How Do I Outline a Novel?

Allow me to talk about the subject.

As a fair few of you might know by now, I am not as good a gardener as I am an architect. I mean, I’m more of a plotter and not as much someone who writes by the seat of my pants. I have to thank George R. R. Martin for the definition of that one.*

However, to make things clear, I’ve been working on a multitude of writing that goes both ways. I’ve had to work on a lot of projects over the years… a lot of them being fan fiction works, mind you, but still. This is something I need to deal with.

Now, let me explain my viewpoint on this problem I’m dealing with. I mostly write with an outline for any fiction I write. Sometimes I write stories without an outline… and they suffer because of that. That sums up how bad my writing is without an outline.

Okay, that’s fine, but I highly doubt you want to hear me gripe about this. I respect that as much as you’d like me to.

Here, I will share what I do for outlining a story, and what other methods I have heard of for outlining. How do I outline a novel?

Allow me to show you how I do this.

My outlining methods

Wait, wait, back up. “Outlining methods?” As in plural?!

Why, yes, I mean it to be at least two methods. I’ll show you all of what I do with my outlining prowess. Please, bear with me as I do this, with all of you as my witnesses.

Method #1

Be warned, this method of writing has a list of sorts to describe my process, so that nobody gets lost with what I’m trying to say. With that said, and to quote the Japanese in terms of how to say this, Iku ze!!

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That’s one way of saying “let’s go” when translated into English.

1. Come up with the base idea of the story. Now, I get it. This is a silly thing to say as the first step. There’s nothing I can say about that, other than it’s the first step for a reason. You can’t outline an idea if you don’t have one to outline.
2. Give this idea a working title. If it’s fanfic… *shudders* Anyway, if it’s a fanfic, then you also give the fandom (or fandoms) this idea is for.
3. Write the premise of this story in the outline as soon as you can, so you don’t forget where you’re going with it. Believe me, that’s something I cannot express enough how annoying it is.
4. Write something that equates to a summary/synopsis. This step is technically not as important as the position would suggest since, to be fair, you’ll need to know where you’re going later, but I’m just putting it out there for your sake.
5. Create a cast of characters that will take center stage in the story. As far as storytelling goes, you need characters, because they’re the ones who need to learn something that you, the author, need to teach them and, by extension, the readers. I won’t be covering details about that in this post, since that’s not the focus, but I will do something about that in a later post (or maybe a book).
6. Create a list or two (or more) for important things you want to have mentioned throughout the story. This could very well be starships like in a Space Opera, or creatures that the heroes and villains encounter in the world they live in, to give two examples. Again, I won’t cover the details here, because this isn’t the focus of the post.
7. Unless you’re not writing a story with a romance period, then you’ll want to include the romance aspects of the story in here somehow, mainly a list of who ends up with who.
8. Keep track of what plot points you want to cover later on down the road as you outline the story. For example, in one of my back-burner projects, I have a list of ideas that are not immediately important for the story but will be important for later, supposing I even get that far.
9. Set up a list in a document that has the outline ready to be written. Depending on how you like to structure the list, this could be as simple as a bullet list with gaps between each item for what you want to do for scenes, or you could make it a numbered list with at least two levels overall. To clarify, that means one level for the title of the chapter, and the next level for the scenes you wish to write in said chapter.
10. Fill in the outline from start to finish.
11. Write your manuscript.

Method #2

Now, this method is mostly the same as the one above, but with a couple of differences. First, steps 10 and 11 are not on this second method. Second, the method has more explanation about what one could do about the outlining process itself.

Of course, granted, I’m mostly someone who learns by osmosis and by doing it repeatedly. I’ve only started recently using this method as best as I can. To be clear on this subject, I plan to share the last part of the method as shared with me, since I’ve gotten it from a friend of mine. Below is a blockquote about this topic, with some editorial corrections made, to keep things from making my grammar checker mad at me.

Outline the plan with a start and a finish. With what you want to begin with and what you want to end with. Plan nothing in between, except for critical components of significance, but do NOT place them into assigned chapters.

Plan up to three chapters ahead. That way you are free to alter if you must or decide to. You never know how or what you will write in those three chapters.

Never plan things out past the 5th chapter. You never know when you might need to change tact or alter something. This applies to the idea of not planning past the 3rd chapter. Gives freedom of development in the event something changes.

Always maintain a strict limit on words per chapter. As well as a strict MINIMUM number of words per chapter. So, the chapters are neither too big nor too small. In between those limits is fair game.

Never plan out the entire story in its entirety. The idea is super simple to decide on, but complex to execute. Writing as a general rule is a complex concept from start to finish.

Details are important. Never doubt that. Just don’t use TOO many details. It slows things down and gums up the works. Some exacting details are good, if you need them for a specific plot point. Otherwise, detail enough to create a sketch and let the reader paint the picture.

Writing, to some extent, is like farming. You need to decide on what you’re planting, how much, and where you will go. Then you till the soil and make the rows. You follow that by planting the seeds and then watering. Tend to the ideas like you would the planted seeds. Time will take care of the growth. You only need to do the work that is needed. After that, enjoy the harvest of your labors.

Method #3

Lately, I’ve got it in my head to try out a piece of software called Obsidian, which I’ve seen in action before, but hadn’t figured out what it was called until later. In effect, this is part of how I intend to write a novel from here on out. The software has, as an example of how it operates, the ability to make actual boxes you can click on to check off what you’ve done.

How I use the software is as a checklist of what I want to write and in what order I plan to get to it. I make a file on the project on Obsidian, write what I want to hit, and make sure it’s in a checklist format. Hopefully, I get to where I have what I want to be written, and then the information is shown in the story itself.

There you have it. The three methods that I use for outlining stories. Credits for the second method go to my buddy, Paul Johnson, who has been a great writing friend of mine for a long time. Please note, I’m sure he doesn’t mean his analogy to be like George R. R. Martin, people.

Below are some other methods of outline writing. Please keep in mind that I am only sharing methods you might like to try. Nothing wrong with some friendly promotion of other resources.

Other methods of outlining

I won’t bore you with all the details behind the methods, especially since I don’t remember them all. However, I can safely talk about a few of them. Fair warning, though. I am leaving links out to the other methods that I can talk about, some of them being eBooks and others being other people’s articles.

First, there’s the Snowflake Method, as described by Randy Ingermanson. He emphasizes to everyone, in a way that I am describing on my own, we make each story like a designer baby… okay, bad metaphor. My apologies, everyone.

The Snowflake Method, as described in the linked page, has 10 steps to writing a novel with it. Of course, these steps differ from my steps, but that's expected. In a nutshell, the 10 steps are:

1. Summarize the story into one sentence of fewer than 15 words.
2. Expand that sentence into a five-sentence paragraph that describes the setting, three “disasters” (as Randy describes them as), and an ending.
3. Get to work designing the individual plotlines of each major character you plan to include, putting their name, one-sentence summary, motivations, goals, conflict, epiphany, and one-paragraph summary. At around this point, you’re free to go back and change the products of steps 1 and 2.
4. Go back and expand that one paragraph from step 2 into five different paragraphs, all but the last one ending with a disaster.
5. Make a full-page description for all major characters in your story and a half-page description for the other important characters.
6. Go back and expand step 4 into four pages, especially if the result of Step 4 resulted in a single page of detailed information.
7. Expand the descriptions of all the characters you detailed so far into full-fledged character charts.
8. Make a list of scenes that you want to use… with a spreadsheet?
9. This step is optional, according to Randy, but go back to your word processor and write a narrative description of the story, while taking each line of the spreadsheet you made beforehand and making a multi-paragraph description of the scene.
10. Write your first draft.

Then there’s the method of outlining that Rachel Aaron mentions in her book 2k to 10k: Writing Faster, Writing Better, and Writing More of What You Love. Not only is she a professional author who wrote the Legend of Eli Monpress, but she also has a method that she taught in her blog, which she then moved over to the book.

To summarize the process that Rachel uses, we have six steps, including a Step 0 of all things.

1. Decide What Book to Write
2. Get Down What You Already Know
3. Input The Basics
4. Fill In The Holes
5. Build a Firm Foundation
6. Start Writing

Next, we have Shaunta Grimes and her excellent book on outlining from the Ninja Writers Press, Write a Novel: How to Outline a Book in Three Hours. Within the book, she talks about how to outline a novel that you can publish in; you guessed it, three hours. To do this, you’ll need to develop and test the idea first. To do this, you’ll need to come up with a hero for your story, then where the story takes place, the situation, and (finally) this thing she calls the 5 Key Plot Points. These Plot Points are the Inciting Incident, the Lock-in, the Mid-Point Climax, the Main Climax, and the Third Act Twist. She even introduces the idea of a 20-Minute Plotting Exercise and the concept of a Zero Draft.

Seriously, though, buy the book. It’s not even that expensive. It’s just $5 before tax.

Finally, we have Chris Fox, an author I am an avid fan of. He had written a series of non-fiction called Write Faster, Write Smarter, which has a book about outlining that he also uses for himself. Most notably, he calls it Plot Gardening, which I know differs from how George R. R. Martin and my friend describe it. He also has a YouTube channel for his writing, a YouTube channel for his TTRPG (why, yes, he has a game out), and a website.

Note: I haven’t finished reading the book on Plot Gardening, so I can’t say with authority how that method works as opposed to the other methods described. Sorry, Chris… :(

*George has a quote attributed to him I have on one of my walls in my room as I type this up. It goes something like this (only because ProWritingAid hates the lack of a comma in the first sentence):

I have lived a thousand lives, and I have loved a thousand loves. I’ve walked on distant worlds and seen the end of time. Because I read.

Samuel Kauffman, AKA Xamusel, is an indie game developer and novelist in training. His main exploits in the realm of fiction, much to his dismay, are the use of fanfic works. This includes fan games, which he’s also hoping to grow past, among so many other things.

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