outlining to fit your needs: methods and ideas

Hello, everybody, and welcome back to Quote, Unquote!

We are now over halfway through February’s four-week Plotting School series! Two weeks ago we started with why you should (or maybe shouldn’t) outline. Last week, we dove deep into the Three-Act Structure and broke it down using Pixar’s Cars as an example.

This week, we’ll be talking all about the different methods of outlining and how to find one that works for you. Whether you’re super organized and detailed, like me, or maybe a little more chaotic and struggle to stay structured, there’s an outlining method for you.

Let’s jump right in!

plot-based bulletpoints

The method that I like to use is very structured and simple. It’s literally just the beats of the Three-Act Structure in a document with the external and internal events as subpoints. That’s it. That’s the whole outline.

Here’s the first page of my lighthouse novel’s outline as an example.

As you can see, it’s very neat and focused. (12-point Times New Roman is my default font for everything.) It’s also very concise, focusing only on the story beats themselves, with no extra padding or development scenes.

As you can see, the internal and external beats are also clearly outlined and separated. It’s important to know what goes on in your character’s head during each beat. Make sure you’re not just focusing on the action.

If you’re a discovery writer, this is the outline I would recommend. It’s the bare bones of your story, the skeleton, and you can put some meat on it with ease. What happens in between the plot points you can figure out as you go, but you have the most important beats of your story down and you can avoid the mushy middle.

synopsis

A synopsis allows you to get the broadest possible view of your story, but doesn’t have the structure of an outline. In the Author Conservatory, the instructors recommend doing a three-page synopsis first and then a more structured outline, like the one shown above, after everything in your synopsis is nailed down. However, if you’re more of a pantser or discovery writer, it would be easy to use a synopsis instead of an outline.

Here’s an example of the first page of my own synopsis for the same story above.

As you can see, the plot points are the same: the Inciting Incident lines up with what’s in the outline. But there’s a lot more content on this page versus the first page of the bulletpointed outline–however, the outline has a lot more detail. The synopsis mainly focuses on external events with the internal arc woven in, but the outline gives equal time and space to the internal and external events. It all depends on how much detail you want to give yourself to write from.

Keeping a synopsis short is another thing that might make it easy for a discovery writer to write from. Condensing a whole story into three pages is a lot harder than it sounds. The brevity allows you to focus in on what’s really important in the story, the main plot thread that pulls you through the whole thing. By keeping your plotting neat and concise, you’re free to explore in the draft, but you’ll never lose sight of the main plot thread.

chapter outlines/scene cards

For my last two novels, I’ve not only done a bulletpointed outline with the Three-Act Structure, but I’ve chapter outlined as well. Chapter outlining is exactly what it sounds like: a brief explanation of what happens in each chapter.

Take a look at my first chapter’s outline for my lighthouse story.

As you can see, it’s more focused but less structured. For this one, I did bulletpoints for each plot beat with subpoints for each thing I thought was important. Most plot points had three or four subpoints, but some had two and one even had six.

My chapter outlines tend to be more like notes to self than an actual story. I know what needs to happen in each plot point because of my outline. But in the chapter outline, I start to think about what could happen. There’s a lot of brainstorming and “thinking out loud”. Since I already had my Three-Act Structure outline approved and greenlighted by my instructors, I didn’t put my chapter outline through any sort of peer reviewing. It was purely for myself, to keep track of all of the things that were important to me that didn’t quite make it into a broader outline.

I also left room for myself by only chapter outlining 25% of my novel at a time. I chapter outlined the first act before I began drafting, then up to the midpoint after I finished the first act, and so on and so forth. This gave me space to discovery write if it appeared that my novel was going to veer slightly and delightfully off course. By tightening the focus on my outline a little more but having room to correct it if needed, it gave me direction and control but also plenty of creative freedom.

I’ve also used a database with a gallery view in my Notion to chapter outline before. Take a peek.

Each of these cards opens a new page in a database, so the sneak peek here isn’t the whole thing. I used this database method for NaNoWriMo 2022, and I really liked how it was easy to visualize. It was like using a virtual 3 x 5 index card, which was nice, because then I didn’t have the cards taking up physical space but I could still move them around and lay them out like a paper one.

Chapter outlining can also work similarly with scenes. I haven’t delved too deeply into the scene versus chapter difference before, but the short explanation is that scenes are shorter than chapters and a chapter can (but doesn’t always) contain multiple scenes. If it helps you to divide your outline into scenes rather than chapters (or both!), you have complete freedom to do that as well.

spreadsheet

J. K. Rowling, the author of the famed and celebrated Harry Potter series, shared a handwritten outline of the fifth book, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.

It’s hard to read, so check out the Harry Potter Lexicon’s transcription of it if you’d like to study this more in-depth. What Rowling does here is list each plot thread that’s going on at once. There’s one for the love interests, one for each secret organization, one for the main plot, one for the prophecy, et cetera. The events of each are noted in each chapter. Some are left blank, which is fine–cramming every single subplot into every single chapter would make for an incredibly hard-to-digest novel, not to mention longer chapters.

If you’re writing a fantasy novel like J. K. Rowling or Brandon Sanderson that has a lot of subplots to process, setting up a spreadsheet (or using a physical piece of paper!) like this might help you keep track of what has to happen in each chapter. It might help to see it horizontally and not in a traditional bulletpointed list. That way, you can make sure you’re giving each subplot its due and not dropping any plot threads as you weave the story together.

sticky notes on a wall

If you benefit more from visual, tangible things, you might even try the “wall of sticky notes” method.

Sometimes it helps to lay everything out and take a step back. With this method, it’s exactly what it sounds like: Write out all your scenes and plot beats on sticky notes and stick them up on your wall.

This method is especially good for making sure your acts are balanced. Your story should be 25% Act One, 25% Act Three, and 50% Act Two (and this can be divided into 25% before the midpoint and 25% after, so some people prefer to look at it more as a four-act structure instead). In the example method above, each act is given a proportionate amount of space (note Act Two taking up two lines). Your sticky notes should reflect this, and it’s easy to see where an act might need lengthening or shortening.

Another benefit to the sticky note method is being able to organize and reorganize easily. You can move the notes around as you see fit. If a scene doesn’t quite fit where it is and it would make sense in another place, you can fix that really quickly! The one problem I see with this is accidentally mixing up important plot beats in your story structure, but a strong understanding of story structure will make this a non-issue with time.

my recommendation

Is there a style of outlining I prefer? Absolutely. I use a combination of synopsis, bulletpoints, and chapter outlining, as that’s recommended by my instructors. I’ve had success with it in the past, and it will likely continue to work well for me in the future.

But is there a style I recommend? The simple answer is no. I think you should figure out what works for you. That might be one of the methods here, a combination thereof, or something entirely new of your own invention. Trial and error is your friend here. Take your time to thoughtfully plan out your story to make it as strong as possible.

I hope that this post has given you some ideas on how to craft your outline. Mix and match styles, figure out what works for you. It’s a process that can be quite fun once you’ve found your process.

Again, don’t outline if you don’t want to or if you feel it doesn’t help you! Writing means complete creative freedom. If outlining doesn’t help you, don’t do it. Plain and simple as that.

Thank you so much for reading, and I’ll see you next Wednesday!