Outlining Your Novel Like A Pro and Sell More Books

Outlining your novel keep readers interested

I can’t lie to you. I love you too much to do such a thing. So here goes, the full truth:I have never outlined a novel until a few months ago. (Update: I have been outlining my novel for years now. Outlining your novel makes the process so much easier!)

Please don’t hate me. I’ll explain.

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I thought I was a Pantser, a fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants writer. No time for outlining, I’m too awesome for that. Which still strikes me as odd because I plan the shit out of my life. I have a calendar on my phone, computer, and normally multiple notebook planners. I’m weird like that.

So while doing a lot of research before NaNoWriMo 2017, I stumbled across a YouTube video by Vivien Reis that changed the way I write.

Now don’t get me wrong I’m not saying that being a Pantser is a bad thing, I’m just saying it wasn’t working for me, like at all.

During this video, Vivian gives her eight phases of a story. Now at this point I already had a very large chunk of my novel done. So I decided to see if my novel followed any of these phases. And guess what… it did. All of them!

I’m still proud of myself because I just started writing and let the story go where it wanted, which I don’t suggest to anyone because I’m now absolutely terrified about editing my first draft. So here is a kind of mesh of Viven’s eight phases and my apparently subconscious outlining a novel.

Introduction

This seems simple. Most books don’t open up in the middle of the main conflict. Normally you get to know the characters, the world, and things like that before we throw you off the deep end of the plot.

When analyzing books that I’ve read I have noticed the same thing I recently read Ruby Red by Kerstin Gier. The book doesn’t open up with the main character traveling through time. You get to know her, her family, and her best friend. You even get to know just a very small amount about the conflict(s) to come. This is a great way of creating questions. Because as we all know making the reader question things generally keeps them reading until the end.

Make them Uncomfortable

This isn’t going to necessarily be putting the main character into a life-or-death situation. This is just kind of a time where you peaked the reader’s interest as well as make a character uncomfortable. Something happens. Something changes in their everyday life.

A great example of this is Divergent by Veronica Roth. The main character has to choose if she’s going to stay with your family or if she is going to follow her heart. This is an extremely difficult decision for the character. And unless you’re a cyborg, a decision like this would be extremely difficult for you, the reader as well.

How the character reacts

At this point, you should have done some plotting to figure out how the character is going to react to these different situations. If you haven’t plotted out some of the ideas in your story, then you might want to go back and do that. Here is a link to my plotting post if you need any help.

This part of the story should be all about how your character is reacting to being made uncomfortable.

A good example of this comes from one of my favorite books Dead Witch Walking by Kim Harrison. God, I love her books! In this book, the “Uncomfortable” is the main character being fired from her job/career. How did she react? She teamed up with a vampire and a pixy to create their own business.

So for this phase just remember to ask yourself how would your character react to the uncomfortable position you put them in.

Well, that didn’t work.

So at this point the way the character’s reaction either isn’t working or just isn’t working the way they planned. So what does a good writer do? We make more shit happen.

This should be a step above making the character uncomfortable and a step below nearly killing them off. For this phase, you want a nice middle ground that keeps the reader reading. Because at this point they should already be emotionally attached to the character and want to know what happens next.

I’m going to fix this!

This phase is where a plan is made. The main character decides to do something about the situation they’re in. Sometimes they don’t even fully decide to do something. They may just get dropped into the situation and the only way to survive is to make a plan.

This is the point in the story where the character takes charge. I’m going to use Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone by J.K. Rowling for this example. In the first book, Harry and his friends know that someone is going to try to steal the stone so they create a plan to stop that from happening.

Shit Hits the Fan.

No really! Shit hits the fan. At this point in your story, the plan goes to hell. Bad things happen. Other characters get killed. Basically, just think of it as things go from bad to worse. In the book Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen, a ton of exotic animals get released into a circus tent during the show. You can imagine how well that went.

What the Reader Has Been Waiting For.

At this point in the story, your reader wants to know what’s going to happen to the characters as well as how the situation will be resolved. This is considered the final battle scene or the confrontation between the main character and the villain. At this point, a lot of those questions that we asked in earlier phases should be answered. If this story is a part of a series then you won’t answer all the questions but you will answer a good chunk of them. This is also a good point to reveal the villain if it wasn’t already known.

In the book The Winter Witch by Paula Braxton, the character comes face-to-face with an evil witch in her true form. This is the point of the book where the reader can’t put it down. We have all had those nights staying up until 2 a.m. just to finish the book because it’s just that good. This, as a writer, is what you should strive for.

The End

This is the part of the book where we find out what happened to the characters after the climax. Did the good guys win? Did the villain win? Did any of the characters die? How do they survive? How did they go on?

This is the point where you tie everything up into a pretty little bow for the reader. Do the boy and girl get to live happily ever after? Or is this more of a Romeo and Juliet ending?

Every ending is completely different and totally up to the writers. Some of us love cliffhangers while others need to know what happened.

My favorite resolution was Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling.

The ending was definitely tied up into a pretty little bow and the author went beyond just after the final battle she went to several years later when Harry’s first child went off to Hogwarts. This gives the readers an amazing sense that life went on after this massive war that took the lives of several beloved characters.

These eight phases are a great help whether you tend to outline every detail in the novel or you do a bare-bones outline. Having an understanding of the basic things that happened in each of the phases will help you write a very dynamic and engaging story.

Now I will go ahead and warn you, that after outlining these phases, I have begun to see them when I read books as well. I’m just putting this little tidbit in to let you know that Vivien Reis and I are not the only ones who use this.

Check out more on outlining: Plotting your Bestselling Novel ( From Idea to Outline in 8 steps)

I hope this post helps you with outlining your next novel. If you have any other variations when outlining please leave them in the comments section. I would love to hear about them.

Happy writing!