There’s nothing more intimidating than staring at a blank page. I can have an idea for a writing project, but as soon as I open a new document, it seems like all my thoughts fly out of my mind. I used to prefer sitting down to write as the inspiration hit me, but over time, I found that method wasn’t working. So I learned how to outline a book.
Can you learn how to create an outline for a book? Yes! Think of the story you want to tell. If you don’t have a set beginning or ending, don’t worry! Take your idea and think of specific scenes to include in the book. You’ve got your basic outline!
There’s a bit more to it than that, and I’ll break it down for you in the next section. But the overall concept is that simple! Your outline is like a road map for your book showing you where you are now and where you need to go.
There are different approaches you can take when it comes to crafting an outline depending on the type of writing project and how much research you’ll need to conduct. I’ll also share tips on how you can easily adapt your outline if your project changes course while you’re working. Whether you’re a pantser or a plotter, these templates and tips will help revitalize your writing life when you learn how to create a book outline.
VIDEO: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XMsrW2zj9iM
What Your Outline Should Accomplish
An outline is a way to document what you want to happen in your book. Many writers refer to a book’s outline as its skeleton, which is a great way to think about it. The outline is the bones of your book, the structure, the framework. And your words will be the meat of the story.
Outlines can be as sparse or as detailed as you want them to be. Their purpose is to help you write your book, so you should craft something that will work best for you.
Maybe you want your outline to just have the basic beats for your story, like “Marianne decides to leave her husband.” You can write an outline that way and still benefit greatly from it.
You may also decide to be more detailed and break that scene down into subsections that specify what steps she takes to leave him and how he reacts.
Outlines are typically formatted as broad headings with minor points listed below. I’ll continue with the example of Marianne. Let’s say she decides to leave her husband in chapter two because, in chapter one, she found out something that pushes her to make that decision.
Your outline for chapter two might look something like this:
II. Chapter Two
A. Marianne decides to leave her husband
B. Marianne packs her household belongings
C. Marianne waits at the kitchen table for her husband to come home
If you want to add more details, your outline might look more like this:
II. Chapter Two
A. Marianne decides to leave her husband
1. She hires a lawyer to draw up the paperwork
2. She rents an apartment in her own name
B. Marianne packs her household belongings
1. She leaves half of the closet and drawers empty
2. She takes all of her books, leaving gaps on the shelves
C. Marianne waits at the kitchen table for her husband to come home
1. She thinks he will immediately notice how empty the house is
2. She has a note ready just in case she loses her nerve
Your outline maps out your entire book from start to finish with key scenes noted along the way. This doesn’t mean you have to have the entire story in mind when you start. Having an idea is a great starting point for writing a book. Take time to sit with this idea and let your imagination run wild.
As your mind comes up with scenes that could be in your novel, jot them down. Don’t worry about your word choice, or even in what order the ideas come to you. There will be plenty of time to iron out the details later. Right now, don’t stop your brainstorming session.
Making a Plot Puzzle
I approach writing an outline like it’s a puzzle, and you might find this method helpful too. I take my brainstorming notes and start transferring them to index cards—one note, sentence, or idea per card, even if they seem like they should be grouped together.
Keeping everything separate will give you more freedom as you’re solving your puzzle.
Deal out the index cards on a table or the floor if you have a whole bunch! Find the card that has the start of your concept, and then look for the scene or idea that should come next. Keep lining the cards up in an order that starts to tell your story.
When you get it all sorted, take a step back, and read over it all again. Does it sound like this is how your story should flow? Maybe the middle scene needs to be moved up a little bit to create suspense earlier. Make any adjustment you see necessary.
Then grab a piece of paper and start writing down the cards in order, or stack them up in order and take them to your computer to format your outline. You can rearrange things as you type your outline, but the work should be already done for you.
Mapping Your Book
This outline will be a road map for your book. It gives you a starting point, and once you start putting words on the page, your outline will keep you on the right path.
After creating the outline and doing the index card map exercise, your mind is probably running wild, making you ready to write your book. Strike while the iron is hot! There’s no reason to wait and pace yourself scene by scene just because you have an outline.
One major perk of having an outline is that, since you know the main beats of your story, you can write whatever sections you want without worrying you’ll lose your train of thought.
That means that, instead of going straight from chapter one into chapter two because you know what needs to happen next, you can pause and jump to chapter four and write that big blow-out fight you can’t get out of your mind.
You can come back to chapter two when you’re ready, and you won’t forget what’s supposed to happen all the way back in chapter two.
Having an outline also helps prevent writer’s block. Instead of sitting down at your desk every day and not knowing where to start, you can pull up your outline and start writing where you left off. You don’t have to stop and think about what needs to come next because you already have a map to follow.
What Happens Next?
Having an outline shouldn’t take the fun out of your writing process; it should make you more efficient with your writing time. Even famous writers use outlines to keep their stories on track.
Following an outline also doesn’t mean you have your book all figured out and now only have to write the words. An outline is a guide, but you shouldn’t feel like you have to strictly follow it.
Part of the fun of writing is letting the story take you where it goes organically. Even if you have an outline that specifies what scene happens in what chapter, you can still add more or even change what you want to happen.
You also don’t have to know what happens next to complete your outline. You can have the general story arc of your book and create a general outline that will still help you stay on track without having all of the answers.
Sometimes seeing your ideas on paper will help you fill in the blanks. If you know where you want your story to end, you can figure out what needs to happen to get you to that point.
If your character is going to start a new life, you know that they need to wrap up their old life, perhaps by finding a new city in which to live, quitting their job, selling their house, and severing emotional ties to their local friends.
Thinking about the story arc in this way will help you figure out what happens next before you start writing.
Outline Template
| Outline Heading | Theme | Done? |
| Opening Scene | Create Interest | |
| Chapter One | Give an Overview | |
| Chapter Two | Give Some Background | |
| Chapter Three | Introduce the Conflict | |
| Chapter Four | Build Up the Conflict | |
| Chapter Five | Resolve the Conflict | |
| Closing Scene | Wrap It Up |
You can change this outline depending on how many chapters your book will have. You can also change the ‘Theme’ column to reflect your story because some books might have several different conflicts, so you might condense the overview into the opening and introduce a conflict right away in chapter one.
Types of Projects
Your outline and brainstorming process will look different depending on the type of book you’re writing.
A novel will need to have more narrative, character development, dialogue, and drama. A nonfiction book will be more research-based, and you’ll need an outline to map out the subjects you’ll cover instead of the plot points.
Besides the straightforward outline format previously mentioned, there are some project-specific options you might want to try.
Options for Outlining a Novel
VIDEO: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kieAfi3hLEY
You probably wanted to write a novel because you had an idea that made your imagination run wild, and you want to share that with others.
Many ideas for a novel start with a question, such as “What would happen if a woman finds out her husband was deceiving her?” Your mind takes your character through the process of deciding to leave him, the steps to separate, and the drama that might come as a result.
Since it’s a novel, the story is made up, even if you were inspired by your own life or a news story. You can make things as wild as you want as long as they’re believable to the reader.
You can create any backstory as to how the husband was deceiving his wife. You can add drama about how their long-term couple friends react to the breakup. You can let the wife move a block away or send her across the country.
There’s a lot to explore in a novel, and you can have fun with it even if you’re going to stick to an outline.
Something fun to try when outlining a novel is making a mind map. You can use this as a brainstorming process or as a different type of outline. A mind map is very visual, so let’s start with the question that inspired this story.
Write that in the middle of a piece of paper, and circle it. Draw a line coming out from that, and think of something that is set in action because of the deceit. One could be “she decides to leave.”
Now from that circle, you will draw more lines that are things that are set into action because she decides to leave, like “she hires a lawyer” and “she gets her own apartment.”
You can add multiple lines to each bubble. For example, another line coming off of her husband’s deceit could be “she stops trusting people.”
More lines will come off of this item because that will influence her existing relationships (who knew about the deceit and kept the secret?) as well as her trying to develop new ones.
Let your imagination spiral in this process. Seeing the elements of your story and possible plotlines drawn out on paper might help you figure out where you want the story to go.
You started with one question, but now you see that there are many options for how the story ends and what happens in the process.
Options for Outlining a Nonfiction Book
VIDEO: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jHEws-adfuA
A nonfiction book requires more research than a novel, but it still starts with a general question or topic you want to learn more about. Although your book will be fact-based and include sources and references, you can still have a little fun with it!
You can use the general outline format above for nonfiction projects, but you might want to try the sticky note method.
The sticky note method can work both as a brainstorming session and to keep your research organized. If you’re using it to brainstorm, it’s similar to the mind map you can use with a novel. Write your topic or research question and stick it high up on a wall.
If your topic is “Women in World War II,” then you have a broad topic to break down. Subtopics might include women in the war, women at home, and women at work.
Space these sticky notes out below the main topic, and then tackle them one at a time. Take “women in the war,” and write down what you know about it, what you need to research, and what you hope to find out about this topic.
After doing this with each subtopic, you should have a wall of sticky notes. You can make it a colorful activity by using different colored sticky notes for subtopics and details. Seeing everything on the wall will help you see what you need to research so you can start finding sources.
You can use the sticky note wall to develop your outline by typing your topic, subheadings, and details into a document. Including resources as bullet points on your outline document can also help you keep everything organized for your bibliography.
While You’re Writing
While you’re writing your book, whether it’s fiction or nonfiction, you might feel like you’re veering away from the main topic you intended to address.
Maybe exploring the storyline about a woman moving to a new city results in several pages of information about the layout and decor of her new apartment. This might be fun to write, but it takes away from the strength of your story.
Or perhaps while researching a subtopic of your nonfiction book, you find something that is of interest to you personally but doesn’t factor into the book you’re writing.
Having an outline helps you stay on topic so you can be honest with yourself about whether your writing improves your book or detracts from the overall story.
That’s not to say that you have to follow it like it’s your rulebook. You can deviate from your outline if you find that a certain scene doesn’t work well in the chapter or that a character needs to change from being a friend to being a love interest.
Keep Track of Characters
Since you’re being incredibly organized by writing from an outline, let that organization seep into other areas of your writing life as well.
Keeping track of your characters will help your writing go smoothly because you’ll have a convenient table to consult when needed. It will also help save time because instead of having to search back over your document to remember the name of your character’s pet, you’ll have it written down on your table for easy access.
You can use this sample character template or develop one that fits your needs.
| Name | Age | Physical Attributes | Personality Traits | Other Details |
Keeping track of your characters will also help you see how they play into the story. If you have a bunch of minor characters, they might not add to the storyline and may even detract from the plot.
Seeing a list will allow you to see what characters you’ve included, what characters you might need to add to complete the story, and also serve as a reference so you don’t have to continually look back over what you’ve written to get the details right.
Ready to Revise
Revision is a crucial part of the writing process, whether you use an outline or not. But it is especially important if you did use an outline because sometimes using an outline can make your writing come across as stilted.
It can also make your writing feel formulaic if you followed the outline so closely that there aren’t natural transitions or if the characters seem to make unrealistic choices just to keep the plot moving forward.
When you read through your finished draft, things like this will jump out at you, and you can fix them during the revision process. But you can also use your outline to help with revising.
If you find that you got off track in certain sections, you can rearrange the scenes to better fit the story arc. If you find that certain scenes don’t fit well or don’t work to move the story forward, you might need to rework them, move them somewhere else in the book, or take them out.
After you finish your first draft, revisit your original outline and notecards. Now that you’ve put the whole story on the page, you might see where you need to add more drama or backstory. You might notice that the book reads at a snail’s pace, so you need to condense the action you have and add some more.
Creating a new outline for a revision might feel like additional work, but it will pay off in the long run.
Your first outline was a great way to get the story out of your mind, but now, as you polish it, having a road map will only help your book become the best it can be. Since you’ve previously created an outline, updating that version for the next draft of your book will be a breeze.
FAQ
You’ve learned how to brainstorm and how to create an outline, but you might have lingering questions on how to create a book outline and how it can help you.
Why should I create an outline for my book?
Would you visit a new city and drive around without using a map or GPS? No way!
Learning how to outline a book is like using a map for your writing project. You’ll approach your book knowing what you need to cover, whether it’s facts you’ll research and present or an engaging fiction story you’re ready to tell.
Creating an outline for your book is a great way to keep your writing on track. You can work efficiently because you don’t have to waste time wondering what comes next. You won’t have to worry about writing a scene and then realizing it doesn’t fit into the scope of your story.
Some positive aspects of creating an outline are that it:
- Prevents writer’s block because you know what comes next
- Lets you see the big picture of your story arc
- Shows you how story elements work together
- Keeps the pace of your scenes on track
When you write an outline for a book before you tackle the writing process, you’re able to see the entire scope of your story and make adjustments before you’ve invested time and effort into the book.
Some writers even see an outline as a first draft because you get such an overview of your book that you can make changes before you write the first word.
Is there a template for writing a book?
Some writers prefer to use templates because they find them more flexible.
Using a template can be a good way to get your thoughts in order. You can use this as a brainstorming tactic before ironing out your outline because you’ll have broad ideas of things that will happen in each section of your story.
Templates are a way to develop your plot points and flesh out characters, but they don’t require the sequence of events the way an outline does. Templates are typically more stripped-down, like the “Three Act Story Structure” that asks for:
- Act One – Introduction
- Act Two – Rising Action
- Act Three – Conclusion
I’ve included a general outline template in the first section, and all of the information about formatting your outline, mind mapping, or making a sticky note wall should be a great jumping-off point to get you started.
To write a book, you have to put in the work, and by creating an outline, you’re doing the work at the front end.
Final Thoughts
Regardless of whether you’ve always loved outlines and considered yourself a plotter, or if you’ve just written as the mood hits like a true pantser, this article has given you good reasons to outline and several different options to make sure it works for you. Now that you know how to create an outline for a book, you can optimize your writing time and increase your productivity and output.