The deeper I dug in to the world, the easier it was to connect formerly isolated plot points and other must-have events throughout the story. I'm told this is called flow, but the major takeaway for me was simply that increases in my own level of immersion directly and positively impacted the quality of my creative output.*
I was able to fill in some of RW1's most glaring plot holes in almost shockingly quick succession. These sticking points were all major impediments to either moving the story along or justifying the state of the world in which it occurs, all of which came together far more readily when I really got down into the narrative weeds for several hours straight. For example:
Dangling unknowns involving the nature of the protagonist's magic and her lineage, the basis for two integral non-human races and their role in the narrative, certain geopolitical considerations that I was still fuzzy on, and a more refined understanding of some of the historical events that effectively set the stage for the larger story to come were all clarified or otherwise addressed.
That's all a very big deal for me, above and beyond the obvious benefits of addressing continuity issues.
I'm positively bursting with ideas most of the time, but can have difficulty linking them up in a sufficiently coherent and organic fashion. And for me at least, even small-scale success in this domain has a way of creating self-fulfilling momentum all its own.
Dangling unknowns involving the nature of the protagonist's magic and her lineage, the basis for two integral non-human races and their role in the narrative, certain geopolitical considerations that I was still fuzzy on, and a more refined understanding of some of the historical events that effectively set the stage for the larger story to come were all clarified or otherwise addressed.
That's all a very big deal for me, above and beyond the obvious benefits of addressing continuity issues.
I'm positively bursting with ideas most of the time, but can have difficulty linking them up in a sufficiently coherent and organic fashion. And for me at least, even small-scale success in this domain has a way of creating self-fulfilling momentum all its own.
I fully expect this outline to become quite a bit larger before writing commences in earnest, both to account for subsequent books and as I drill down even deeper into the minutia of scenes and their transitions. I imagine that I'll need a general timeline as well, to ensure that character actions, locations, and knowledge are kept in alignment, although I can't fathom ever approaching the likes of, say, GRRM or Steven Erikson in this regard (careful: beyond those links be spoilers galore).
This is admittedly only a small step, but one that I am really excited about nonetheless. I have "wanted to write" for pretty much as long as I can remember, but consistently failed to do anything meaningful about it. It feels very empowering to finally start changing that.
*I don't yet have performance metrics in place to determine if it had a measurable impact on the amount of work I was getting done as well, but that is something I'll look into as I standardize and settle more of my overall process.
