, 2022
This was a wonderful explanation of how to use scrivener in the plotting of your book. I learned some good tips on tracking and managing my progress as I outline and prepare for writing my book. Good job!
Emma
April 14, 2022
Maybe for the first time I ended this session relaxed. I have had many story ideas but never a way the keep every thing in order.
Irina
December 19, 2021
A quick and to the point run down of the story beats process illustrated with the author's own novel. Lots of practical ideas that can be adopted into and customized for any writing style if you find value in planning your story, like a lot of us do.
Juanita
October 24, 2017
Hearing the thought process on how the elements of the story are preplanned and come together for the book is extremely helpful in plotting a course of action to get through my first book. This is an awesome series!
Eric
October 19, 2017
This course was very informative and useful to get your story organized through Scrivener. I listened to it twice and created a template in Scrivener during the second watching (2x speed) following the author's system. Overall, I recommend the class. However, this class would greatly be improved by offering a real template to follow along and work with. It's not difficult to do. I did it myself in about 1 hour.
Brenda
October 3, 2017
Good overview of how to create beats for building a story. I wish they offered a sheet of important points in creating beats. At the end of this course I felt like I was still missing something concrete to use even though he used an actual published story as an example.
Melinda
October 1, 2017
I'm convinced these guys approach writing the same way I want to, and I'm excited to learn from their experiences.
Rory
September 30, 2017
Brilliant insight into the intriguing "beats" method of outlining and how the S&S guys do their thing. Looking forward to attempting this with my next project.
Maddhatter0409
September 28, 2017
As a writer I pants 95% of my writing. I've tried to plot and I have read a lot of books on outlining, but this course made everything click for me. I'm very excited to get in and start plotting my next book.
Linda
September 26, 2017
Sean explains what he'll cover so I know what to expect from the course. Using a book he's written as a real-world example, my expectation is that I will be able to do the same thing after this course.
George
September 11, 2017
I really like Sean and am a devotee of his other work but I really found he read way too much from the novel setup he uses as an example. I get he was trying to use it as an illustration but more general technical Scrivener/Beat "how too" would have been better in my opinion.
Debbie
September 9, 2017
I appreciated Sean's use of a real-world project to demonstrate how he does the pre-work of novel writing. The course is not necessarily in-depth on Scrivener features but instead a way to use fairly standard features to create the scaffolding on which a first draft can be written. I definitely found this course useful.
Tina
September 8, 2017
Loving this course. It's one of the real ones. These folks speak from experience, not having "read a book". I'm only part way through, but so far, highly recommended.

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303202
udemy ID
9/18/2014
course created date
1/24/2021
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