Hey writers, I've recently been talking a lot about productivity tools like Trello, my bullet journal, my Google Calendar, and if you're interested in that kind of stuff, I'll link that playlist down below. But I've also been editing my book and sharing any editing tips that I've come across as I've been going through that process. And when I realized that I could not only use Trello for productivity, but also to outline and edit my books, I couldn't wait to share that with you guys. So in this video, we're going to talk about how I've been outlining my books or re-outlining my books using Trello. And in the next video, I'll be showing you how I'm using a similar process to use Trello to edit my books. So if you don't want to miss that second video coming soon, definitely make sure you're subscribed and let's get into outlining. First, if you've ever used the index card outlining method before, this might look a little familiar, but basically each card here represents a different scene in your book, like you would do with index cards, but this is obviously a digital version. You can also use a program called Scrivener, but that's something you have to pay for. Scrivener is a great program that you should definitely look into if you want even more features. But if you're looking to just start with something simple and free, like I am, then Trello is the next best thing in my opinion. First, if you're starting from scratch, I would create a different list for each act of the story. This is usually act one, act two, act three, but I like to split act two into two different parts because usually that is a longer section than act one and act two, and I end act two with the midpoint. Then I create digital cards for each scene in my book. I really love this because it is so easy to edit these scenes and move them around without having to spread out a bunch of index cards on my floor every time I want to see the full outline. You can also pre-set up scenes to follow basic story beats from outlining methods like Save the Cat or any other story beats you tend to use. As many of you already know, I love Save the Cat and the book Save the Cat rates a novel. So I've set up these scenes to follow those beats. And if any of you are totally lost on what acts are or story beats are or different outlining methods are, I did do a whole outlining and plotting series with my friend Bethany called the Save the Cat experiment, which was super awesome. And what we actually did is follow the Save the Cat story beats to outline a book from scratch with our live audience. So that was really fun. I'll link that down below if that's helpful to any of you that are just starting out. Because I tend to use story beats, sometimes I even title each scene with that story beat name or I'll pick a word or short phrase that helps me remember the basic function of that scene or generally what happens in it. When I know what scenes go in what chapters, you can see I also add the chapter number at the beginning of that scene title. Doing all this makes it so much easier to play with scene order, but you can also go into the scene card and create a different list for each scene if you rather do that. I also use the description box to write out a brief description of the scene and also the purpose of that scene. Since listening to a recent podcast by writing excuses, if you're not listening to that podcast, I'm telling you it is gold. But one of their episodes about revision was just super insightful. And one of the things they were talking about is making sure that you know the purpose of each individual scene so that it really engages the reader and keeps them locked into the story. They also said to try to have more than one purpose to a scene in case one of the purposes doesn't connect with a certain reader. So I just loved all that and definitely I'm going to be noting those in my outlines going forward. The one thing I wish I could do is easily compile all the descriptions into one large outline, sort of have Trello do that for me. But I could also go through after I'm done and copy and paste each description into a larger word doc when I really feel like my outline is complete. But my absolute favorite feature Trello has is being able to use labels and colors like you can see here to keep track of different things like I keep track of characters and what characters are in watch scenes. And this can include main characters and side characters and sometimes when I have like a main cast that's in multiple scenes a lot of the time I can create a label just to say that that whole cast of characters is in each of these scenes. I also like to create labels to track the main plot and story arc, but also subplots to make sure that I'm not dropping any subplots for a long period of time throughout the story. Because I'm following Save the Cat, I also like to mark the single and multi-scene beats with a specific label so you can see that here. And basically you can track anything that is helpful to you. If you don't want to see a gazillion colors in your outline you can always make the labels gray and then they will sort of disappear and they will be listed when you click on the scene but they won't show up as colors when you're looking at the overall outline. But if you want to be able to see again like what scenes a certain character is in or if you're dropping a subplot or different things like that you can temporarily make that label a specific color and it'll show up like you're seeing here in my outline so you can track those things visually and easily. You can also create another list or an entirely separate board to use as a kind of series Bible or story Bible where you can keep track of character profiles, world building, etc. You can even add inspiration photos by attaching a photo or adding a cover. And while I already have two videos on creating series Bibles, one if you want a physical series Bible or if you'd like one that's more in a word doc or a Google doc, I'll link those below if you want to check those out. I definitely think this is a really fun option as well and I might play with using this method of a series Bible with my future books. Once this is done I can now use this outline which I can also access through the Trello app to either work on different drafts, play with the plot or make a revision plan for my novel which I'll be showing you guys have been doing that in my next video. But how cool is that? If you guys are excited to try this out or you think you know some other writers who would find this really helpful, help me spread the word by sharing this video on social media and don't forget to tag me so I can give you a shout out. If you'd like to learn more about plotting or save the cat, again you can check out that save the cat experiment playlist on the screen here and if you're excited to see how I use a similar board to make editing notes in a revision plan, let me know that in the comments and don't forget to subscribe so you don't miss when that video comes out.