OUTLINING YOUR FIRST NOVEL

A guide to laying the groundwork for your bestseller.

Outlining. Something that most people outside of the writing world aren't really aware of. I can't tell you how many times people have asked me, "How do you just sit down and write a book?" Well, I don't. There is a lot of time that goes into developing your story before you start the writing process.

So, how do you outline? That's a highly-debated question. There are countless different strategies for outlining your novel, but let me introduce you to a few that I've found really useful.

Choose your method

There's a reason I named this blog Before the Book. The steps you take before you ever even start writing are so important. They will make or break your story's flow and doing it right will make your writing process much more efficient. Figuring out which outlining process works best for you and really taking your time to get it right should always be priority number one.

There are countless different ways to outline, and I don't think anyone really sticks to a certain prescribed method 100% of the time. But to make it simple, I'll go by two different strategies for outlining that I see used the most often.

First, there are what I like to call the hard-and-fast outliners. These people like to really nail down each chapter of their book. These people write out the very first scene, climax, and ending cliffhanger for each chapter. They take note of the characters involved, source of conflict, and maybe even some very specific scenes they want to take place chapter by chapter.

This type of outliner is very detail-oriented and they typically don't stray from their outline once they start writing because they've already planned out every detail and scene in their story before they ever put pen to paper. Their creative process mostly takes place before they start writing, and then they turn to the more technical side of filling that story in.

The pros? The hard-and-fast outliners can typically churn books out fast. Because there is no guessing game or changing the story on a whim, they can follow their outline and get stuff done. I used this method for my trilogy, Renegade, and found that it took a lot of my stress away during the actual writing process to always have something to look back on. With the backbone of my story already in place, adding details is a breeze.

Then there are the milestone outliners. This is what I used for my novel, All the Beautiful Things. In this method, your outline is kept pretty minimal. I went in with just my character concepts, an idea of the type of emotion I wanted to portray, scraps of dialogue, and a few "milestone" scenes.

One pro to this type of outlining is that the writing process is very creatively-driven. Your story ebbs and flows with however you are feeling that day. There is also something very exciting about sitting down to write with little to no plan. You are able to really let the story take on a life of its own and see where it takes you. However, this is definitely a strategy I would suggest using when you are not on a deadline, as it can be a little more unpredictable than a hard-and-fast outline.

A Few of the Tools I use

• My "notes" app

Carrying a writer's journal can get difficult if you are running around on a busy schedule like I am. As silly as it sounds, I found that just always having the ability to quickly open a note and jot something down was incredibly useful for me when I was working on outlining.

• A whiteboard

If you are like me, and are blessed with ADHD, you know that there can be a lot going on upstairs sometimes. For me, having a huge space to just get things out of my brain and in some sort of color-coded visual format helped immensely. I used my whiteboard as my home base for things. Moving around sticky notes and having kind of a storyboard to look back at and physically rearrange was essential.

• "Take off Your Pants!: Outline Your Books for Faster, Better Writing" by Libbie Hawker

No gatekeeping here! This was the very first book I bought on outlining for creative fiction, and it was an enormous help. I still use her strategies with my own writing and have found a lot of success with her methods. Check it out on Amazon below!

• A vision board

I know, I know. But I'm telling you, it helps! I'm very visual, so nailing down the aesthetic I want to bring to my book is really important for me. I like to make playlists to write to, form a Pinterest board with pictures from the setting and time periods my books are set in, and really just create an image to center my books around so I'm not writing something I can't picture.

Leave comments about your outlining process or the tools you've found helpful in the comments!