The outline: your novel’s GPS

Screenwriters have a name for it: the step outline. A list of the script’s scenes, one line each, before anybody writes a word of dialogue. It works just as well for a novel. It’s the route your reader will take through the book, in the order they’ll take it.

And like a GPS, it doesn’t drive for you. It tells you where you are and what’s coming up. If you take a detour, it recalculates. Nobody ever died from taking the wrong exit.

What goes in an outline

Chapters, and inside each one, its scenes. For each scene, one line is plenty: what happens. Here’s chapter 2 of Wanted: One Dragon, Sunday Plot’s sample novel:

2. The Empty Case. Alex finds the case empty and the glass intact. · With half the town in the square, everyone has an alibi except Mara. · Alex takes her statement between the bookshelves and asks her not to leave town.

Three scenes, three lines. That’s all you need to know what the chapter is about, and enough to sit down to write with a very clear idea of what’s next.

Reading order isn’t story order

This is the part people forget. The outline puts scenes in the order they’re read, which isn’t always the order they happen.

Say that in chapter 3, with her suitcase open on the bed, Mara remembers the day she arrived in Valdrago a year earlier. It’s not in the novel, but it could be. In the outline, that memory would sit in chapter 3. In the story, it would be the first thing that happens. Both are true, and it helps to have both at hand: one for pacing, the other so you don’t get tangled up in dates.

What an outline does really well

Shows you the pace. With every scene in a row, you notice right away if three chapters in a row are conversations at the bar, or if Alex vanishes from chapter 5 to 9 and nobody misses him.

Lets you move things around without fear. What if the shell turns up earlier? Move the scene up two chapters and see how it reads. Much cheaper than rewriting twenty pages.

Helps you decide where a chapter ends. A good chapter ending leaves a question hanging. If one ends with Mara calmly locking up the library, try cutting it a scene earlier: when she hears a strange noise in the bakery.

Tells you what to write today. You can see at a glance which scenes are ready to write and which ones are still missing something.

Loose scenes

Not every scene is born with a place. You think of the dragon setting fire to the bar’s awning, but you’re not sure whether that’s chapter 8 or 9. Write it down anyway and leave it loose. A scene without a chapter isn’t a mistake. It’s a scene waiting its turn.

Chapters are similar. You don’t need to decide up front how many the novel will have. They often show up on their own once the scenes are lined up and you can see where the story takes a breath.

How much detail

Not much. The outline is for seeing the whole novel at a glance, and that only works if each scene fits on one line. Everything else (what the character wants, what makes it hard, how it ends) belongs on the scene card. That’s what it’s there for.

And it doesn’t have to be complete to be useful. An outline with gaps tells you where the gaps are, which is no small thing.

For today

Make a bare-bones outline of your first three chapters: the number and one line per scene. If you don’t know what goes in one of them, write “I don’t know yet” and move on to the next.

In Sunday Plot, the Outline shows your chapters with their scenes, and everything drags: a scene from one chapter to another, a chapter up or down. Each scene says whether it’s “Ready” or what it still needs, in amber, so you know which ones you can write now. The ones without a home yet wait to one side, under “No chapter.” And if you want to see the novel in the order things happen, “See also” takes you to the Timeline, with your scenes sorted by their day.

Want to see a whole outline before you build yours? In My novels, “Explore a sample novel” gives you your own copy of Wanted: One Dragon: thirteen chapters, an epilogue and a few scenes left half-done on purpose.