This is K.M. Island and you are listening to the 358th episode of the Helping Writers Become Authors Podcast. I've been a little hither and yawn in transcribing my outline notes for my portal fantasy sequel

Dreambreaker this year. I really like to stop every major section in the

outline and transcribe and organize my keeper notes in Scrivener using the Dragon Naturally Speaking

Speech to Text dictation software. But I've been a little random with my

transcribing this year. I've been enjoying writing outside in the morning so much

that I'm trying to milk every possible remaining nice day out of the autumn. I had a

few rainy days last week to stay inside and transcribe the last of my general sketches notes. I'm still in the middle of

finishing up character sketches but they can wait to be transcribed

until later. This means I should be to be able to dive right into my scene outline and soak up every last drop of sunlight left.

The latest post on my blog is seven things you need to know about plotting and editing.

Do you need a roadmap for the writing process?

Ace your journey to publication with this handy overview of the important

road stops for plotting and editing your novel. To read the post, visit my site at helping

writers become authors.com.

And now I hope you enjoyed this week's podcast entitled How to Outline for Nanowrimo Part 3,

Three Steps to finding the heart of your story.

Most of the time when you start figuring out how to outline a story, you know one of two things about that story.

Either you know the skeleton of your story, its premise or plot, or you know the heart of your story. But it's not enough to have just one. You gotta have both.

On its surface it certainly seems as if story is plot, the mechanics of characters doing

things in pursuit of their goals.

But as important and fun as all that stuff is, it's just window dressing.

To find the story you're really telling,

...