How to easily prepare an Expanded 'Plotting' Grid on MS Word and Libre Writer - inspired by S. Horwitz (who transcribed JKR's post of her outline of OoP.) - eviltoast

I was inspired by S. Horwitz who transcribed Rowling’s post of her outline of OoP and posted about it on his site/blog. And I quite liked this Grid.

He calls it an ‘Expanded Series Grid’, and was seemingly upset when Rowling described her chapter action sumaries on the grid as ‘plot’. He calls them ‘series’ which is not something I’m familiar with, but his advice seems pretty good so I’ll take his word for it.

I started by using MS Word, to open a document, go to layout and set margins to narrow. And orientation to landscape.

edit: I forgot to put in instructions for Libre Writer: for Writer, go to Format> Page Style> Page, and click landscape and halve the margins.

I took the image and ran it through an online service (extractimage) to get a usable table. It was mostly correct, so I copied the result and pasted it in.

The result is pretty good method of compiling factional subplots, timing and the resulting chapter summaries imo. if you like I can update you on how my own personal efforts go.

No. Time Title Plot Prophecy Cho / Ginny Order of the Phoenix Dumbledore’s Army
13 16 Oct Plots and Resistance In the Hog’s Head Harry has a lesson scheduled with Snape, but he skips it to go to Hogsmeade with Ron and Hermione…_ Harry sees the Hall of Prophecy (in a dream). Voldemort is still formulating his plans;… Cho is in Hogsmeade and wants to join Dumbledore’s Army. Tonks and Lupin Recruiting

A template to get your table started.

:)