I am not quite finished with writing the backstory stories for the characters in my novel, but today I did something different. One of my main character’s key traits is her attachment to a children’s mystery series from her childhood. I decided that each of the stories in my series would be attached to one of the books in that (fictional) children’s mystery series. So, I am writing some brief (1000-1500 word) outlines of some of those stories. (I am writing them similar to this — the sort of outlines that Stratemeyer gave writers of the Hardy Boys, etc books.

I did a point form outline of the outline story to begin with and this worked very well, since it requires a very strictly logical progression. The story came out very well and I am quite pleased with it. Tomorrow I am going to outline the book in my series that will match up with this one.