Amateur To Published: The Fiction Writer's Guide To Publishing

5 - Outline Your Story

Outlining is an individual thing. Some people like to dive into the story as soon as they have a vague idea and characters to play with. They go with their gut instinct and end up wherever their story takes them. That's okay.

Others like to plan it a little. They might flesh out the story a little bit more so that they have a rough idea of how the story will go and how it will end. That's okay too.

Others go full out. They plan their book chapter by chapter so they know allthe conflicts, beginning, middle and end. They know every scene like the back of their hand and when they sit down, all they need to do is just arrange it all into a cohesive book. That's okay too.

None of the above methods of writing is superior to the other. What's most important is finding a method that works for you and will help you finish your book. The steps that you'll find below will give you an idea of what your story should look like. You can use them all or just pick what works for you and let the story unfold as it will. But it's important to know.

Here are the basic steps to outlining:

STEP 1: UNDERSTAND BASIC STORY STRUCTURE

Novels are like houses, they all have a foundation. The most basic foundation that most writers startfrom is the 6-point story structure i.e.

1. Introduction To Ordinary World . Show how the characters are living before thestory begins, the problems/comforts they live with. What happens before yourplot completely turns their life around or twists it.

2. Inciting action or Call-to-Action. Something happens to push the lead character outof their ordinary world and into action. For example meeting the heroine, discovering a body, suddenly finding out zombie's exist

3. Rising Action. Several complications that build to the major complications e.g. hero and heroine start competing with each other in the office, detective starts investigation, hero starts off on his journey to find the magic sword

4. Climax. The conflict comes to a head and is at its mostintense. Failure to resolve it will lead to a major loss for the character. Heroine discovers that the guy she likes is actually the son of her father's killer and has to decide, the detective finally discovers who the criminal is but is kidnapped by them, hero and villain meet face to face and have to fight for the magical sword

5. Resolution. The conflict that occurred at the climax and any remaining threads of tension are resolved in a satisfying way. Heroine decides to get past her issues and be with the hero, lead finally beats the villain and saves the world, detective solves the crime and gets away from the criminal.

6. Denouement. The end of the story that shows the new reality of the new characters. Heroine is now having fun with her new powers after having defeated the villain but is always ready in case a new villain shows up, hero and heroine finally have their happily ever after and are getting married, detective has proved their ability to solve crimes and has just been introduced to a new crime.

The above is the standard structure that creative writing students are taught but you can go beyond that by studying other proposed structures. Such structures include Ronald B Tobias's Twenty Master Plots and Christopher Booker's Seven Basic Plots. Though it's not necessary to know those structures, they make for an interesting read and may improve your story.

STEP 2: STUDY HOW STORIES ARE COMMONLY STRUCTURED IN YOUR GENRE

You've probably realized that most genres have a loose structure that they are based on. For instance in a mystery the story will go like this: