I've heard a lot about outlines (mostly that the majority of HWers don't use them ), but nothing actually about how one writes an outline.

Recently, I was challenged to write an outline for a story. In chat, I vigorously protested (after all, I had no clue what a correct story outline would look like (and still don't)). But outside of chat, I figured I'd give it a shot anyways.

In order to get even the most general of an idea of what goes in a story outline, I took out my 11th/12th grade Grammar handbook, and looked up what it had to say on outlining papers. Using that as a basic structure I managed to scribble out something that resembles what an outline probably looks like.

So now, to my intended, two-fold purpose of this thread.

1) A place where anyone and everyone can give tips on outlining.
and 2) A place where I can beg outline users to PM me so that I can figure out what I did wrong in my outline.

God bless,
Suiauthon

I used to be a die-hard panster, but I think I'm slowly being converted to the way of the outliners, mostly because I've found that my novels lose all sense of direction when I don't outline.

Anyway, I've tried a couple different kinds of outlines. The first one is probably the one you described... it looks just like an essay outline. So, something like this:

I. Introduce main plot

• Introduce subplot A

II. Something bad happens to MC (or whatever. )

• Subplot A continues...
• Introduce subplot B

III. Yada yada yada...


Another way I've tried is just writing everything that happens as a list... but that can get just as rambly as the actual book.

The type of outline I'm using now is rather complicated, and it involves a spreadsheet. Each column is a plot or subplot, and each row is a chapter. I'm not exactly sure how to explain it beyond that, but here's an example. (Note: The link shows part of an outline for Harry Potter... so if that bothers you, or you don't want to know what happens in book 5, don't click. )

Also, here's a link to an article Katty wrote on outlining on her blog.

Anyway, I hope that was at least sort of helpful!

I have two outlines: the high-level "outline of history", and the planned-book-by-planed-book outline. The "outline of history" is more a list of events corralled into something resembling an outline; in the other, I start with the most general view at the highest level (the book itself) for each, then repeatedly outline each item at the most specific level so far at a somewhat more specific level (books with the general flow, then that by sequence, then each sequence by scene---which is the farthest I've gotten in any of the---then, if necessary, each scene by action). But, as I've done far more writing "following the muse" than from an outline, and haven't yet finished one of the stories I'm outlining like this, I can't yet say how well this works in practice ...

@PotK Interesting. I think my outline ended up as a mix of 1 and 2. It is set up like 1, but the information contained within it is like 2 (except I made sure that all the sub-letters/numbers were parallel and (as a result of that) are sometimes abstract).

Then again, I could be putting in sub-plots and not knowing it. (I'm very sure I have a wrong definition of sub-plot in my head: whenever I attempt to think of a sub-plot my brain thinks of tangents )

Wow, that spreadsheet is complicated.

*clicks link* Fascinating. It seems that I write most like 'Strict' (though I'm still not sure if an essay outline and a story outline should look different ) but I get the benefits of Q&A.

Very! Thank you.

@kingjon *blinks* Some of that went over my head, but I think I get what you're saying.

*nods to the first part of the last sentence* I'm not really following and restricting myself by using the outline. It's more of a way for me to get my nebulous ideas wrote down in a semi-structured pattern. It helps me to realize where the ideas in my head have gone.

I think of it this way: a subplot is a plot (a story) in your novel that isn't the main plot. It should be relevant to, and probably intertwined with, the main plot, but with a little work you could cut it out if you had to, while cutting out the main plot would make the story pointless. For example, in The Lord of the Rings the main plot is Frodo taking the Ring to its destruction, while the threads about Merry and Pippin with the Ents and in Rohan and Gondor, the romance between Faramir and Eowyn, and Gandalf's imprisonment in Orthanc, to give only a few examples, are subplots. You could remove one of those without the story falling entirely apart (though Tolkien's prose is such that this would leave gaping holes needing to be patched up), while if you remove Frodo's quest to destroy the Ring there's no story left.
Sometimes a subplot is a tangent; some authors have in fact made that work quite well. (The one example that leaps to mind is The Chequer Board by Nevil Shute; the main story is the point-of-view character, who's dying of an old wound he got during World War II, going around trying to find out what happened to the three people he shared a hospital ward with during the war, to help them out if he can, and the story of how he and each of the others ame to be in the ward and what happened to them after the war is a rather tangential subplot, but those subplots make up the bulk of the novel.)

And (to take a tangent of my own) I think this quote from a poem ("The Neolithic Age")by Kipling is apropos here:

Ah. That makes a lot of sense, kingjon, thanks.

Very apt quote.

I don't use the outline method used for essays, because it would kill the story before I even got started. I do a more spontaneous method for outlining, because that's how my story ideas come out.

I'm using K.M Weiland's book on outlining as my guide for the first novel I really developed (Other than my first fantasy novel). So far, it's been really helpful.

She says to start with a premise sentence, and that's actually only as far as I've gotten.

I think that one of the reasons my outline is working so well is because it's for a very short story. (that... and probably also because it has no effect on the way I write the story )


But you shall get farther.

I've been wondering about that book. Would you recommend it?

So far, I would.

Okay, good to know.

*has been thinking of outlining recently and so goes digging for old outlining thread*

Thank you again, PrincessoftheKing, for linking to Kathrine's article. It has been very helpful.

Outlines are so nice to use becuase if you have a mindblank you can look at the point above. The only problem with them is that if you have a point one you must have a two.

Carliss

I use either this method:

I: Basic 'bird's eye view' of the chapter
....1: Scene 1
....2: Scene 2
........a: Important point in Scene 2

Etc..

Or I use Bubbl.us to create a bubblemap of my plot.

Wow, there be a lot of outliners.

I've come to find that isn't necessary. Just depends what outline method you choose to use.

What's that like?

Yep, and I think I'm close to joining them.

I use two basic types of outlining. The first entails writing down notes about the series I'm planning: what happens in book 1, book 2, etc; the main subplots; the necessary elements of the main plot and how to work them out. It's mostly done as random thoughts occur, so I'm always adding and rethinking how things work.

Then for each individual book, I take a different approach. I make a list of the chapters (supposed number), and then start writing down the scenes and main events for each one. I then put all the scenes I've come up with into the various chapters depending on what I want to occur when. Having all the chapters in a column helps me see the big snapshot of what the book will be like, where the story changes to a different setting and POV, which chapters I can use for suspense by shifting somehwere else, and so forth.

Beyond that, as I write my book, I'll add notes and phrases I don't want to forget to the outline, where they'll be handy when I need them. I also create a list of possible chapter titles, since those aren't a strong point of mine.

I didn't write outlines for my first couple books, but when I tried it the first time, I was converted. It's necessary to organize your jumbled thoughts and have a visual map of how everything works.

That's quite similar to the process I have been and am planning to use, but a little more ... forced, I suppose, at the top level. As I mentioned in the "Creating History" thread, I have an "Outline of History." Soon after I got that and put it into outline form, I came up with tentative book titles and divided the events on the outline into books. Then I started dividing each book's events into "sequences," which I plan to divide into scenes (and the scenes into actions, if I need to make the outline that detailed). I don't think I could do chapter-by-chapter outlines because I prefer my chapters to be of fairly uniform length (a habit I got from when I was trying to write 2000 words a day in middle and high school---adding up words is a lot easier if the subtotals are round numbers), but I'm never sure how long a scene is going to turn out to be. I'm also figuring out who I want to assign POV to and putting that on the sequence-by-sequence outline.


(Pretty much every book about writing I've read has advised aspiring authors to make their "favorite lines"---phrases that you "couldn't bear to cut"----the first things cut in revision, so making sure to remember them before writing them down might be a trifle counter-productive.)

I just use "Chapter One", "Chapter Two", etc., or "One", "Two", etc., or in one case "Chapter the First", "Chapter the Second", etc. No chapter names required


The one lengthy draft I wrote without any outline (which, on the other hand, is the only piece of fiction of that length I've ever written, I think) died about 50,000 words in when I realized that my protagonist was too-obviously invincible, so there was really no dramatic tension. (More about that in the "Your Novel's Identity" thread in a few minutes, I hope.) Since then I've produced quite a few outlines, but not much prose following (or even trying to follow) them yet ...

That's not quite what I meant. I write a book straight through, without hopping around as the scenes pop into my head. So if I have a sentence or piece of dialogue I want to fit in later but not forget about in the interim, that's my way of remembering to use it.

Great points as always.

Thank you for doing that, Eleutheria.

Bubbl.us is great for outlines, because you can move the bubbles around, change their font sizes and colors, and bubble colors, plus make unlimited bubbles. Unfortunately, because of those features, it has more drag on the computer. Also, you'd better not be using it for more than 3 novels at a time, because the free version only allows you to have 3 bubblemaps.

But I've been satisfied with it. No ads, at least if you have Adblocker, it's a secure server if you upgrade to unlimited bubblemaps, and they update the software regularly.

https://bubbl.us/

That looks (at first glance) likes a fairly standard mind-mapping tool, and there are lots of other mind-mapping tools available (FreeMind is one name that leaps to mind); if you feel like using a tool like that, search for terms like "mind map".

I hadn't considered getting any tools specifically designed for mind mapping, but now that I know they exist, I'll have to look into it. Do you know of any free ones?

Since I use Linux, free-as-in-speech ones (which in practice are also free-as-in-pizza) ones are pretty much the only ones I'm familiar with. FreeMind is one (and since it's Java, it's cross-platform); the only other two I know of are AFAIK Linux-only. But I suggest searching Sourceforge, Google Code, and the like

Thanks. I'll look into those.