Outlining is a fun, easy way to turn book writing from agony to awesome.
Let’s go over some tips, then write a detailed outline together for our story about Scenya, the world of season-magic!
During the last stream, a subscriber requested that we create a detailed outline for a story we’ve written before.
You can watch the full video here to or scroll down for notes/highlights.
How to Make a Detailed Outline
- Once you’ve written a basic outline for your story, you can then make a detailed one.
- My favorite kind of detailed outline is one that divides the story into chapter-by-chapter summaries, since it provides the most detailed map of the book
- As you outline each chapter, you’ll make new things up to fill in info gaps, some plot points will change, and characters may be born/die, and that’s fine, that’s your story growing
Aside from giving a short summary of each chapter, make sure that every chapter answers these two questions:
#1. Connection: how does this connect to the last chapter?
#2. 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, and then Y happens, and then Z happens,” 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. Don’t just convey info, have something HAPPEN where that info is necessary
For Example, with Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone:
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: We see the magic that was hinted at last chapter
Compelling: Seeing Harry’s horrible life and accidental magic
(NOT Harry at school accidentally using magic)
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)
We then created a chapter-by-chapter outline for a book we’ve worked on before: a story about Scenya, a world where four countries have four different types of seasonal-based magic.
Here’s an awesome map of the world, as drawn by Dragonflyghter. Glitzen is the winter kingdom where they have the power to freeze time, Decarne is the fall nation where they have the power to ripen/mature things, Incarna is the spring covereign where they have the power of rebirth, and Vitalis is the summer hive where they have the power to control insects.
Be sure to check out the back of the book summary and basic outline we’ve already created for this story before reading the chapter-by-chapter outline:
Here’s what we came up with:
Prologue
Synopsis: Show the powers/relationships of the four nations
Connection: (n/a)
Compelling: It’s all coming to an end with the conflict of the melting glaciers/disease, bringing a new seasonChapter 1
Synopsis: Victor (from spring) is a several-centuries-old member of the elite whose sister is sick/dying for the 1st time and he can’t help her. Their society is stagnant/academic, based on sibling bonds, since children are seen as “crops” harvested for their lifeforce. End with Victor telling her he’s going to Winter to freeze her in time so they can find a cute.
Connection: See the disease/spring powers in action.
Compelling: See the spring life-transfer power in action, when Victor sacrifices a “flower” child to try and save his sister, see how different/scary their culture is.Chapter 2
Synopsis: Celan (from winter) goes to snooty private school where she’s learning time-freezing magic. She hears rumors about melting glaciers/virus but no one talks about it. We see her fun relationship with her father, the chauffeur for the royal family, who picks her up in the royal limo. They hear a news story about the melting glaciers on the limo radio, but dad tells her not to worry. At home, Celan’s mother, a research scientist, gets into an argument with father about staying/leaving, since she wants to run away before disaster happens.End with mother telling Celan they’re going to run away and leave father behind.
Connection: See the Winter kingdom that was talked about in the last chapter.
Compelling: The mystery of the disease and where it’s coming from.Chapter 3
Synopsis: Bree (from summer) was born into the worker caste to work the fields, but then the prophet-king came to power (first king in forever, was always a queen before) saying that people are not born into their role and can change. Brie, along with many other workers, became warriors, ready to take advantage of rising temperatures and defeat fall/spring, then winter
Connection: See the army that Celan’s mother was worried about
Compelling: See the summer society where the gender ratio is skewed 9:1 female to male.Chapter 4
Synopsis: Tarus (from fall) is an adult ripened from childbirth right to working age, working doing simple tasks in a factory.
Connection: Summer hive is going to attack fall, see the people that they want to slaughter.
Compelling: Seeing the tedious tasks that Tarus has to perform and how they’re justified as “games” where they get “prizes.”Chapter 5
Synopsis: Victor (spring) sets sail for the winter kingdom to try and get someone to freeze his sister in time before she dies
Connection: He’s on a boat that is manned by brainless workers from Fall
Compelling: Victor goes from boat to boat trying to find someone to take him, but sailors don’t want to go to winter because of the spreading disease, they warn him that’s where the sickness is coming fromChapter 6
Synopsis: Celan (winter) and her mother run away to the port to try and escape the kingdom, news of the attack of summer on fall is already happening. Mother tells Celan about the Rot bomb that she helped create with fall, a bomb that would release tons of rot magic in an attempt to destroy the virus.
Connection: Victor is coming to winter, Celan/mother are leaving.
Compelling: Celan betrays her mother by telling a teacher her mother’s plan before they leave.Chapter 7
Synopsis: Bree (summer) is brainwashed to hate the other kingdoms, and part of the army that the prophet-king sent to invade fall. (The other half went to spring.) Bree attacks the people there with her comrades, ends with her ordered to attack Tarus’s factory by herself since one warrior is plenty for the brainless workers
Connection: Get to see the attack of summer on fall.
Compelling: Bree slaughtering the citizens of fall, but she empathizes with them because they’re workers like she was, begins to have a change of heart.Chapter 8
Synopsis: Tarus (fall) working in a factory where he thinks they’re making nice toys but it’s actually the Rot bomb. Bree meets Tarus and realizes what she’s doing is wrong, because he asks her innocent questions that she can’t answer.
Connection: See Brie attack the factory she was assigned to.
Compelling: We see Brie’s killing through Tarus’s innocent POV, he thinks she’s putting the others to sleep, he says he doesn’t want to take a nap, that’s what pushes her over the edge.Chapter 9
Synopsis: Victor (spring): He arrives in the Winter kingdom port, asks around for someone to help but everyone is wary of outsiders right now due to the instability, ends with an explosion in the distance.
Connection: Instability of war affecting the people’s reaction.
Compelling: Mystery of the explosion.Chapter 10
Synopsis: Bree (summer) sees the Rot bomb that fall was making get launched and exploded in fall. The Rot itself kills many fall/summer people, and it makes the virus even worse (since the virus feeds on magic).
Connection: See the source of the explosion.
Compelling: Bree sees all of her powerful comrades falling to something they can’t even fight against.Chapter 11
Synopsis: Tarus (fall) leads Brie through an underground evacuation tunnel, which he was told to do in case of an emergency. They get to a door and it’s locked, but Tarus uses his decay magic on it to destroy the lock and keep going.
Connection: See how Brie/Tarus survive the Rot blast.
Compelling: Bree changes her mind, and now Tarus is her comrade, she calls him “drone,” a term of endearment that the summer nation uses.Chapter 12
Synopsis: Celan (winter) and her mother and everyone else around the Winter port gets hit by the empowered virus from the Rot bomb. Those who have used a lot of magic are most affected, and her mother dies from it, but Celan survives. Victor is arrested as a scapegoat, accused of being a terrorist unleashing an attack, and Celan thinks he killed her mother. Celan’s teacher finds her and helps her away.
Connection: See more repercussions of the Rot bomb.
Compelling: Victor and Celan meet up and Celan misunderstands who Victor is.Chapter 13
Synopsis: Bree (summer) together with Tarus reach the fall port and start to travel to spring to confront the prophet-king and tell him what happened with the Rot bomb. They pass the time with Bree seeing what other kid of magic Tarus can do when they turn it into a game.
Connection: Repercussions of the bomb.
Compelling: We want to know what will happen with their meeting, Bree wonders what she will tell the prophet-king now that she’s had a change of heart.Chapter 14
Synopsis: Victor (winter) is in jail, and Celan hates him since she thinks he killed her mother. He doesn’t care for her much either since to him, children are just crops to harvest for life.
Connection: Theme of “change of heart.”
Compelling: Interaction between Victor/Celan and their misunderstanding of each other.Chapter 15
Synopsis: Celan (winter): She goes home, father tells her that mother told him about the Rot bomb but he didn’t believe her, now Celan knows that Victor is innocent, her father drives her to the jail to help him out.
Connection: Goin’ back to jail!
Compelling: Celan learns the truth, change of heart for her father.Chapter 16
Synopsis: Victor and Celan work together to him break out, Celan freezes the guards but only for a few seconds, enough to steal their keys, let Victor escape, and then have him steal the guards’ lifeforce before the unfreeze. Celan’s dad leads Victor/Celan to a boat bound for Spring with Celan pretending to be Victor’s sister, but they have to leave the dad behind.
Connection: The final part of the escape.
Compelling: First time magics have been used together, and the father’s sacrifice.Chapter 17
Synopsis: Tarus (fall) experiences his first time outside of the fall nation, now together with Brie in Spring, he has fun commenting on everything he sees, he doesn’t understand that it’s all rubble, death, and destruction, waged by the summer hive.
Connection: We see the spring nation where Celan/Victor are headed too.
Compelling: We see everything from Tarus’s innocent POV.Chapter 18
Synopsis: Victor (spring) arrives in spring with Celan to see it decimated. He 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, and find out she was stolen away for research and is being autopsied and is already dead. Now 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.
Connection: Theme of “learning new things.”
Compelling: Finally discover the source of climate change.Chapter 19
Synopsis: Bree (summer) meets the prophet-king, but he is weakened by the disease and the army is almost all dead. Brie tries to get him to stop the invasions, but the prophet-king calls her a traitor and stabs Tarus.
Connection: See the continuation of the decimation from the previous chapter.
Compelling: Interaction between Brie/king and her telling him her change of heart.Chapter 20
Synopsis: Tarus (fall) is stabbed and dying, but Bree fights against the prophet-king, killing him but taking a mortal wound in the process herself.
Connection: See the next part of the battle.
Compelling: Oh no, Bree and Tarus are dying!Chapter 21
Synopsis: Victor (spring) sees what happened with the prophet king/Bree, and Bree begs Victor to put what remains of her life force into Tarus, saving him, and then she dies.
Connection: End of the battle.
Compelling: Bree’s sacrifice not for her nation but for her friend.Chapter 22
Synopsis: Together, 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.”
Connection: The war is over but the battle against the disease is still there.
Compelling: We have all the characters working together.
It’s not a perfect outline, and there’s a few places where it needs to be smoothed out, but it’s an important next step. Our story/characters grew, and with a bit more work, it’ll be ready to start being written.
Be sure to check out the video for 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