If you’ve been following my blog the past couple of weeks, you’ve probably learned a lot about novel structure and how to outline an idea as part of the planning stage of the novel writing process. You may be wondering, what now, brown cow? Well, I hope you have a lot of notes and ideas at the ready because it is finally time to outline your novel!
By now, I hope you have settled on one or a couple of story structure outlines that will meet the needs of your novel or novels. I say, “or novels” because at this point, you may still have a couple of ideas that you are hashing out. While you may be tempted to narrow your focus to just one at this point, I say keep working on all those ideas for now, at least until a clear forerunner emerges. Just make sure you settle on one novel to draft at a time. Right now, you still have plenty of time to consider which novel you want to write first. For now, let’s jump into our next writing assignment.
Writing Assignment #3: Outline your novel
Outlining a novel is a personal process, and there is no one “right” way to do it. However, here are some general steps you can take to outline your novel:
- Determine your basic story elements: Start by determining the key elements of your story, such as the main character, the setting, the conflict, and the resolution.
- Create a rough chapter outline: Decide on the basic structure of your novel, including the number of chapters and their approximate length. Select one or two of the story structure outlines we just reviewed to use as a guide to keep your story focused and on track. Then, create a rough outline of what will happen in each chapter.
- Develop your characters: As you outline, make sure you are developing your characters and their arcs. Think about their motivations, desires, and fears, and how they will change throughout the story.
Remember that outlining is a flexible process, and you can always revise your outline as you draft your novel. The overall goal is to create a roadmap for your story that will help you stay on track and ensure that your plot and characters are well-developed. It’s also okay to leave your ending vague enough so you don’t feel like you’re married to it. Have faith that it will work itself out in the end.
Once you have completed your novel’s outline, I challenge you move to on to the final step in my novel planning process, which is writing a novel synopsis. We will discuss that in the next post, so make sure you subscribe to this blog by entering your email in the box to the right. That way, you’ll be sure to be updated immediately by email as soon as the next writing assignment has been posted!
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