Finishing The Process of Outlining Parapenda.

As I am sure you all know by now, one of my ultimate bucket list items is to become a published author. I like to think that I am a gifted writer who, if published, would be very successful and admired. During my career as a writer, I have authored all kinds of pieces, from academic papers to short stories. The longest academic essay I have ever written is 44 pages, which was my capstone paper that was required in order for me to graduate from Occidental. Additionally, my longest fictional piece so far is The Accidental Traveler. Both of these works have been posted on this website.

In other words, I have never written a full-length novel before. Originally, this task seemed sort of daunting. However, I have learned to attack it by breaking down novel writing into its constituent parts. With help from my dear friend and fellow writer Monica, I was able to create some literary templates. This has allowed me to fully flesh out potential characters, by including their backstories, favorites, and more. Additionally I was able to produce a one page summary for each chapter of my future book Parapenda. There are to be thirty chapters in the novel—hence there are thirty pages of outlines.

The planning process for this novel so far has been one of the most rewarding tasks I have ever completed. For a few months now, I have been living and breathing Parapenda. The only analogy I have to describe my fervor during this time was my excitement after re-reading all seven Harry Potter books fairly recently. It is possible for me to fully immerse myself in fictional worlds, which makes me an even better writer, in my humble opinion.

The next step for me is to physically type each chapter of Parapenda. This process will be made vastly more rewarding because of my outlines and in-depth character sketches. I have found that, the more I have developed Parapenda, the more excited I get about the eventual writing process. I am incredibly proud of my book so far, and fully believe that it will sell millions of copies and garner rave reviews once it is eventually published.

I truly and honestly feel that the most challenging, and yet most rewarding process of writing a book is outlining the plot and developing your characters. Once this is done, for all intents and purposes, the book is finished. This means that, as of right now, Parapenda is basically already written.

While doing some research, I discovered that, among writers, there are “pantsers” and “plotters.” Pantsers just write about what is on their mind in any given moment, while plotters carefully outline everything before beginning to write. I am definitely in the latter category. To reiterate, fleshing out Parapenda during these last few months has been one of the most enriching and exciting things I have ever done, and it can only get better from this point on until the completed work is in the hands of interested readers.