Outlining doesn’t have to be painful.
Let’s go over two ways to outline your own stories, then create one together!
During the last stream, a subscriber requested that we go over how to outline.
You can watch the full video here to or scroll down for notes/highlights.
How to Outline
- Outlining is one of the best things you can do to improve
- It might sound painful to outline your stories, but creating one is like making a map to your destination on a trip: it will help ensure you don’t get lost along the way
- They’re the best way to not only prevent writer’s block and frustration, but also to trust yourself that your story won’t suck because you already have a good middle/end planned out
I recommend outlining in two steps: basic then detailed, so let’s go over both
#1. Basic Outline
Answer these five questions to get a great place for your outline to start
1) Who is your main character? What makes them unique? What does he/she want to do? What is the conflict?
(Harry Potter: An 11 year old orphan finds out he’s a wizard.)
(Romeo and Juliet: Two teens from rival families fall in love.)
2) What happens at the END of your story? What do you want to SAY with your story?
(HP: “Love is the greatest magic” – Harry defeats an evil wizard with the power of love.)
(R&J: “The dangers of prejudice” – The teens kill themselves because their feuding families won’t allow them to be together.)
3) What is the 1st good/bad thing that happens to your MC?
(HP: Harry is taken to a wizarding school where he makes friends and learns about magic.)
(R&J: The teens find out they will not be allowed to be together.)
4) What is the next bad/good thing that happens to your MC? (If #3 was a good thing, then do a bad thing this time; if it was a bad thing, then do a good thing.)
(HP: Harry finds out his parents were killed by an evil wizard but somehow he survived.)
(R&J: The teens marry in secret without their families knowing.)
5) How is it resolved? How will you connect #4 to your ending? How will your character(s) grow/change?
(HP: Harry confronts the evil wizard and the shield of sacrificial love that his mother gave him allows him to win.)
(R&J: The teens’ families find out, and they kill themselves rather than be separated.)
- Doing the basic outline gives the skeleton for your entire story, makes sure you have a cohesive/coherent narrative
- Cohesive: hits all the right beats and flows together
- Coherent: everything makes sense logically
- You can stop here if you’d like and discover more as you write your story, but if you’d like to be even more prepared, then I recommend doing a detailed outline too
#2. Detailed Outline
Now take what you came up with in the basic outline and start dividing up the information into a chapter by chapter outline. You’re going to need more info to fill in the synopsis for each chapter, and that’s fine, that’s your story growing
Every chapter should ask and answer these two questions:
– Connection: how does this connect to the last chapter?
– Compelling: what compels readers to read this chapter?
- For connection, chapters should be connected by a flow of “because X happened, then Y; because Y happened, then Z.”
- There shouldn’t be any “and then X happens, then Y happens, then Z,” since that feels more random.
- For compelling, almost never use the words “history, background, information, learns,” or anything like that for your reasons because that’s not compelling that’s just exposition.
- Any time your reason is something like “the reader needs to know X or Y,” that should set off alarms to change your chapter. Don’t just convey info, have something HAPPEN where that info is necessary
Example:
Chapter 1
Synopsis: Harry is dropped off as a baby at the Dursleys.
Connection: (n/a)
Compelling: The secret about the Dursleys, Harry being famous
(NOT Dumbledore in his office talking about Dursleys)
Chapter 2
Synopsis: Harry makes the glass disappear at the zoo.
Connection: Because the Dursleys hate Harry they treat him horribly and the one time they’re nice to him it goes wrong.
Compelling: Seeing Harry’s horrible life and hint at magic
(NOT Harry at school accidentally using magic in bathroom)
Chapter 3
Synopsis: Harry gets a mysterious letter in the mail.
Connection: Because Harry’s life is miserable and he has no friends, he desperately wants to read the letter.
Compelling: The mystery of the letters
(NOT Harry learning about Hogwarts from a book/wizard)
After that, chat voted that we outline a story together, and they voted that we do the story about a world with four seasons/countries of magic that we worked on before. Check it out if you haven’t read it already.
Here’s the outline we came up with:
1) Who is your main character? What makes them unique? What does he/she want to do? What is the conflict?
- Victor (from the spring sovereign, power to steal life/rebirth): several centuries old member of the elite whose sister is dying for the 1st time and he can’t help her (stagnant society based around academic)
- Bree (from the summer hive, power to control insects): part of an army following the prophet-queen (poor/angry society based around agriculture)
- Tarus (from the fall nation, power to ripen to maturity/decay): adult ripened from childbirth right to working age (ignorant/innocent society based around industry)
- Celan (from the winter kingdom, power to freeze time): young girl caught between her parents who can’t decide whether to stay or leave their crumbling kingdom thanks to a magic-eating/killing disease that is spreading from melting glaciers (leader society based around staying in power)
2) What happens at the END of your story? What do you want to SAY with your story?
- Celan (winter) freezes time on the disease, giving Victor (spring) the ability to put life into the viruses, and then Tarus (fall) decays them away.
- Theme: “In order to combat a giant, insurmountable enemy, we need to work together.”
3) What is the 1st good/bad thing that happens to your MC?
- Victor (spring): goes to winter kingdom to try and get someone to freeze his sister in time before she dies
- Bree (summer): brainwashed to hate the other kingdoms, prophet-queen sends an army to spring and fall to invade them before tackling winter, Bree is part of army sent to fall, but then meets Tarus and realizes what she’s doing is wrong (because he asks her innocent questions that she can’t answer)
- Tarus (fall): working in a factory where he thinks they’re making nice toys but it’s actually a giant bomb called the Rot filled with decay-magic that was commissioned by the winter kingdom to try and kill the virus
- Celan (winter): she and her mother, a scientist, run away to try and escape the kingdom before it collapses and the Rot bomb she helped build is launched
4) What is the next bad/good thing that happens to your MC? (If #3 was a good thing, then do a bad thing this time; if it was a bad thing, then do a good thing.)
- Victor (spring): Gets accused of being a spy and is arrested in winter kingdom
- Bree (summer): the Rot bomb that fall was making gets launched and makes the virus even worse, killing tons of people and is more deadly the more magic you’ve used
- Tarus (fall): he uses his “ripening” powers to keep the Rot explosion at bay from Bree and himself, he doesn’t realize it’s magic though, he just think it’s playing
- Celan (winter): Mother dies of sickness from the vrius/Rot and Celan is caught and taken to jail with Victor, they hate each other since to Victor children are just crops to harvest for life and to Celan the plague is Victor’s fault, but they work together to break out (Victor injects some life from Celan into the jail’s bars causing the cell wall to collapse allowing them to escape.)
5) How is it resolved? How will you connect #4 to your ending? How will your character(s) grow/change?
- Victor (spring): takes Celan with him to go back to his sister and try to freeze her in time, but she’s gone, they speak with the university leader, find out she was stolen away for research and is being autopsied and is already dead, we find out the origin of the disease, that it was caused by the winter kingdom slowing down the planet with their time-freezing-powers and causing it to warm
- Bree (summer): together with Tarus goes to spring to confront the prophet-queen and tell her what happened, but the queen is weakened by the disease and the army is decimated, Brie tries to get her to stop the invasions, but the prophet-queen calls her a traitor and stabs Tarus
- Tarus (fall): Tarus is stabbed and dying, but Bree fights back against the prophet-queen, killing her but taking a mortal wound in the process herself
- Celan (winter): Celan/Victor see what happened with the prophet queen/Bree, and Bree begs Victor to put what remains of her life force into Tarus, saving him, and then she dies
It’s not a perfect outline, and there’s a few places where it needs to be smoothed out, but it’s an important first step. We took some cool ideas we had, and actually started to turn it into a story.
And if you have some ideas of your own floating around, answering the five questions could be a great way to get started too.
Be sure to check out the video to for a dramatic reading and more!
If you want to join us and help write a story by trolling in chat, or share your own writing for feedback, then we’d love to have you join us on Twitch.
And you missed the stream, you can still watch them on the YouTube channel or watch the full stream reruns.
Hope to see you next time, friend!
Featured image: GAHAG