How to Write a Novel: Outlining (or plotting)
“Outlining is the most efficient way to structure a novel to achieve the greatest emotional impact… Outlining lets you create a framework that compels your audience to keep reading from the first page to the last.”
—Jeffery Deaver
Writers who outline or plot spend more time up front considering aspects of the novel and know how the story will progress before they start writing the manuscript. It’s a spectrum, with some outlines consisting of a page or so and others stretching to thousands of words of preparation.
The benefits of outlining
While discovery writers jump into writing and spend more time later cleaning up their drafts, outliners or plotters spend time beforehand so they can write faster in the first draft.
When it’s time to write, outliners focus on writing words on the page to fulfil their vision rather than figuring out what’s going on. Outlining can result in more intricate plots and twists, deeper characters, less time rewriting, and faster production time.
If you co-write, outlining is the only way to ensure your process works smoothly. As a discovery writer, I have found it particularly challenging to co-write fiction, which is why I rarely do it!
If you have an agent or a publisher, or you want an agent or a publisher, you might have to write an outline anyway, so learning how to do it well can help. If you’re a discovery writer, you can always outline after the book is finished, if you need to.
“When you plan a story the right way, you guarantee a tight, compelling structure that keeps readers turning pages and delivers a satisfying reading experience from start to finish. And really, a satisfied reader is all you need for a ‘good’ book.”
—Libbie Hawker, Take Off Your Pants! Outline Your Books for Faster, Better Writing
The difficulties of outlining
Outlining and plotting suit some writers very well.
But not all.
Some authors get lost in outlining and plotting and world-building and character bios and theme explorations and symbolism… and never actually write full sentences and may never finish a book.
Such writers may go astray through a combination of procrastination through preparation, a delight in the learning process without a desire to do the work to turn it into a story, or perhaps fear of what might happen if they do write.
Some authors outline a book and then decide it’s too boring to write it and never finish.
Some authors become so obsessed with the technicalities of outlining that they decide writing is too hard, so they give up.
Other writers try outlining only to find it is no fun at all.
If you can do it, brilliant!
If you can’t, don’t worry. See the next chapter on discovery writing.
How to outline
“Every hour spent outlining prior to starting a novel saves you many hours in the actual writing process. It also helps you to write a better novel, as you will ‘tighten’ down the story in your outline before you write, rather than having to do it in rewrite.”
—Bob Mayer, The Novel Writer’s Toolkit
There is no single way to outline, but options include a text document, a spreadsheet, mind maps, and/or Scrivener or other software. Outlines can also vary in length and complexity.
Shawn Coyne describes the Foolscap Method in The Story Grid, where an entire book can be outlined on one A4 page with just a few lines describing the beginning, middle, and end of the story.
You could expand this brief outline into a document of a few pages by describing the main action points and characters of each scene in a couple of lines or a paragraph. This is often what agents and publishers mean by an outline.
At the more extreme end of the plotting spectrum, thriller author Jeffery Deaver creates a lengthy outline for his thrillers. As he said in a Wall Street Journal interview in 2012, “The finished outline runs about 150 pages, single spaced, though with very wide right margins, so I can jot references to the research material relevant to the plot.”
James Patterson outlines his books and uses the process to complicate his plots and come up with twists that surprise readers. Patterson is a prolific story machine and works with co-writers to expand his story worlds. Whatever you think of his books, he is the highest-earning and bestselling author in the world. I highly recommend his MasterClass online course, in which he goes into detail about his process.
In the MasterClass, Patterson says, “I’m a fanatic about outlining. It’s going to make whatever you’re writing better. You’ll have fewer false starts and you’ll take a shorter amount of time. I write them over and over again. You read my outline and it’s like reading a book. You really get the story even though it’s condensed. Each chapter will have about a paragraph devoted to it, but you’re going to get the scene and you’re going to get the sense of what makes the scene work… The ending almost always changes in the writing, though, it’s because I learned to listen to the characters.”
Some writers use paper index cards for plotting scenes and characters. Lauren Beukes used a wall of index cards to physically plot the details for her award-winning thriller The Shining Girls, later adapted for TV. It is a time travel thriller, so the plot lines and characters needed to be interwoven in multiple ways.
If you don’t want to use paper, you can use plotting software like Scrivener, Plottr, Granthika, or other tools to create electronic versions of index cards that you can drag and drop into a different order as you need to.
J.K. Rowling outlined the Harry Potter series with hand-drawn matrices tracking the characters against the plot and timeline.
Prolific thriller author Russell Blake uses a spreadsheet with chapter numbers down the left, character names across the top, and a few sentences in each cell. “I will typically capture the whys of the chapter, meaning the motivation for writing it. To make it into my final outline, it will need to either reveal something about the characters or the plot, or move the story forward. If I can’t articulate to myself the purpose of the chapter in that manner, I cut it.”
You can include whatever you like in your outline and it can be as long as you want it to be.
Outliners often change things as they write, so don’t feel that the outline is a constraint on your creativity. It’s just a tool to help you write your book in whatever way works for you.
“A good outline should be a spur for creativity, not a stumbling block. The author is the master of the outline, not its slave.”
—K.M. Weiland, Outlining Your Novel
Outlining a series
If you have a series in mind, particularly if there is a clear character arc and a final ending, then it can be a good idea to outline more than one book at the same time so you know where the series is going, even if it’s just a few lines.
However, remember to write the book at some point. Don’t spend forever outlining!
Questions:
• What are the benefits of outlining?
• What are the potential difficulties?
• Are you excited about the prospect of outlining? Or is it something you feel like you ‘should’ do?
• Which methods of outlining might work best for you?
• How much time do you want to spend outlining before you move on to writing?
Resources:
• “How J.K. Rowling Plotted Harry Potter with a Hand-Drawn Spreadsheet,” Open Culture — www.openculture.com/2014/07/j-k-rowling-plotted-harry-potter-with-a-hand-drawn-spreadsheet.html
• “Outlining made simple,” Russell Blake’s blog — www.russellblake.com/outlining-made-simple
• “String Theory and Murder Walls,” Lauren Beukes’s blog — www.laurenbeukes.com/string-theory-and-murder-walls
• “The Architecture of a Thriller” by Jeffery Deaver, Wall Street Journal, 15 June 2012 — www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702303734204577464681207430076
• Outlining Your Novel: Map Your Way to Success — K.M. Weiland
• Take Off Your Pants! Outline Your Books for Faster, Better Writing — Libbie Hawker
• The Novel Writer’s Toolkit: From Idea to Best-Seller — Bob Mayer
