As mentioned in my scene cards post, I am a PLOTTER, all caps. I have to know where I think my story is going before I start drafting so I don’t end up treading water among sharks.
I never outline at the start of a new project. I like to let the ideas simmer as I brainstorm and give the characters and ideas a chance to develop. My story ideas begin as a note file on my phone where I ramble ideas. I scrolled through my phone and picked one of these notes at random. Here’s an excerpt of my Untitled High School series musings:
- You can change him
- Peer pressure
- Wanting to be in a band
- Bullying
- Can guys and girls be just friends?
- First kiss, first love
- Friends who become something more
- Steroid use for athletes
- Getting kicked out of your house by your parents
- Gossip
- Secret friends
- Being adopted – finding out/want to meet birth parents?
- Feeling like an outcast
The football guy doesn’t even like the sport. He only plays because his father was on a state championship team & is in the Hall of Fame at the college he went to. Quarterback. He doesn’t like cheerleaders in general either but starts out the series dating one because his friends pressured him into it (and because she basically told him he was gonna ask her out).
Preseason: One of the girls mothers gets a divorce and is having a hard time even getting out of bed. Her father cheated on them and got another woman pregnant (on his frequent business trips to Texas). So he decides to leave & be with that woman. But then once the baby is born, he starts trying to contact his daughter to come back (being the father of a baby is too hard on him & the woman is crazy).
The coach from the state championship football team from the year before got in trouble for giving a student a ride home and was fired so the team has to deal with a new football coach who doesn’t know anything about them.
Not exactly a cohesive outline, right? But it’s a start! I make note of themes and tropes I want to touch on, symbolism to include, and story nuggets that I can weave into the novel or novels to show the themes/etc.
Once I’ve picked what story I want to focus on, it gets upgraded from my phone to Scrivener. During the outline and scene cards phase, these notes slowly get added to their respective scenes as I build the scene list. But I’m getting ahead of myself!
I’ve talked about the character journey and character web already. Those notes usually get added to either my note on my phone or my Scrivener file. With the general character and plot ideas formed, I start building my outline. I start with the major plot points, which for me are: the opening image; inciting incident; first plot point; midpoint; second plot point; climatic moment; and ending scene.
Here’s an example from the very rough draft of my second Dreki novel Valkyrie:
Opening Scene: While Destin is away with the majority of the soldiers on raids, Sylvi is left behind. She trains to be a shieldmaiden with Bard, who has taken a liking to her. And while she flirts with him, when he makes an advance on her, she realizes her conflicted feelings for Destin and pushes him away.
First Plot Point: Sylvi and Destin reunite and reconnect, which gives Sylvi leverage to get Destin to agree to train with her again, and for her to be around dragons more. It also gives her leverage to go on the raids at the end of winter.
Midpoint: At the midpoint twist, a shipwreck washes up on the beach in the middle of the night and is seen by the watchmen at first light. Most of the village goes down to check it out. While they do, Holmes’s men scale the cliffside on the opposite side of the island and land a surprise attack on the village. Destin is heading to the caves and is one of the first they run into. He is caught without his shield and weapon and they get him in the side, close to his organs. He falls and plays dead to keep them from finishing him off. When Sylvi finds him, she panics and sets the chain of events for the dragons to come to the aid and massacre the raiders.
Second Plot Point: Eirik’s talks with Holmes fall apart, forcing the war to the forefront.
Climatic Moment: Climax is the battle with the other clan and Sylvi’s pregnancy. (Resolution is omitted in case I ever get to publish this baby.)
Before we dive further into my outlining process, a quick word about plotting. There is a wealth of craft books about plotting. So far in my personal writing journey, I gravitate toward Save the Cat! by Jessica Brody, Structuring Your Novel by KM Weiland, and Anatomy of Story by John Truby. I use their structure and terminology for story beats and plot below. You can check out my full page here for other plotting resources.
Sometimes, I start at the beginning and work my way to the end. This was the case for Baggage. The idea for that story came from an opening image of the main character laying under her desk at work, surrounded by chaos, asking herself how the hell she ended up there. (Fun fact: this opening image ended up getting cut from the story as it didn’t fit her characterization and character arc. But even though I didn’t use it in the end, it spurred an entire novel.)
Other times, I start at the end and work my way back to the beginning. This was the case for the first Fortitude novella. I knew the big dramatic moment I wanted to leave readers dangling on at the end as soon as I knew the premise for the story. There’s also times where I start in the middle and work my way out to the beginning and end. And then others where I jump around with no rhyme or reason as I flesh out the mad ramblings saved in the note file on my phone.
Once I get the major plot points nailed down, I start on my marketing materials and send them out for critique before I do any more outlining. This lets me gauge whether my core story beats match my character’s journey before I waste a bunch of time plotting out a story that inherently doesn’t work. I want to make sure the hook with the opening is sound, and that the premise is unique enough to entice readers. I also want to make sure there are enough stakes and conflict present within my main outline or know if I need to rework the middle and ending and thus change all the steps in between.
After revisions and with approval from critique partners that “hey, this could be an interesting story!” I go back to my outline and fill in: the first and second pinch points; the All is Lost moment; the Dark Night of the Soul; and the character arc of positive climb in first half, negative descent in second half (or vice versa).
This is also the time where I hone my subplots. I overwrite and my original outline draft typically has too many characters and subplots that I parse down based on what my critique partners like the most. While I’m outlining my main plot, I’m also thinking about subplots and their pacing. How can they build off the main plot? How can they tie into these major plot points? Do I have too much in the beginning of the novel and thus it overpowers the main plot? Does the subplot start too late? The outline is a great tool, along with scene cards, to check the main plot, subplot, and overall story pacing together.
As I fill in these plot points and scenes, I build beats into my outline and scene cards that match the character journey and goal, motivation, and conflict of the story. Each plot point has to tie these elements together. The story GMC have to be shown in each scene’s GMC. Using the same example of Valkyrie above, here is what the (again, very rough and incomplete) outline looks like for the First Act:
Departure: Destin leaves with the other raiders to help resupply the winter reserves. Sylvi is still very upset on their discussion at the end of Dragon Lord, so it is a tense farewell.
Bard: Syliv and her new training partner take a break from the winter preparations to practice, though he is more interested in flirting with her than anything else.
Sickness: Sylvi wakes up in Ragna’s house. She had a headache, but is otherwise fine, so Ragna enlists her help to treat all the villagers who have taken ill to the disease plaguing the people and the livestock. (subplot)
Harvest: Sylvi helps prepare the meat from a slaughtered horse for the larder. The women gossip about Sylvi’s relationship with Bard and her marriage to Destin. They mention the festival for Winternights, and the strain it puts on the food supply, which is dwindling with the disease. (main plot woven in with subplot)
Kiss: Bard surprises Sylvi in the bathhouse with an aggressive kiss. She pushes him away and he apologizes for the misunderstanding, but confesses he would like to try again with her permission. Longing for human contact, Sylvi relents, but then regrets it and warns him to never speak of it to anyone, least Destin find out and cut his lips off in his sleep.
Once I have the outline of what my scene list is going to be (typically around 30-40 scenes for my novels), I dig into the details of my scene cards.
In the past, I’ve waited until I have an extended outline of scene cards before sending it out to critique partners. Going forward, I’m going to pause here and send this version of my outline out for critique to make sure all the plot points and beats are hitting the right notes before I get 30,000 words deep into my extended outline/scene cards. Work smart, not hard!
(I also make snapshots in Scrivener or copies of archived Word files of these old outlines. Just because these ideas don’t work for this story now doesn’t mean I can’t come back to them in the future. Never delete anything for good! Tuck it away for a rainy day, your own writer’s dark night of the soul.)
What’s your outlining process? How has it evolved over your writing journey?