Step 7: Detailed outline

Here’s what you’ve accomplished towards your project so far. You:

• Set a goal + are being held accountable

• Reserved your writing time

• Assembled your resources

• Connected with your “why”

• Identified your point

• Envisioned your ideal reader

• Brainstormed a title

• Identified your genre/category

• Assembled your comps

• Drafted your jacket copy

• Set up the arc of change

• Sketched a simple outline

If you haven’t done these things yet, you can always catch up by following the links!

Last week, you sketched out a super simple outline for your project. Now it’s time to do a detailed outline of your book!

Some people don’t like the word “outline” because it reminds them of strict school rules. That’s okay! In that case, call it an Annotated Table of Contents or Chapter Summaries. The goal of this task, whatever you’re comfortable calling it, is to capture the major scenes of a novel or the trajectory of the content of a nonfiction book.  

It’s a powerful task because:

• It’s an efficient way to capture and hold the whole story as you write forward, make changes, and revise. 

• It’s a lot easier to revise a 3-page outline than a 300-page book!

• It lets you see and work with the whole. You can easily cut, add, or move scenes or chapters to see how they work in various locations. 

• It forces you to focus on what is most important. Every scene, every action has to have a point and purpose. 

• It ensures one scene or chapter drives to the next and allows you to evaluate where the narrative may have holes or may not logically flow.

• It helps you concisely summarize your book, as in a synopsis (needed to pitch agents) or a book summary (needed to pursue independent publishing).

Here’s how to do it for fiction: 

In no more than three pages, describe the major scenes of your book in this format:

What happens in this scene? Why does it matter to the protagonist?

Because of that…

What happens in this scene? Why does it matter to the protagonist?

Because of that…

And so on until you get to the end.

Each scene must cause the next scene to happen. Think “because of that, the next thing happened” rather than “and then this happened, and then this happened, and then this happened.” 

Here’s how to do it for nonfiction:

Describe the major content chunks of your book. I do it in a spreadsheet with three columns labeled as follows:

Chapter name | Why is this chapter here? What is the experience of the reader in this chapter? | What will the reader know, feel, or be able to do by the end of the chapter (and why)?

Fill in a row for each chapter or chunk of content. You’ll be able to see the flow of information that helps the reader go on that journey of transformation you sketched last week.

If you do this prep work now, you’ll be ready to WRITE starting Nov. 1 towards that 50,000-word goal for NaNoWriMo! And if you’re not doing NaNo, you still will have laid a strong foundation for your project.

Jennie Nash has written extensively on this exercise in her Blueprint for a Book and Blueprint for a Nonfiction Book. I highly recommend making the small investment so you’ll have a book coach in your pocket when you want a little more book prep help.