How to outline a novel in an afternoon

A novel does not need a forty-page plan before the first line. It needs three things you can work out in one sitting: what the ending is, what the big turns are on the way there, and what each scene is for. Everything else can be discovered while writing. Here is a way to get those three things down in an afternoon.

Start with the ending

Write one sentence about what is different on the last page from the first. Not the plot, the change: a woman who has never left her town leaves it; two brothers who have not spoken in ten years bury their father together. If you cannot write the sentence yet, write three candidates and pick the one that makes you slightly nervous.

The ending decides what the beginning has to set up. Once you know she leaves, the first chapter has a job: show us why leaving is unthinkable. Most outlining trouble is really ending trouble in disguise.

Two sentences of premise

Sentence one: who wants what, and what stands in the way. Sentence two: what it will cost them to get it, or to fail. “Mara wants to keep the family boatyard open after her father’s death, but the only buyer is the man who ruined him. Taking his money saves the yard and ends the last thing she shared with her father.”

Keep this at the top of your notes. When a scene feels loose later, read the premise and ask which half of it the scene is serving.

Choose a shape, then disobey it

Story shapes are scaffolding, not blueprints. Three acts (a quarter to set up, half to confront, a quarter to resolve) fits most books. A fifteen-beat sheet gives you more handholds and works well for commercial fiction. The hero’s journey suits quests and coming-of-age stories. Romance has its own beats, from the meeting to the dark moment to the declaration. Nonfiction and memoir organise by argument or by period rather than by act.

Pick one and take from it the six to ten turning points you believe in. Leave the rest. A shape you follow slavishly produces a book that readers have already read.

List the turning points as questions

Write each turning point as a question the story has to answer, one line each, in order:What makes Mara stay one more week? What does the buyer want that is not the yard? When does she learn what her father owed? Questions are better than statements at this stage because they leave the answer open while fixing the pressure. You will have six to ten of them. If you have thirty, you have scenes, not turning points; keep going.

Break the turning points into scenes

A scene is one place, one stretch of time, one change. Under each turning point, list the scenes it takes to get there, with a single line for each saying what the scene is for: not what happens, but what it does. “Mara finds the ledger” is what happens. “Mara learns the debt is twice what she thought, and decides not to tell her sister” is what it is for.

A novel of eighty thousand words runs to somewhere between forty and eighty scenes of a thousand to two thousand words. You will not see all of them this afternoon. Mark the ones you can see clearly and the ones you cannot. Write the clear ones first; the fog in between usually lifts once there is something on either side of it.

What an outline is for

An outline is a promise to yourself, not a contract. When a scene turns out differently from its line, change the line, not the scene. When a turning point stops being true, cross it out and write the new question. The outline’s job is to tell you, on a day when you sit down tired, what the next scene is for, so that you can write it instead of wondering.

Next: Scenes and chapters: breaking a book into pieces you can write