Outlining Your Novel – Here’s How To Do It Well

Hello Writers!

by: Writerslife   | Writing

Having a good novel outline can be invaluable. If you spend some time writing a detailed novel outline, before you begin, you’ll find that it’s easier to write your story, you’ll feel confident that you have a full story there, and you’ll be less likely to suffer from the dreaded writers block where you just can’t see where to take your novel next.

But what are the things writers should include in an outline? There, of course, has to be a balance. An outline should be just that – if you go into too much detail you’ll end up getting so bogged down in it that you’ll never actually start your book. On the other hand, make it too vague and it won’t be much use to you at all.

So here are some helpful tips about what to include in your novel outline.

Your premise

A good outline will sum up, in the simplest yet most effective way, the basic idea for your story. A premise should include details of your protagonist, the setting, the goal, the conflict or obstacles and the resolution at the end. You should be succinct here and able to write a few simple sentences to capture all this information.

Scene ideas

Writing your outline is a perfect opportunity to sketch out some scene ideas. This doesn’t have to be every scene that occurs in your story, but if you know some of the main, definite scenes that have to happen, start to plot out the details of these and bring them to life. This is really just a brainstorming exercise to get your ideas out there. When you have finished you can go back and look at them in more detail and begin to order and shape them to provide a basic timeline for your book.

Your characters

An outline is a great opportunity to get to know your characters better. Why not interview them or write a page long bio for each of them summing up their character traits, history, what brings them to the story, what their purpose is, their physical appearance and so on? This can be helpful when you start to write as you’ll already have a clear idea of who they are and how they act and react to certain situations which will help you keep them consistent, relatable and believable.

Settings

Think about the world you have created. Is it based on the world as we know it, or completely different? If you know a lot of action will take place in a certain room or setting, start to build up a picture of it in your outline. When you come to start your first draft you should have a very clear idea of where your book is set and the places where important scenes will take place.

Chapter outlines

Writing out a short outline for each chapter will really help you to understand where you book is going, flag up any problems early on and give you the confidence to know that you do have a great story to write!

Remember to be flexible

Remember your story is likely to change so much as you write it, and what you thought in your head was going to happen at the beginning may be very different to how it turns out in the end. That’s why you should always consider your outline a work in progress. Every time you have finished a writing session go back to it and tweak it as necessary, that way it will always be useful rather than being made redundant because you completely change the direction of your story after the first few chapters.

Outlining your novel takes some time, thought and research, but having a well thought out, a detailed outline can help writers to start their novel feeling confident, creative and exhilarated about the writing process, make them more likely to finish their story and help them to write more consistently and productively too.