Why You Need An Outline For Your Story And Here's How To Make One

The Process #2 The second part in my guide on how to go from blank page to published story

© Michele Turriani Dama gazelle with chess pieces

Meat: A short story about an artist who creates modern memento mori (‘remember you must die’) paintings using real meat for her first solo show. But when her husband persuades her to make her exhibition more sensational, she has no idea how devastating the consequences will be.

This is the second part of a deep dive into how I write, going from a blank page to a published story. I’m using a short psychological thriller, provisionally called Meat, commissioned by Comma Press. I hope some of this mini series on the craft of writing, called How to Tell a Story will be useful to you, or at least interesting if you’re a reader and you want to see how a writer works.

If you missed the previous post, you can find it here:

A Simple Way To Come Up With Compelling Ideas

In this essay on the craft of writing fiction, I’ll be outlining why you need an outline for your story, and how to create one.

So first up,

What is an outline for a short story or a novel?

Basically, it’s a one or two page proposal explaining what happens in your story. You don’t need to go into too much detail - obviously you’re condensing your short story or novel into around 1000. Or less. Author and former agent, Robert Dinsdale, explained that an outline is “the nuts and bolts of a story”. We don’t need to know too much about the characters, their emotions or motivations - just enough to understand the spine of the story - as if a friend were explaining a Netflix show to you in the pub.

Why bother creating an outline? Why not just crack on with writing? Well, it’s extremely useful because: