Outlining

     Outlines are important things. My first novel suffered immensely because I didn't plan it out at all. I respect the people who are the 'write-as-you-go' type.

     For me, planning is crucial, as is organization. (It's almost pathetic how dependent I am on being organized.[I may or may not do a rough outline on blog posts before writing them.]) So I thought I'd share the novel-outlining system I devised a while back.

     It starts with a story idea. (whoa, surprise surprise) If it's one I'm excited about and that I particularly like, I make a new document for it. I decide whether it should be a full-length novel, a short story, or something else. (For this post though, we're going to assume it's a novel.) The first thing I type into that document is a quick summary of my idea, a couple sentences long. For lack of a better word, I call it the log line, but it won't be used in pitching your story. These sentences are just for you, so that when you forget what you're writing about you can look back at the beginning of the doc and refresh your memory.

     These next steps don't have to be carried out in any particular order, but I'm listing them in the order I have them in the document. So, second step I take is writing a synopsis. As opposed to the log line, the synopsis is what I'll send people when they want to know about the new story idea I'm working on.
In the synopsis, I try to give a preview of:

• The main character and other important characters
• Setting
• What they're up against
• What makes the story exciting

      After the synopsis, I choose a setting and then a theme, which can be as little as one word. It's the point you want to make in the story. After that comes a section for characters. What I do in that section varies. Often I'll put the names of the major characters, perhaps write a short description of each, and include notes on their backstories and motivation. I usually come back to this section throughout the writing process to add little pieces of information. An optional section that I put on an outline is a list of possible scenes that don't really have a place yet, random dialog, and just extra things that may or may not happen in the story.

     Now comes the more technical part of the outline. I always decide on a number of chapters and how many words I want in each chapter, on average. (For my current WIP, I'm going to have 12 chapters of around 2200 words each.) Then I decide how many main action points there should be within a chapter, depending on the number of words. I've found 4-5 is the amount of points that suits me. Ultimately, the number of action points actually in each chapter will change unless you're crazy strict about it, but it helps when outlining. An action point is a scene(or sometimes several scenes) that furthers the plot of the story along.

     Once the novel is basically all plotted out chapter by chapter, I look over it and make a list of potential plot holes and things I'll need to work on more. And last but not least, I make a brainstorming list for title ideas.

     So there you have it. A (hopefully helpful) method of outlining a novel. For a short story, I do things in a similar way, but less in-depth. I just sort of make a list of things that happen in the order that they will happen, and I obviously don't bother about chapters.

     I was going to be all fancy and have a PDF for you to download with my outline framework, but that totally failed because I can't figure out things. But for your benefit, I have pasted it below.

Log line:  
Synopsis:  
Setting(time, place, genre)
Theme: 
Character profiles, motivation, and backstories
List of extra scenes, setting ideas, random things you want to happen, etc. 
Number of chapters: 
Average word count for each chapter: 
Number of action points within chapter: 
~Actual Outline~
Chapter 1:
-First scene
-Action point
-Action point
-Action point
(continue this way for each chapter with the desired number of action points.)
Potential plot holes: 
Title ideas: