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After spending plenty of time thinking of ideas and concepts you’d like to explore in your novel, you’re left with a whole bunch of disorganized things. You let your imagination run wild and came up with great ideas and now is the time to organize them. Now comes time to learn how to outline a novel and this is the second step in becoming a fantasy author.
Outlining a novel is an important milestone, for you’re now taking all your scattered ideas and putting them into a logical, orderly format. This is where you see how everything you came up in the brainstorming process interact with each other. Some will mesh quite well and some will clash. Who knows? Maybe seeing how they interact will spark a new idea!
When it comes to how to outline a novel, where do you start? Well, the simplest answer is to start right at the beginning, where you introduce your characters and plot lines to the reader. Alternatively, you could go right to the end and work backwards. Find something that works for you!
To what extent should you go about outlining a novel? Should you go for broad strokes or put every scene in intricate detail? It depends on how much detail you want to put into the outline. The goal of outlining a novel is to create the structure of your story. You want the outline to be easily referred to when you’re writing since it’ll be right next to you.
There are things that make outlining a novel easier. While the process can be time-consuming, you don’t want to make it any more difficult than it has to be. Remember, this is something you created and you want to give it your all!
This is the second article in the series revolving around writing a fantasy novel. We have scads of other articles on our blog page. Perhaps one will catch your eye!
You have tons of ideas and concepts, all in one place, but you’re not sure how to make them all fit. That’s where outlining comes in. It’s a process where you take what you came up with during your brainstorming session(s) and you put them all together in an organized format. It’s important you know how to outline a novel, for it’ll help set you up for when you’re ready to write!
Outlining a novel in a word processor is easy since you can move whole paragraphs and sections around with ease. You could do it the old fashioned way by writing on a notebook but it’ll take you longer and it’ll be more difficult to change things around.
How do you organize everything? Group your ideas together logically. Outlining is a multi-layer process with many moving parts and grouping things by ideas is one of the most important layers. Keeping your ideas separate here helps you see if you still have more work in fleshing them out.
You’ll be mixing them later so don’t worry about that. The point is to see how they stand on their own before you start mixing them together. You might think that a concept you thought you had fleshed out thoroughly turns out to not be the case or you spent more time working on one idea that the others aren’t up to par which means more work is necessary.
Devote as much time as you need to in fine-tuning them. Once you’ve made the necessary adjustments, you’re ready to move onto the next step in how to outline a novel: creating the story structure.
Ideas and concepts don’t dwell alone in isolation. Rather they interact with each other in many different ways, some of which can lead to surprising results. You’ve separated them all so you could see how they stood by themselves; now comes the time to put them all together. This is the heart of the outlining process.
A novel outline has many layers. Think of each idea and concept as its own layer. You want to arrange them in a way that makes easy for you to follow and understand. How you arrange them is vital. You don’t want to overwhelm them by giving them too much information at once just as you don’t want to give them so little info they have no idea what’s going on.
This is where you take everything you separated in the preceding section and combine it all. A book is split into three parts: the beginning, middle, and end and the outline should reflect that. The beginning is where you introduce key characters and storylines. The middle builds upon those established at the beginning, typically introducing major plot twists or new characters. And finally, the end brings everything all together, usually in a showdown of some kind.
What do you put in an outline? The basic information that should be in an outline are as follows:
After all, you’ll be following the outline you created here as you write your book, so be sure to put in a format that’s easy to understand and follow.
How detailed should you go in outlining a novel? You already have your characters and major storylines plus all the essential story beats. The type of outline you go with depends on how you intend to write your story. Some writers simply freestyle, meaning they have the story’s broad strokes already in mind but it’s not well-detailed whereas others plan it down to the smallest detail, including every single scene in the outline. Go with an approach that works for you and the outline should reinforce that.
Generally speaking, the more ideas and concepts you plan to explore in your book, the longer the outlining process will take. It’s why in the end, an outline can span many pages! This is a step you definitely shouldn’t rush at all. Take your time to create one that when it comes time to actually write your novel, it’s quite easy to write!
Outlining a novel can be time-consuming. You’re taking many disparate pieces of information and putting them together into something that makes sense. Fortunately, there are some things you can do to make the process a bit easier.
Word-processors are your best friend in terms of how to outline a novel. You can make changes effortlessly and move things around until they’re just right. You can also change the text size or the typography. There’s so many fantastic options you can use! They’re available on computers and tablets which means you can do it anywhere, anyplace. And be sure to save often! The last thing you want is for it to suddenly freeze and you wind up losing all your hard work. Back it up to another device or in the cloud just in case.
Outlining a novel in a compressed timeframe is a big no-no! In other words, don’t set the goal to do it in a period of time that’s impossible for you to accomplish. Doing so will only make you rush through it which could lead to disaster down the road. Instead, set some time so you can create it at a nice, steady pace.
Take a bit of a break after you finish it for the first time. Going back, you’ll have fresh eyes which will make it easier for you to see what changes, if any, you need to make to your novel outline.
Multiple revisions are a big part of how to outline a novel. You’ll be making constant changes. Think of the outline as an evolving thing as you fine-tune characters and storylines and eliminate those that contribute nothing to the story. Basically you want your outline to be in the best possible position it can be prior to writing your novel.
Assess whether you have too many ideas and concepts. The core function of the outlining process is to create the basic foundation in which you’ll write your story. With everything all finally put together, you can now see which of them will work or not. Only include those relevant to the story and get rid of those that aren’t. The last thing you want to do is to write a bloated book. Removing them streamlines the outline which makes it easier for you to write your book. You might even be able to use the ones you removed in a future book!
Knowing how to outline a novel is part of being a fantasy author. Outlining it means you’re taking what you thought up in the brainstorming phase and putting them together into a logical, organized format. Just like in brainstorming, you’ll be making changes to the outline, getting it ready for when you begin writing.
A novel outline consists of characters, settings, key scenes, and many others. However, it isn’t a static document, rather it’s one that undergoes changes as time marches on. You’ll add and remove things as you hone in on what’s important to your novel.
When you’re creating your outline, you’re essentially creating the structure that your story will follow. It’s something you want to take plenty of time so you pack it with everything you need so you have them all in one place.
Outlining a novel for the first time can take quite a bit of time, luckily some things can help make the process easier. Doing them will make your outline stronger and you’ll be able to hit the ground running when it comes to writing your book.
Now that you know how to outline a novel, will you create the best outline ever for the book you’re planning to write?
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Sunfire
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