How I’m Re-Outlining My WIP

Over the years, I’ve learned (sometimes the hard way) that writing is so much easier if I have an outline. My latest writing project, a soon-to-be-published Pride and Prejudice retelling Comes with an Attitude was the easiest book I’ve ever written, and I attribute that for the large part to the extensive prepping and outlining I did before I started the first draft (granted, it did help that I was following literary genius Jane Austen’s already existing outline!).

My next writing project most likely won’t be as easy. I’m getting back to an urban fantasy novel I started in 2021. I wrote the first draft during NaNoWriMo, and even though I did have some kind of an outline, it wasn’t enough. While the first and the third acts of that book are in a tolerable shape (at least in terms of the outline and the order of the scenes), the second act is a complete mess of disconnected events and scenes. That means that before I can start the second draft, I need to sort out that mess and come up with a functioning outline.

I’m hoping that this blog post will be helpful if you (like me) are a recovering plantser who wants to improve an old project or if you’re a pantser and you want to reverse outline a project before starting the second draft.

(Disclaimer: there’s nothing wrong with not outlining a book. If you can finish a book without an outline, awesome! There’s no right or wrong way to write. I just happen to be one of those writers who works better with an outline.)

 

Step 1 (Optional): Write a Messy First Draft

Okay, so it would have been very helpful if I had known how to outline a book properly in the first place. But we’re all beginners at one point! I did have an outline (more on that in the next point), but as I wasn’t very good at writing one, most of the first draft ended up being pantsed or discovery written. Disconnected scenes, inconsistent main character, repetition, missing elements, not enough conflict or conflict that lead nowhere… You name it, my draft had them all! But I do have almost sixty thousand words of text that is at least partly salvageable.

 

Step 2: Choose an Outlining Method

There are a lot of outlining methods out there! When I was writing the first draft of Project Urban Fantasy, I used the snowflake method and Save the Cat! beat sheet (from Jessica Brody’s Save the Cat! Writes a Novel). In snowflake method, you start with a one sentence summary of the book and grow it into a one paragraph summary and from there to a synopsis and a scene list like a snowball. My problem was that I didn’t know yet how to make a scene list, so I stopped at the synopsis level. That meant that even though I knew how the book started and ended and a lot of the things that happened in the middle, my ideas didn’t form a coherent whole. For the second act, I simply had episodic scenes that didn’t connect to each other.

I had the same problem with using Save the Cat! beat sheet: The second act comprises of two very large beats: Fun and Games spreads from 20% to the midpoint, and Bad Guys Close In from the midpoint to 75%. That’s a lot of scenes! I ended up writing the scenes of the second act out of order, jumping from one scene to another depending on my inspiration that day. The added pressure of writing fifty thousand words in a month didn’t help.

That being said, I did find both the snowflake method and Save the Cat! Writes a Novel immensely helpful, and I will definitely be using both of them in the future. But I also needed something more, something that would help me structure the second act.

And for that, I decided that I’m going to use the 27 chapter outline. This outlining method was introduced by Kat O’Keefe on her YouTube channel @katytastic. It divides a book into three acts, nine blocks (three blocks per act), and twenty-seven chapters (three chapters per block). Out of the outlining methods I’ve seen, this gives clearest guidelines for how the action progresses in Act Two. And guess which book also has twenty-seven chapters in three equal-size parts? The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins! I always welcome a chance to reread an old favorite for *cough* research purposes.

So in this step of the process, I learned about the 27 chapter outline, annotated The Hunger Games paying special attention to how the story was structured, and wrote down a table documenting both the general outline and how The Hunger Games follows it. I also had a column ready for the outline of Project Urban Fantasy.

This is not me saying that you should use the outlining methods I’m using, although I can recommend all of them. What I am saying is that you should learn about several outlining methods, find the one that resonates the best with you, and not hesitate to combine parts of different methods into a system that works for you.

At this step, I was also rereading parts of John Truby’s The Anatomy of Story and K.M. Weiland’s Creating Character Arcs. I found the latter especially helpful for figuring out my main character, as her characterization and behavior felt a little inconsistent in the first draft.

 

Step 3: Write Scene Cards

The good thing about this step is that if you’ve already written a zero draft or a messy first draft, you probably already have majority of the scenes! They might be in the wrong order, they might need serious reworking, or some of them might need to be deleted or replaced with different scenes. But they exist! And now all you have to do is take index cards or sticky notes or random pieces of paper and write each scene down. I recommend using one card or note per scene, especially if you need to reorganize the scenes. I find that the visual aspect of moving scenes around helped me a lot!

 

Step 4: Organize the Scene Cards

After writing down each scene to a piece of paper, I spread the scene cards on my living room floor and stared at them. Well, there was also a lot of brain activity involved. Acts one and three, like I said, were fine at this point. And by fine, I mean I had all the scenes, and they were in the right order. The second act needed a LOOOT more work, but I had my handy 27 chapter outline ready by my side.

I started moving the scene cards around and writing them down in the outline. I used sticky tabs first, as they’re easier to move around and remove if I decided the order wasn’t working after all. Another option would be to have a big cork board or even use a wall to organize the scene cards. I didn’t have enough wall space and preferred to have the outline in my A4-sized notebook.

This was the point that took me the longest time. I spent several evenings trying to come up with an order where the scenes follow each other logically. As I had a lot of disconnected scenes, I needed to come up with a way to make them work together. If I know that event B needs to follow event A, what’s the connecting factor? That meant organizing and reorganizing scenes, adding things to make the move from one scene to another logical, and in some cases combining scenes to avoid repetition. I also noticed a few places where I need to add completely new scenes that were missing from the first draft. But I finally have a working outline ready for the next step!

 

Step 5: Write a Scene List or a Synopsis

To be perfectly honest, as I’m writing this blog post, I’m not at this point yet, but it will be the next step. My plan is to write a list of scenes like this: X happens, and because of that Y happens, and because of that Z happens, and because of that… This should ensure that the scenes follow each other in a logical order, the main character’s actions and decisions causing the next scene or event. That way you should be able to avoid plot holes!

I might even write a synopsis that reads more easily than the scene list. If you want to learn more about how I write a synopsis, you can find a blog post about synopses here.

I’m also thinking of making a plot grid to make sure all my subplots form a logical whole and are evenly spread throughout the story. For example, at the moment, the main character’s aunt is mentioned at the beginning and the end of the book, but not once in the middle of it. As she is supposed to play a rather important role in the main character’s life, that makes no sense! So I have to make sure I remember to add mentions of her in the middle of the book as well.

 

Step 6: Write Scene Outlines

This will be the last step of outlining before I start drafting. At this point, the scenes should be in the right, logical order, and I can focus on everything that happens in individual scenes. I’m planning to write a separate blog post on how I write scene outlines in the future.

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If you want to see more of what I’ve been doing and how I’ve outlined Project Urban Fantasy, check out my recent writing vlog!