Afterword: About Outlines

Hi, it’s Yumizuru again. People ask me to go behind the scenes a lot on Twitter, so I want to get into that and go into what it’s like to be in the industry.

The first thing you need when writing something you want to see published is an outline. Everyone has their own way to approach it, but for me, it’s a short pitch, around a hundred words. If you can’t hook someone on the concept while you’re pitching it, you’ll never get published. Your first reader is your editor, and you want them to love it.

Next up is crafting the characters. Flesh them out. It’s when you run out of places to go with this that the initial drama appears. And that drama is what will drive the narrative.

Let’s see, how about an example...

The devils and the angels are at war, and our young hero, a demon, is on the front line. There, he falls in love with a girl. But on her back are the white wings of an angel. An angel girl and a devil boy in love.

They resolve to elope, to the ends of the world if need be, but to get away from their pursuers, the boy makes a pact with an elder demon, while the girl takes up the forbidden sacred sword. Each is consumed by the power they rely upon. But they’ve sworn to stay with each other forever.

Can they make it away from the war? What awaits them after their escape? A love story between angel and devil, woven from hope and despair.

...See, that kind of thing. If you know you could make a book out of this, you’ve got the makings of a pro. Pick up your pen and get to work.

Now, as for how you write the romance, there are so many paths you can take. Is the angel older or younger? Expressive or quiet? It’s like a kaleidoscope of possibilities that you can spin into limitless stories.

But if you put in too much, you’ll never finish, so you need to have an ending in mind from the very beginning. That’s a requirement. Once you’ve determined your ending, it’s very easy to create a story from the path to it.

For me, the thing that gives me my drive at the beginning is thinking “I’d like to see this ending!” But it doesn’t exist yet. I need to create it. And to do that, I need these characters, in this world, doing this. And there I go, I have a book.

I guess that isn’t really ‘behind the scenes,’ but... See you next time!

— Izuru Yumizuru