Outline Sample

To those who are looking for guides on how to write an outline~

An outline is the bone of your story that supports your content and keeps it in shape. It can help you check whether your emotion flow is in place.

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1 Theme (in one sentence)

This is ONE sentence describing NOT what happened in the story or in the beginning of the story, but to explain: what is the emotional experience you are offering your readers with this story.

Eg: Only after their divorce, did he realize how much she did for him and how much she was worth and meant to him, but when he went chasing her, he was left with just regret and pain because she was no longer his.

 

Please do know that this is what decides your climax!!! Don't lose focus on it.

 

2 Main Characters' portrait

 

The core struggles of the characters decide the dynamics of the whole story, which is crucial. Please do understand that it's the core struggles of the characters that decide how the story will go and how it would end. Please do fill it with: the background, characteristics, and main goal of life (revenge? money? true love?).

 

Answer these questions respectively for your FL, ML, and THE villain:

 

1 What's their core struggle (what's she trying to achieve?)

2 How does their background give her that struggle

3 How are their struggles relate to each other

4 How are they gonna solve her struggle

 

3 World Settings (Special rules about your world)

 

4 Plotline

This part is not only about the content of the story, but also how you design on how to deliver the story (when to give new information). You need to have these parts in this part:

 

a. Inciting incident.

Why is it happening and how does it change the life of your main characters. [These parts need to be clear and straightforward. The reason and background might not be delivered at the beginning of the book, but it needs to be clear in the outline]

 

b. Body of your plot

These are the big events (structure of the story) that decide the flow of their minds, like what happened when the FL meets with the ML and so on. This is the most important part that decides whether the flow of the book would work.

 

Event one: what's their first stage of relationship (after inciting incident)

       eg: they met each other with FL poured coffee on ML, leading them to hate each other. Then, your "event one" needs to be a huge turn from that "hatred", something like, they met again at the office, realizing they are co-workers now, and they have to survive each other, and this one event (event one) made FL realize that ML is actually not that bad.

 

Event two: a massive twist of their relationship

       (continuing the example for event one), it can either be they fall in love with each other (which is an enhanced flow of emotion from feeling better about ML), OR, it can be that they hate each other more after FL just thought ML wasn't that bad.

 

Event three: same as event two. Another twist.

 

c. Climax

 

What's your climax and how does this prove the theme of your book? Please note that this part is directly related to your theme!!!

 

In the example above (haters to lovers), this climax would be the event that led the FL and ML BOTH confirm their love for each other.

 

Important tip:

    This part is NOT building up toward anything. This IS the ultimate event, the solution that you are building to. The final solution to all your main characters' core conflict. If your FL's core conflict is thinking that ML killed her family, this is the event that she realized he didn't do it, and she had been wrong about the killer all this time.

 

The climax NEEDS to be actions, and hopefully hard choices of your characters. If you don't know what climax is, open any movie and watch to the last, to see how the problem is solved. That's the climax you are looking for.

 

Example: In The Avengers 2012 (hit here if you don't know what I'm talking about: https://www.imdb.com/title/

tt0848228/), the climax would be the final battle over New York city. Try to feel how the story developed into this solution. You are welcome to come to talk to me about it.

 

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See you in comments if you have questions about how to work with an outline~