smilebackwards

And it doesn't have to be anything elaborate... When I was doing Rough Trade in February, I knew the goal was to hit 30,000 words (!)... guessing a section to be about 3000 words, then I needed 10 plot points to make the goal. I think I had like 12 plot points, but when I got there, I didn't need the last two...

And I'm talking really rough bullet points. As I stared at it, most of the major bullet points ended up with sub bullets, just so it didn't feel so overwhelming. There are days that even 3000 words for a section can feel daunting.

But having a loose outline like that also let me wander off to see what shiny things I could find.

Depending on the fic, another tool I like using is using a calendar... literally. So if event A happens on Monday, then event B happens on Tuesday but event F has to happen on a Saturday, so how do I get from B to F without having 9 days in a week? If B is on Tuesday, is F the immediate Saturday, or do I have to work harder to make it the next Saturday, which would essentially be 11 days later.

Again, 'event' is a rough description... event F could be "big party" and that's all you put on the calendar. (Or, if it's a tightly scheduled story that totally happens like on a single weekend, it could be hours instead of days.)

Either gives you a way to organize events, without killing yourself on details or feeling like you already wrote the fic while creating the outline.

Hope something helps! Good luck with trying something longer!