Fiction writers have an ongoing debate about whether or not to plot: that is, whether to use an outline. But outlines and drafts come in many varieties, which complicates the debate. Here’s everything I know about outlines and drafts condensed into handy bullet points (itself a kind of outline), which I hope will be helpful to you.
Why outline?
• Ideas for novels are too big to hold in your head all at once; you need some sort of notes.
• You might be able to write faster using an outline.
• Outlines can let you write less anxiously because you know what will happen next.
• Outlines are a “big picture” tool to help you revise/re-envision your story for subsequent drafts.
• Leonardo da Vinci used outlines when he painted; this is a respectable artistic tool.
Why avoid outlines?
• Your brain simply doesn’t work that way; you can do just fine without one.
• You lack experience using this tool, so it’s hard to figure out and feels uncomfortable.
A few kinds of outlines
• Three-act structure
• Save the Cat formula
• Romance novel formula
• Scrivener or other software
• 3 x 5 cards or Post-It Notes
• Pictures/scrapbook/artwork/poems
• Spreadsheets/charts/maps
• Hero’s Journey
• Heroine’s Journey
• Fool’s Journey
• Beat Sheets
• Snowflake method
• East Asian four-act kishōtenketsu
• Detailed scene-by-scene
• General chapter-by-chapter
• Character driven
• Theme or narrative focused
• Crisis or paradox centered
• A series of questions
• A series of causes and effects
• Continuous re-evaluation
• Joyous amalgam of all these
Some secrets to using an outline as a writing tool
• You can make an outline at any time: before, during, or after any draft or part of a draft.
• Your outline can be a simple list of beats, plot twists, or key scenes.
• The plot outline is not the manuscript outline, which might not be chronological or logical.
• There is no Platonic ideal story; a story can take different forks in the road along the way.
• You can begin plotting from the end, middle, or beginning of the story.
• Any single step or couple of steps of a standard plot outline can be a short story.
Kinds of drafts
• Zero draft, a wildly experimental initial draft that doesn’t “count” as a first draft.
• Dialog-only draft, with the rest to be filled in during subsequent drafts.
• Disconnected scenes, to be connected in a later draft.
• Fast drafting, writing as quickly as possible without looking back, NaNoWriMo-style.
• Writing each scene as a short story.
• Messy, ugly, crappy early drafts; only the final draft needs to be beautiful.
Exercise: a tiny outline
Summarize your story in three three-word sentences. Such as, for a romance: 1. Girl meets boy. 2. Girl loses boy. 3. Girl wins boy. Or for Hamlet: 1. Hamlet has doubts. 2. Doubts are resolved. 3. Hamlet gets revenge. Does your story have a beginning, middle, and end?
(This post is available as a one-page PDF here.)