This is KAM Willem, and you are listening to the 20th episode of the Word Play

podcast.

I'm back from a wonderful weekend of book signings and

sales in Midwestern Illinois. Thanks so much all of you who bought a book or stopped

to chat. In the midst of getting caught back up to speed at home, I haven't written as much as I'd like to,

although both my Robin Hood's Sleeping Beauty story and my World War I soccer are progressing.

A dear friend of mine was severely injured in a car accident last week and her condition has been weighing heavily on my mind.

Please send up a prayer for her if you think about it.

My blog tour is ongoing.

This week you can find excerpts from behold the dawn, three book giveaways, a handful of interviews and guest posts entitled

Top Ten Lessons from a Completed Novel and Faith Enough, Hagar and Mairead.

You can locate more details, including links to all these posts,

in the left column of my blog at wordplay-K-M-Yland, that's W-E-I-L-N-D D dot blog spot dot com.

Meanwhile, please enjoy this week's post, should you outline backwards.

When you think of outlines, you generally think organization, right?

The whole point of outlining versus the seat of the pants method

is to give the writer a roadmap, a set of guidelines, a plan.

It only makes sense that an outline should be simple, streamlined and linear,

an outline should put things in order.

So you're probably going to think I'm crazy when I tell you that sometimes the most effective

outlines are those that are constructed backwards. When I began outlining a story, I usually have only a handful of scenes in mind.

My job during the outlining period is to connect the dots between those scenes.

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