7 Steps to Creating a Flexible Outline for Any Story

writersdigest.com/write-better-fiction/7-steps-to-creating-a-flexible-outline-for-any-story

1. Craft your premise

Your premise is the basic idea for your story. But it’s not enough to just have an idea. “Guy
saves girl in an intergalactic setting” is a premise, but it’s also far too vague to offer much
solid story guidance.

This is why your outline needs to begin with a tightly crafted premise sentence that can
answer the following questions:

Who is the protagonist?

What is the situation? What is the hero’s personal condition at the beginning? How will
that condition be changed, for better or worse, by the hero himself or by the
antagonistic force?
What is the protagonist’s objective? At the beginning, what does the hero want? What
moral (or immoral) choices will she have to make in her attempt to gain that objective?
Who is the opponent? Who or what stands in the way of the hero achieving his
objective?
What will be the disaster? What misfortune will befall the hero as the result of her
attempts to achieve her objective?
What’s the conflict? What conflict will result from the hero’s reaction to the disaster?
And what is the logical flow of cause and effect that will allow this conflict to continue
throughout the story?

Once you’ve answered these questions, combine them into one or two sentences:

Restless farm boy (situation) Luke Skywalker (protagonist) wants nothing more than to leave
home and become a starfighter pilot, so he can live up to his mysterious father (objective). But
when his aunt and uncle are murdered (disaster) after purchasing renegade droids, Luke must
free the droids’ beautiful owner and discover a way to stop (conflict) the evil Empire
(opponent) and its apocalyptic Death Star.

2. Roughly sketch scene ideas

Armed with a solid premise, you can now begin sketching your ideas for this story. Write a
list of everything you already know about your story. You’ll probably come to this step with a
handful of scenes already in mind. Even if you have no idea how these scenes will play out in
the story, go ahead and add them to the list. At this point, your primary goal is to remember
and record every idea you’ve had in relation to this story.

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Once you’ve finished, take a moment to review your list. Whenever you encounter an idea
that raises questions, highlight it. If you don’t know why your character is fighting a duel in
one scene, highlight it. If you don’t know how two scenes will connect, highlight them. If you
can’t picture the setting for one of the scenes, highlight that, too. By pausing to identify
possible plot holes now, you’ll be able to save yourself a ton of rewriting later on.

(Writing Mistakes Writers Make)

Your next step is to address each of the highlighted portions, one by one. Write out your ideas
and let your thoughts flow without censoring yourself. Because this is the most unstructured
step of your outline, this will be your best opportunity to unleash your creativity and plumb
the depths of your story’s potential. Ask yourself questions on the page. Talk to yourself
without worrying about punctuation or spelling.

Every time you think you’ve come up with a good idea, take a moment to ask yourself, “Will
the reader expect this?” If the answer is yes, write a list of alternatives your readers won’t
expect.

3. Interview your characters

In order to craft a cast of characters that can help your plot reach its utmost potential, you’ll
need to discover crucial details about them, not necessarily at the beginning of their lives but
at the beginning of the story.

To do this for your protagonist, work backward from the moment in which he will become
engaged in your plot (the “disaster” in your premise sentence). What events in your
protagonist’s life have led him to this moment? Did something in his past cause the disaster?
What events have shaped him to make him respond to the disaster in the way he does? What
unresolved issues from his past can further complicate the plot’s spiral of events?

Once you have a basic idea of how your character will be invested in the main story, you can
start unearthing the nitty-gritty details of his life with a character interview. You may choose
to follow a preset list of questions (you can find a list of more than 100 such questions in my
book Outlining Your Novel: Map Your Way to Success), or you may have better luck with a
“freehand interview” in which you ask your protagonist a series of questions and allow him to
answer in his own words.

4. Explore your settings

Whether your setting is your childhood neighborhood or the seventh moon of Barsoom,
you’ll want to enter your first draft with a firm idea of where your prominent scenes will be
taking place.

(Discover the Basic Elements of Setting in a Story.)

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Don’t choose a setting just because it sounds cool or because you’re familiar with it. Look for
settings that will be inherent to your plot. Can you change your story’s primary locale without
any significant alterations to the plot? If so, dig a little deeper to find a setting better suited to
your plot, theme and characters.

Based on the scenes you’re already aware of, list the settings you think you’ll need. Can you
reduce this list by combining or eliminating settings? Nothing wrong with a sprawling story
locale, but extraneous settings should be eliminated just as assiduously as unnecessary
characters.

5. Write your complete outline

You’re finally ready to outline your story in full. This is where you will begin plotting in
earnest. In Step 2, you solidified the big picture of your story by identifying the scenes you
were already aware of and figuring out how they might fit together. Now, you will work
through your story linearly, scene by scene, numbering each one as you go. Unlike the
“sketches” in Step 2, in which your primary focus was on brainstorming and exploring
possibilities, you will now be concentrating on molding your existing ideas into a solid
structure.

How comprehensive you want to be is up to you. You may choose to write a single sentence
for each scene (“Dana meets Joe at the café to discuss their impending nuptials”), or you may
choose to flesh out more details (“Joe is sitting by himself in a booth when Dana arrives;
Dana orders coffee and a muffin; they fight about the invitation list”). Either way, focus on
identifying and strengthening the key components of each scene’s structure. Who will be your
narrating character? What is his goal? What obstacle will arise to obstruct that goal and
create conflict? What will be the outcome, and how will your character react to the resulting
dilemma? What decision will he reach that will fuel the next scene’s goal?

Work to create a linear, well-structured plot with no gaps in the story. If you can get this
foundation right in your outline, you’ll later be free to apply all your focus and imagination to
the first draft and bring your story to life.

(25 Plot Twist Ideas and Prompts for Writers.)

As you mentally work through each scene, watch for possible lapses of logic or blank areas in
how one event builds to another. Take the time to think through these potential problems so
they won’t trip you up later. If you get stuck, try jumping ahead to the next scene you know,
and then working backward. For instance, if you know where you want your characters to
end up, but not how they’ll get there, start at the ending point and then see if you can figure
out what has to happen in the preceding events to make it plausible.

6. Condense your outline

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Once you’ve finished your extended outline, you may want to condense the most pertinent
points into an abbreviated version. Doing so allows you to weed out extraneous thoughts and
summarize the entire outline into a scannable list for easier reference. Because your full
outline may contain a fair amount of rambling and thinking out loud on the page, you’re
likely to end up with a lot of notes to review (I often have nearly three notebooks of material).
Rather than having to wade through the bulk of your notes every time you sit down to work
on your first draft, you can save yourself time in the long run by doing a little organizing now.

You may choose to create your abbreviated outline in a Word document, write out your
scenes on index cards, or use a software program such as the free Scrivener alternative
yWriter.

7. Put your outline into action

By now, you’ll be feeling prepared and eager to get going on your first draft. Each time you sit
down to work on your manuscript, begin by reviewing your outline. Read the notes for your
current scene and the scene to follow. Before you start writing, work through any remaining
potential problems in your head or on paper. If the time comes (and it will come) when
you’re struck with a better idea than what you had planned in your outline, don’t hesitate to
go off-road. These ventures into unknown territory can result in some of the most surprising
and intriguing parts of your story.

An outline will offer you invaluable structure and guidance as you write your first draft, but
never be afraid to explore new ideas as they occur. Remember, your outline is a map showing
you the route to your destination, but that doesn’t mean it is the only route.

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