Writing a Plot Outline

Rebecca Anne sent in this question: What is the best way to outline? I assume you're talking about writing a plot outline (can't think of any other kinds in novel writing), so here goes:

All novels begin with an idea. To get from an idea to a full-blown plot outline, begin by trying to summarize the events of your novel on a single sheet of A4 in 20-30 steps. So Step 1 would be whatever you envisage as your opening scene (introducing your character in their ordinary world), the next step would be "something happening" which sets the story in motion, and so on, right up to the novel's ending.

The fact is, of course, that when you're starting out you are going to have to do a lot of guesswork and leave a lot of blanks in the outline, but that's okay. The more you think about your novel's overall structure in this way, the more things are going to occur to you.

Eventually you will be in a position where you have twenty or thirty steps (or whatever number feels right) that you are more or less happy with. These will inevitably change as your novel progresses, but you've got to start somewhere. What you do next is to write a separate page for each of the steps, fleshing them out in as much detail as you can. Broadly speaking, each of these pages will represent one of your novel's chapters.

Like I said, it is impossible to know from the outset the exact shape your novel will take, meaning you will constantly be having to revise your novel's outline as you learn more about it, but without taking that initial plunge and writing a rough outline, even if it ends up looking nothing like your finished novel, you will get nowhere.

I know that all sounds a bit chaotic, but writing an outline for a plot is like that - to establish order you first need the chaos!

Harvey