Outlining Your Novel by K.M. Weiland | Review

Hey, guys! I am going to attempt to act professional because I must send this link to K.M. Weiland. But because everyone knows I’m only professional at blogging because I make money on my doll-collecting blog, I am going to fail. ?

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If you don’t know who K.M. Weiland (Katie) is, she’s an incredible Christian author who mentors writers at Helping Writers Become Authors. She’s an epic example of using what God’s gifted her with and of glorifying God through your gifts and talents.

See, God’s no dummy. He knows which of His children bring honor and glory to Him, and that’s why He epically promotes them. God promises in 1 Samuel 2:30, “I will honor those who honor Me.”

Helping Writers Become Authors is an incredible and successful site, and Katie’s advice helps so many writers and authors around the world. Her author site is K.M. Weiland.

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Her posts have rocked my world in realizing that my novels need to be taken to the next level. Upon discovering Helping Writers Become Authors, I was all story structure what? Pinch points huh? Inciting event who?

And now I realize my novels are in desperate need of these things… as well as literally everything else.

My epic goal this month? Read and review these three of her writing books in an attempt to educate myself on structure, plot, and outlining so I can do it all in September-October in order to rewrite my first historical epic, Loyalty Book I: To the Death, in November. I’ve edited that 123k hunk of junk three times now, enlisted you poor beta readers twice, and it’s still absolutely terrible.

Worst yet, now the second book is written with a floppy plot structure. I spent 30+ hours during April Camp NaNo brainstorming scenes that didn’t domino, a plot that wasn’t structured at all, and in July wrote a novel that ended up half the length I wanted it to be. I’ve got to replot and revise that one, too.

So. I’ve got some serious work to do.

As part of Katie’s exclusive club Wordplayers, she lets you request one of her phenomenal writing books to read for free, review it, and then you can do it again.

That’s how I’m going to save my novels, folks.

So far, I’ve read her fantastic Outlining Your Novel, and here’s my review of it!

K.M. Weiland’s Outlining Your Novel has been the most helpful writing book I’ve ever read on outlining. Katie clearly busts the myth that outlining zaps your creativity, explains the importance of outlining and the freedom it brings, and even presents methods of brainstorming. At the end of each chapter she interviews a different author about their outlining process, which was extremely helpful and interesting for me to see the different ways authors outline as well as their views on pantsing.

Outlining Your Novel covers many incredible subjects such as identifying your story’s central idea, distilling the book’s focus and audience, general sketches, scene summaries, how to write backstory, setting, and so much more. It really opened my mind to all these different and important elements of outlining and brainstorming that I had never even heard of before.

I love how Katie includes snippets and examples of her outlining from her different novels and points out plot elements in other books and films. It is very helpful to see what she is teaching in the book with actual examples of hers and other pieces. I took entire pages of the book as notes — the parts about backstory and making sure every scene is pertinent to the plot totally rocked my world.

★★★★★

For what Outlining Your Novel is meant for, I give it five stars. I actually started reading the book with a misconceived idea of what it was going to teach me and felt dissatisfied throughout the book to the end, but I really just should have read Structuring Your Novel first.

I recommend Outlining Your Novel to anyone. It was such a wise investment of my time (despite the fact I really needed to read Structuring Your Novel beforehand). You won’t regret it! Thank you, K.M. Weiland, for such an incredible book.

Have you heard of K.M. Weiland and her epic website? If not, are you going to become a part of Wordplayers (it’s free), check out Helping Writers Become Authors (it rocked my world), and read her incredible books (that also rock my world)? If not, what are you even doing?

Bear with me and the two more reviews to come this month! ? Much love and am praying for you! ♥