How to Outline Your Next Novel in Four Simple Steps

It can be difficult when writing a novel to keep it organized from beginning to end. Novels require a great deal of plotting and character development, and it can be hard to keep an entire book's worth of characters and events in your head for three hundred pages. There are several strategies that can be used before and during the writing process to keep track of information. Some of these strategies may seem familiar to you, while others you’ve never heard of before. Each of these strategies covers one of four crucial parts of a story. These four parts include the theme and purpose, character profiles, chapter records, and the outline. Our goal in discussing these strategies is to give you a detailed overview for your novel so that your plot turns out exactly the way you set out to write it. Writing a novel is a difficult task, but these strategies will help to take things one step at a time. Let's get started!

The What and Why: Defining the Theme and Purpose of Your Novel

The first step is to work out the theme and purpose of your novel. In every story, there is an underlying message or point that is woven throughout the entire text, as well as a purpose that the author has for writing the story. Theme can be a lesson that you would like to teach your reader through the text, or it can just be a point to the text that is defined through your character’s experiences. Themes can be things like joy, peace, and the importance of being humble. If you're unsure as to what you would like to make the theme of your book be, you can take a look here at twenty different common themes in literature to help you work it out. This is different from your purpose for telling the story.

The purpose of your book is written down to remind yourself why you believe this particular story must be written. What point do you have for writing? Why are you conveying it? The theme and purpose of your book can be written down in a few sentences in order to give you a glance-by reminder as to what you are working towards when you are writing your work. This helps keep your writing concentrated around the central idea of your work and is vital to a well-thought-out novel.

The Who: Character Records

This list is one of the most useful resources used during the novel writing process. Over the course of your novel, main characters come in contact with supporting and minor characters, and it can be difficult to keep them in order. Instead of looking all the way through your work, it’s best to make a list of the characters as you are creating the story. It is possible to make your entire character list before beginning your novel if you prefer more structure, or if you find that too constraining and prefer more creative freedom, then you can record the characters as they come into your novel as you write.

For your main characters and supporting characters, add a few descriptive sentences to create character profiles to describe them so you have more information about them. If there are animal characters that play a large role in your novel, it is best to include them in your character record as well. It is up to you whether or not you'd like to include minor characters since they play a minimal role in the story.

Here is an example of a character record:

- Clara: main character (whole book). Clara is a student at Fairview High School who is incredibly good at math, but she struggles to make friends and deals with bullying.

- Sidney: supportive character, Clara’s best friend (whole book). Sidney met Clara in kindergarten and is friends with her despite the fact that they are very different people. Sidney is loud and outgoing and does not struggle with the social anxiety that Clara does, but she still tries to empathize with her.

- Mrs. Mosey: Clara’s teacher (chapters 9, 12, 13)

- Fitz: Sidney’s dog (chapter 9)

This helps keep track of all of your characters and when they appear in the book. It also ensures consistent spelling throughout the book in the character’s names which can be particularly useful for fantasy books in which spelling names can be more complicated. This system makes your first draft a much less painful process and helps keep all of the characters organized.

The When and Where: Chapter-by-Chapter Records

Keeping chapter-by-chapter records will keep track of all of the finer details and where they are in the book so that when you are writing and you need to reference earlier scenes or quotes, you don’t have to search the whole manuscript to find them. Like with the previous idea of keeping character records, this is one that you can choose to use before you begin your novel, or while you’re in the process of writing. Which time you choose to make your chapter record depends on how much structure and creative freedom you like to have when writing.

Would you prefer to know what needs to be written in each chapter before you begin writing, or would you like to write with complete creative freedom and then record the scenes once you finish each chapter? Publisher's Weekly states that, "Novelists tend to fall into two categories: 'planners,' who develop outlines before they begin writing," and "'pantsers,' [which] refers to novelists who work without any kind of synopsis." It's up to you whether you'd like to plan your novel out in-depth before you begin writing, or free write a basic plan and see where your creativity takes you. Whatever you choose the process for keeping your chapter-by-chapter records is the same.

When planning or recording your chapters, write a one to two sentence description about what happens in each chapter. State the title of the chapter, chapter number, and the scene that happens in that chapter as well as the effect that said scene has on your main character. The goal of this exercise is to jog your memory about what happens in that chapter by reading that sentence.

Tying it All Together: Outlining Your Novel

Preparing an outline for your novel is best done to begin with the end in mind, which can be understood by knowing your theme and purpose. This is the detailed story idea or plot device that will go at the top of your outline. It doesn’t have to be any more than a few sentences. The best format for doing this is to write the genre, the plot, and the effect of the plot on your main character or characters while referencing the theme. Remember: the theme is the most important idea or driving force of your book that is covered throughout the whole story.

For example, “This novel is a sci-fi adventure where aliens attempt to take over the world and a group of kids have to stop them, resulting in the kids realizing they are powerful and important people beyond a traditional school setting.” The genre is stated at the beginning of the sentence, the main plot is stated next, following with who the main characters will be and the effect this plot will have on their lives. This strategy is an effective dual-purpose method for filling in the details of your book while keeping everything organized.

Where to Go from Here?

As authors, it is our duty to tell stories that inspire and entertain people, however, there is a lot to keep track of when writing and it can be extremely difficult when the information is not compiled in one place for reference. The point of well planned-out organization through the four strategies we've discussed in this post is to aid as a rough instruction manual without infringing too much on your creative freedom. Simple steps like planning out the major plot points in your book and keeping track of your characters and events can make the writing process so much smoother. By now, you should have some new ideas on how to organize your novel, but if you'd like to diver deeper, download The Novel Society Workbook: The Who, What, When, Where, & Why to Writing a Novel for more organizational tips!