In today’s blogpost we’ll focus on how to sketch a quick outline for your novel. This is Part 2 of a blogpost and video series to help you prepare for NaNoWriMo.
Often the month of October is known as Preptober among writers.
NaNoWriMo is short for “National Novel Writing Month” and it happens every year in November. It’s where writers are encouraged to write 50,000 words in 30 days. It’s meant to inspire and motivate writers to finish their novels.
Last week, we focused on Part 1: How to Uncover and Brainstorm a New Story Idea. Today we will focus on, Part 2: How to Sketch a Quick Outline for Your Novel.
Watch the video below or scroll down to keep reading…
What is your first step to creating your novel?
My process has always involved brainstorming the ideas for the novel first. The rest of the process has evolved throughout the years.
Sometimes I will brainstorm the main characters first, if the idea for the characters show up in my imagination fully formed.
However sometimes if the characters aren’t that vivid in my mind, I will first sketch out a quick plot outline for the story that’s been running through my head.
And if throughout this story process, you’re feeling lost or overwhelmed, start at the beginning. Simply, write down every single idea related to your story idea.
For myself, I like to use Scrivener to keep track of my story ideas. It’s a brain dump of all story ideas tossed together.
So here are the Steps to sketch out a quick plot outline for your novel.
STEP 1: Making sense of those ideas
Write down a rough draft of your story idea, so you can begin to make sense of them.
This includes: Premise; characters; setting… and if you have an idea of theme, write that down.
This will kind of feel like a pitch meeting between you and yourself.
Think through the ideas and write them down. Writing the story idea down on paper will bring so much clarity to you!
Next, once you’ve sold yourself on the story idea, it’s time to move onto the next step of the developmental process.
STEP 2: A very raw and quick sketch of the story.
This is where you are finding the story in the mess of ideas you just wrote down.
Exploring the main conflicts that my characters are going to face:
1.Who are the Characters?
*who are the characters? What are their internal conflicts and their misbeliefs? Why do they each have individual reasons for being a part of the story?
2.What is the Premise?
What is the basic premise of the story? If you had only 30 seconds to tell someone what this story is about, how would you describe it?
3.How are these Characters going to go on an Internal and External Journey?
What are they going to learn and how are they going to transform as a result?
Answering these questions should help bring you to your story’s theme:
Why are you passionate about this story’s theme? What is the truth you want to shout from the rooftops? What are some “big ideas” you want to explore through your character’s journey?
STEP 3: A Quick Sketch of the Plot Outline.
Take the rough sketch you made in Step 2, and start to break it down into story beats using the three act story structure. For some writers, this third step might be all the outlining or planning you do before you start writing your novel.
If you’re not a fan of writing a big outline — then this short bullet point plot might be just the thing for you. This is more for discovery writers.
I refer to the three act story structure that is in the book: Save the Cat! Writes a Novel by Jessica Brody.
Gives you a sense of character arc and how the internal conflicts and character’s journey fits into your story’s timeline.
Most of the time, I lean towards story beats that are simple for me to sketch out.
I thought I would write out a quick outline for the short novella sweet romance I’m currently writing to help you understand what I mean by a quick outline of your story.
Eliza and Daniel’s Story: a Christmas Sweet Romance Novella.
1.Inciting Incident: (life-changing event that happens to the hero – which catapults them into new world or new way of thinking).
=> Eliza’s friend Bianca sees a special invitation for the Company’s Christmas Ball. Bianca encourages Eliza to be “cinderella” for one night — and see if she can meet and even dance with the handsome man for whom they clean the office.
=> Daniel’s life is same old — he’s on track to possibly ask Sandra to marry him. But he’s not happy about it — just like he’s unhappy about where most of his life is going.
2.Hero Accepts the Call: (Break into the 2nd Act where main character chooses to accept the call into the new world — to leave their comfort zone and try something new).
=> Eliza goes to the ball and meets and dances with Daniel. She has a lot of fun and even though she reminds herself that their relationship would never work out because he’s rich and she’s poor. She’s convinced it would never work out between them.
=> Daniel sees Eliza at the Christmas ball. After they take a walk and they get closer to one another. Daniel begins to fall in love with Eliza during the ball and later during their time together.
Daniel has an aha moment where because of Eliza’s questions — he realizes his life is in need of desperate change.
3.Important Game-Changing Midpoint: (Middle of the novel where stakes are raised and pushes the Hero towards real change).
=> Eliza has been coerced by her stepfather Hank to work at his business friend’s Bar & Grill. If she doesn’t work for Van, Hank threatens that he won’t help any longer with the payments for her mom’s medical bills.
Eliza is trapped… doesn’t want to work at the Van’s bar & grill, but is forced. Not only that but the same week that Eliza starts working there, she overhears conversations, where she can tell something shady and illegal is happening there.
=> Daniel is surprised to run into Eliza when he shows up at Van’s bar & grill as Van’s accountant. Van is one of Daniel’s clients. However when Eliza tells Daniel of what she overheard, Daniel is surprised. Tells her don’t say anything to anyone yet. We need to find proof and we need to get you out of there. Daniel decides once they find proof and take it to the police, he will wash his hands of Van.
4.Bad Guys get closer (a downward path where things get progressively worse for the main characters).
=> Eliza gets threatened by Van to stop being so curious about what’s happening with the new young girls that he’s hired as upstairs maids. Her stepfather Hank also makes threats. Eliza feels like she’s stuck. When she sees Daniel again at the bar and grill and Eliza has some documents to show Daniel.
=> Daniel sees Eliza struggling at Van’s place — and wants to get her out of there to somewhere safe.
When he sees the documents Eliza has found — he realizes that this is part of the proof that they’ll need. Just need the other portion.
5.Climax/All is Lost Moment: (lowest point of the novel — and action beat where something happens to the Hero(outer and inner bad guys) that pushes Hero to rock bottom).
=> Eliza overhears Van and the others looking for her. Daniel shows up and seeing Eliza is in trouble, drives her back to her home.
Eliza sees her mother — looking weak and tired. Mom has been continuing to get worse. Eliza explains that she’s in trouble and what happened. Asks her mom – how could Hank work for this guy — he’s got so much going on that is illegal.
=> Daniel talks with Eliza’s mom and says that they are missing a piece of evidence. Eliza’s mom tells them she has evidence. Searches in a back cupboard somewhere in the trailer and walks outside carrying documents as she walks towards Eliza and Daniel.
6. Climax confrontation:
Hank suddenly arrives on the yard.
He pulls out a gun. “You’re not going to ruin this for me. This is my big pay out and I will get what’s coming to me.”
As Hank is distracted by the sound of sirens, Daniel reaches over and twists the gun out of his hand. The gun fires into the air, and the bullet nicks Daniel in the shoulder.
The police take Hank away in handcuffs and they also arrest Van and other criminals.
Eliza calls the ambulance and they take Daniel to the hospital. The doctor does surgery and is able to fix up Daniel’s shoulder.
Eliza is worried about Daniel. Goes to the Hospital to check on Daniel.
Her mom is with her at the Hospital.
7.Resolution/End of novel.
Eliza goes with Daniel to the hospital and the Doctor stitches up Daniel’s shoulder telling him that it could’ve been much worse. Eliza’s mom explains why she called the police before Hank got there — she thought he might get angry and violent. She says she’s glad she gave the police evidence they needed and that Hank was now in police custody.
Daniel realizes how close both Eliza and he came to dying and tells Eliza he has re-evaluated what’s most important in his life. He asks Eliza to marry him. Eliza says yes, and they ask Eliza’s mom if she would like to live with them when they’re married. She happily agrees.
Eliza meets Daniels’ family. Daniel’s granddad sees how good Eliza is for his grandson and is impatient for the wedding. The rest of the family agrees.
Story ends with the wedding scene.
That’s the way I write a quick outline of a story. You might have a different way that suits you better… and that’s great! As writers there is no ‘correct’ way… just the way that works best for you. 🙂
You can see how what was originally a bunch of messy ideas, was narrowed down into quick plot points. I tried to get both internal and external character conflicts in this plot outline — to flush it out into a short and sharp outline that hits every compelling point of the 3 Act Story Structure.
It’s a simple way to outline because you can change and shift things on very short notice.
If you want to get deeper into each story beat you can do that — or you can begin writing the first draft — because you know with these beats you have the main plot points of the novel… it’s solid.
Whether you’re a pantser or discovery writer, you could definitely benefit from sketching out these quick plot points.
If you are a discovery writer you might not like writing a big detailed outline, for fear that you’ll lose the initial excitement you had for the story you want to write.
But, I do think there is a benefit to having the foundational elements sketched in before you begin writing.
In the Next Video, we’ll explore the character building process.
In the next video in this video series as we prep for NaNoWriMo, we will chat about how to dig deeper to really understand your Main Characters.
Thanks for joining me today and I’m excited for you as begin your journey to write amazing stories.
Happy Writing! 🙂
