Blog: Outlining Week! (01/24/22 - 01/28/22)

Monday, January 24th - Time to outline

Today I finished up research on the last remaining magazines. So, it's time to outline!

My outlining process is pretty simple. First, I set up the basic structure of how the story will be told. In this case, the basic structure will be:

Part 1: The End of an Era
- The Famicom Era is Over
- Announcing the Super Famicom
- A New Mario Team
- Learning the Super Famicom
- The Super Famicom is Coming
- Development Begins
- The Delay of the Super Famicom

Part 2: A Whole New World
- Playing with Super Power
- Yoshi
- A New Melody
- Coming Together
- Super Famicom Hype
- The Launch of the Super Famicom
- Super Mario Mania

Part 3: Coming to America
- Nintendo's Worst Kept Secret
- The Rumor Mill
- The Decline of the NES
- Nintendo Finally Caves
- No Easy Task
- The Power of Mario
- The Console Wars

Part 4: Launch, Legacy, Conclusion
- I'm still going through Part 4!

The next step involves me going through all 200+ sources and categorizing each note. This means when I write my script, I can simply add the main points in my outline and check them off when I've added them. 

I can't stress enough how important outlining is to script-writing. I've got about 200 sources to go through, so I expect my outlining process to take a while!

Tuesday, January 25th - More mail!

Rather than bore you with my outline work, here is something I got the mail today. 

A complete-in-box PC Engine from 1987! The PC Engine seemed poised to overtake Nintendo in the Japanese video game market. But the Super Famicom quickly squashed that. I talk about this system quite a bit in the new video, so I figured I should grab one for b-roll purposes.

Wednesday, January 26th - Outlining continues

Sorry, not much to say about today. I just kept going through the outlining process! It can be a slow process. Sometimes I have to re-verify numbers and figures. One source will say "Nintendo controls 80% of the market" while another will say "Nintendo controls 90% of the market."

Hoping I can wrap this up by the weekend.

Thursday, January 27th - New magazines & toys

During the research process, I'll tag sources with a "photo" tag to remind me that a particular source has photos. I found quite a few magazines with photos I had never seen before of trade shows, so I went ahead and bought them so I can scan them in the highest quality possible. 

I also picked up this Super Mario World toy from Japan. It's a little egg and Yoshi pops out! Just thought it would be fun to show it in the video. Yoshi was very popular and so there was a flurry of new toys and video games around him. 

Friday, January 28th - Business day

Whew, I needed a day to step away from this outline! Today I took care of some business stuff, worked on some upcoming 1-minute history videos, and recorded the audio commentary for January.

Don't forget, the new 1-minute history videos launch on Monday, January 31st!

I'll be working on this outline through the weekend. I'd like to have it done by Monday so I can start writing. 

Have a great weekend!

- Norm