15 Minute Outlining

It's always a good idea to have a map to where you're going.

 On one end of the planning spectrum, you have those writers who love outlining and planning every single detail, and on the other end you have those who just sort of...write, and see where it takes them. 

Since it's almost guaranteed that you'll write more if you know what you're writing first, I've done my best to come up with a way to outline that can be used by both kinds of authors, and everyone in between. 

This method is a down and dirty quick method, designed to be completed in fifteen minutes or less. It has two phases.

The Big Picture

Most stories consist of two initial disasters, then one final disaster that culminates in an ending. 

Not all, but most. Your story doesn't have to fit along these lines, but assume, for the moment, that it does, and fill in the following:

1. Initial Disaster 1 - The Call To Action

This is the disaster that gets your character's butt in gear. It's the thing that made him leave home, or the thing that makes her decide to get her act together and go out for that scholarship. It's Luke Skywalker's aunt and uncle burning to death, the Ringwraiths in Hobbiton, Harry Potter's Hogwarts letter. It's the impetus for your character to get up and take some action.

Scribble down one thing that can get your character moving. Stick to it for now - you can decide to change it if you don't like it later. For now, go with your first instinct. 

2. Initial Disaster 2 - The 'Crap It Got Worse'

Man, now you're in it deep. Now you're on the Death Star and you've got to rescue Princess Leia. Now everyone's arguing over the ring and Frodo's got to decide to take it to Mordor, now someone's trying to kill Harry during his first-ever Quidditch match. Things are serious now, even more serious than they were before.

In this disaster, you can have your character win or lose, but I find it usually stretches out the tension if your character loses something every now and again. This is a really good place to do it.

Sketch down a second disaster to let your character know he's really in deep. You can change it later. 

3. Final Disaster - The Highest Hump on the Rollercoaster

Luke's in the Death Star trench now, and one by one his comrades are being shot down by Darth Vader himself. Boromir's dead, and the Fellowship is unwittingly split. Harry, Ron, and Hermione have to face down all the safeguards surrounding the Philosopher's Stone in order to keep Voldemort from coming back to life.

This is the toughest disaster your character will face. Things are harder than they've ever been, and you have to show it.

Jot down an ending. Not the whole thing, just a few specific details. What happened, and why is it so hard? Will your character triumph, or not? 

That's phase one, done. Don't spend to much time on it. Just write it down, and move on to the next bit. You can always change it later.

The Little Picture

We are now in the business of figuring out what you're writing right now. 

Writing every day can be tough. What do you write about? This is the bit that you can do every day, before you write, to figure out what to do next. Take your big-picture outline, and have a look at it. Mine looks like this:

First Disaster: Ana gets caught stealing a magical substance (quicksilver)

Second Disaster: Ana is trapped in a prison for werewolves with three people to take care of.  The prison is a quicksilver mine. The quicksilver has mutated the creatures in the mine and made them huge and monstrous, and one of them attacks Ana and wounds one of her legs so that she can't walk. 

Third Disaster: Ana is forced to choose between unlocking ALL the prison's inhabitants, and saving her friends, or letting her friends die in order to keep the prisoners locked up. 

I'm not too happy with the second disaster right now, but I'll come back to it. I need to figure out what to write today. So here's what I'm going to do.

The first disaster is: Ana gets caught stealing a magical substance. This is the one I'm working towards today.  The queston I ask myself is:

What is the first step towards propelling her towards the disaster? 

• Show her stealing the quicksilver.

This is the first thing that came to my mind. It's all I need, right now, so I'm going to stop right there.

Next question.

What does the reader need to know about this scene? 

• who Ana is
• why she's stealing the quicksilver
• the risk Ana is taking by stealing the quicksilver

There's where I get what I'm going to write for the day. I'm going to write a scene that shows my character Ana stealing a magical substance called quicksilver.  It needs to demonstrate who Ana is, why she's stealing, and the risk she's taking. (The reader, at this point, doesn't necessarily need to know what quicksilver is, only that Ana needs it.) 

At this point, you can do one of two things. If you don't like the outline, you can go back and edit it, and add more steps towards each disaster, if you like. If you're more of a fly-and-be-free type writer, you can come back tomorrow, and ask What's the next step towards the current disaster? Then, you write that for the day.

Remember, this is designed as a system to help you write every day, and still write towards a goal - so don't fiddle around too much with the outline before you get to work!