When everyone keeps telling you to make an outline

 

“Where do I even start?”

I’m writing this post, because I wish someone had written this type of post when I was in the process of figuring out what works for me. 

There are many different ways to outline and this list is certainly not exhaustive as authors tend to create their own method out of multiple methods. Here are 5 methods I’ve tried that can help you effectively outline a novel plus some bonus ideas.

1. The Snowflake Method

This is more than a simple outline. It’s a holistic-style approach. You begin with your big story idea, and then break it down step by step. I have tried this: However, I’ve discovered my style of writing is more the opposite: I begin with something small (usually a character or even an idea of a character) and let it expand. But I do recommend writers/authors try this method out at least once. There are multiple writers I’ve met who write stories from big picture ideas or big what if questions.

You can check out the book here:

and there’s also a website that outlines the steps here.

2. Beat Sheets

These are really useful and have helped me organize my thoughts. They can be customized by genre. I write romance, so I’ve used the romance beat sheets to help organize the scenes and flow of my stories. Plottr is a relatively inexpensive program that allows you to pick from various beat sheets based on genre and plot your book from there within their desktop software. Highly recommend!

3. Old Fashion Notecards

This involves using index cards or virtual index cards Scrivner has this option and so does Supernotecard.com. Basically, you write out each of your scenes on index cards. As well you can write down settings, characters on index cards. Then you can arrange them however you wish. Many people like this method because you can easily move and change things without having to delete, type, delete, type, or write longhand over and over again the same scenes in different orders.

4. Paragraph format

This sounds lame compared to the rest – but this is how I outline.

I transcribe the thoughts/scenes in my head, onto my computer – a paragraph for one scene, or even a paragraph for the chapter as a whole if I didn’t have all the scenes thought out. I still use this method regularly to test out whether a story idea I have has any depth. The more consecutive hours I spend writing, the more ideas form from other ideas. So this method is like speed writing to see how far my story idea can run.

5. Using a Calendar

This is also another method I use – because I typically write books that span 6 to 12 months. I find the year I’m working with, download a calendar template, then start filling in dates with one-sentence scene descriptors.

If you write shorter stories that span a week or two weeks or a couple of months, it’s still useful but not as necessary. For me, I found using a calendar very necessary to help me keep track of what time of year certain scenes are happening, how long of a gap is occurring between events, etc. Whatever genre you write in, taking into consideration the context of your world, historical, fantasy or contemporary, and taking into context the seasons in which events take place, is vital to creating a vivid page turner.

I’ve tried all of these and found varying degrees of success. Some work better for some genres than other genres. Again, you are the one who has to find what works for you.

There are many other methods I haven’t explored, but I have attended workshops on Mind mapping, and Storyboarding, which are both methods that emphasize graphically visualizing your storyline.

Which outlining method do you prefer? Or do you pants your way through? I’m somewhat of a combination of both. I begin with freewriting the first 1/3 of a book, then I take a step back and try to outline the rest.

Until next time.