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
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 The Process 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:
To celebrate six months on Substack, this post has been freed from the paywall and is available for everyone.
In this essay, I’ll be outlining why you need an outline for your story, and how to create one.
So first up, what is an outline?
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:
it allows you to see the whole of the story and discern if there are any holes in it that may need to be plugged either because you need to do more research or because it simply doesn’t work (too unbelievable, inauthentic or impossible given the context, genre and time period of your story) or because you haven’t quite figured it out and may need to go back to brainstorming. And that’s fine. I always find flaws, holes and gaps in my plot that need to be fixed.
the outline will help you create a plot. You might think the outline is the plot, but it isn’t - yet. Once you see it laid out on the page, you can decide if and where the story needs to be told chronologically - what happens step by step, in real time, as it were - or if you need to hide or reveal information from the reader or other characters and, therefore, the plot will need to be different from the chronological events. More dramatic, hopefully! Have a look at The Craft Review of All Her Secrets to read more about hiding or revealing information in order to create suspense.
it stops you diving right in to writing, which can be a mistake - see points 1 and 2! It’s much easier to fix plot holes and devise a plot before you start writing - even if it’s a loose outline and not a literal blow by blow account of what happens paragraph by paragraph. In my experience, planning in advance helps cut down on editing afterwards.
When I wrote my first psychological thriller, Bone by Bone, I had a rough outline and wrote it in six months. It then took me two years to edit it. I had, in total, a four-book deal with Corvus Books, and the next three books had to be ready, from germ of an idea to finished book, in one year. When I was writing (as opposed to outlining or editing, say), I needed to write 2,000 words a day before I had to leave for the school pick-up, and there was certainly no time to faff about with extensive and dramatic editing.
you may want to share this outline with your writing group or writing buddy at this stage, but later, an outline will be essential to get an agent or give to your agent and / or publisher. Of course, you’ll probably need to revise the outline you’ve created before you wrote your story as in the writing, the story will change.
This is the start of my outline for Meat.
The antagonist (A) is a biotech entrepreneur who is funding an art gallery where his partner, the protagonist (P), is going to have her art work exhibited. A has a start up in Bristol and is trying to get approval to launch his artificial meat. He’s concerned that the meat tastes bland, so he’s looking for new ways to improve the taste.
He uses human stem cells from P’s mother to improve the taste. She’s dying, in palliative care, and he forges the consent form. The procedure is invasive for a person in her frail state, and will hasten her death.
P is an artist and vegetarian. She’s not sure what she thinks about artificial meat, and is working on an exhibition called ‘Meat’. It’s a selection of memento mori paintings of meat, but with modern trappings, such as a light from Ikea, a plastic orchid, a vase, an Apple iPhone.
A cooks meals for P - steak for himself, and an omelette for her. He persuades her to try his artificial meat and she is surprised to find that she likes it. Over the course of the story, she tries the steak three times, and each time it’s better than before.
P works on her exhibition, but makes one crucial change…
I won’t give the whole of the outline here, but what you’ll note from what you’re read so far is that this isn’t a story - yet and it’s also not a very good outline. I would not give this to my agent or publisher.
So what’s good about it?
It has key characters - a hero and a villain.
We can see that there will be conflict between the characters due to their beliefs and motivation.
We have an idea of what their motivations are.
We notice that there’s an imbalance of power between them - all so far so good in being able to create drama by using multiple elements and levels of conflict.
There will be at least one death - necessary in crime fiction!
We understand this is the beginning (equivalent to Act I), we can see we’re heading towards the middle (Act II) and there will be an end (Act III).
We know what the location is - Bristol.
BUT it needs work. It needs proper characters and it needs a better plot.
How will this story start? How will it hook the reader in? When will the reveal take place about what has happened to P’s mother?
What the outline shows me, is what I need to do next.
Here’s what I thought:
The story hangs together and there aren’t major plot holes, but there are gaps and glitches. When I wrote, P realises… exactly how does she realise?
I have a resolution and a false ending - something I’ll talk about in The Process on plot - but it’s too complicated for a short story so it will need to be deleted and re-jigged. Back to more brainstorming.
Now that I have an outline, I can create the plot.
I can make a list of what work needs to be done - for instance, I can see how many characters appear in the story and they all need to be created and named.
There are a number of settings. It’s not enough to say ‘Bristol’. Where exactly does every scene take place? Where’s P’s studio? What does it look like? What is the view from the window? What does it smell of?
In the past, I used to do a ton of research before I embarked on a project, mainly because I’m a type A perfectionist personality. These days I’m trying to live by the motto, Perfection is the enemy of the good. So I do enough, and then, looking at the outline, I can see all the things I need to find out. This makes me more efficient - I’m not spending all my time on Google falling down rabbit holes - I only need to know what I need to know.
Next, I’ll talk about key elements of plot, and how I created a plot for this short story based on this outline.
Let me know what you think. Do you create outlines before you start? What’s your process?
Writing exercise
Have a go at creating your own outline. Use the prompts from the previous post to get you started, or take a look at this simple but effective writing exercise by
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