More outlining

Part two of my outlining.

Beware, this is partially my way of thinking aloud, so coherence won't be the main theme of these articles.


How to proceed with the actual work?

This is what works for me. Someone else may very well find it contrary to all common sense, and they would probably be right as far as they work best.

I define boundaries. A starting setup and an end I aim for. It usually includes the main characters, one or more places and some kind of time-stamp.
From there I decide upon a number of events which will not happen.
After that I take a few notes and leave the idea. A few days spent thinking about it allows me to add events in the middle I actually want to occur. Those events are matched against the characters I plan to use. No match -- start from scratch.

What does this translate to with my upcoming project?

I have the surviving characters from Frays in the Weave. I know they're all north of the Narrow Sea, an inland sea I have mapped in the world I created.
I know how the political situation is when I left Frays in the Weave.
That's the beginning.

I've planned to continue with a military/political story, and that kind of requires an end of a military nature with political repercussions. A big battle would be the easy way out. It doesn't have to be one though. I plan to go for a semi victorious military standoff instead, but this isn't written in stone.
The end, no matter how it turns out, will happen south of the Narrow Sea.

To keep the story from branching out too wildly I'll keep it geographically between where the story starts and where it ends. By this I mean I'll keep the entire story within a triangle on my map. It's a comparatively small area but large enough to encompass different nations.

These limits are so vague there's no risk for a mismatch between them and my characters. There is also pitifully little story to it.
As for solving that dilemma I know I left most of my characters with problems brewing. That takes care of my start, but it also leaves me with the decision on which of the problems I ought to handle as sub plots and which should be part of the main arc of the story.
I'm still in the thinking part of this so I'll leave it at that for a time.