How to write an outline for a book: 6 simple steps

Do you want to write a book but have been staring at an empty blank slate for several days, feeling stuck and unsure of where to begin? Writing a book can be an exciting and rewarding experience, offering the opportunity to share your story, knowledge, or creativity with the world. However, it can also be overwhelming, especially when it comes to organizing your thoughts, ideas, and the overall structure of your narrative. That’s where an outline comes in handy. What is a book outline? An outline serves as a roadmap for your writing journey, helping you to arrange your ideas in a logical sequence, identify key plot points or arguments, and ensure that your work remains cohesive and engaging from beginning to end. By breaking your book down into smaller, manageable sections or chapters, you can tackle the writing process with more confidence and clarity, making it easier to overcome writers’s block and maintain momentum throughout your project.

How to write an outline for a book, and how will it help you reach the goal?

A book outlines a roadmap, a plan for your book. It helps you move through the story, following the order of the events and thoughts you want to share. It doesn’t matter if you are writing a fiction or nonfiction book. There should be logic and consistency in the facts and events covered. It is where the plan of the book helps. It is like a navigator leading you through the dark forest of your thoughts.

Here are some reasons writing a book outline is essential to reaching your goal:

1. Organizing thoughts and ideas. It is the primary function that a properly designed book outline performs. With it, when writing book outline, you can map out where your story is going and what significant events you want to describe. Then, after creating a plan, you must state them in the correct order.
2. Assisting in overcoming stops. From time to time, all authors face a blank slate of mind phenomenon ─ when you look at the screen and can’t write the first word. The book outline helps to resolve this barrier. It allows you to turn your main ideas into a story.
3. Helping to finish the book. You may want to add more information when your story is almost finished. You can think for days if you said everything. However, if you stick to the plan, there is no such gap because you are always aware of what needs to be described.
4. Correcting inaccuracies. There may be gaps, inaccuracies, and errors in the story. Proper planning helps to avoid these problems before writing. You can see that some story parts are missing and quickly fix them.

As you can see, writing a novel outline helps avoid many problems, so starting with a plan is a good idea if you decide to write your story.

Types of outlines you should test for your next book

Before discussing writing a book outline, let’s look at the strategies you can use. You can try each and choose the most convenient one because the usual Introduction-Main-Conclusion is not for everyone.

• Classic plan. It is what we all know and see in different books. It is a sequence of numbers or letters and chapter titles. This way of writing an outline is suitable for highly organized people who know what they want to describe in Chapter 7 and what they want to leave for the events of Chapter 10. In this plan, you name key ideas without commenting on them and build all events around crucial ideas.
• Summary. A few authors love this plan when they are preparing and outline for writing a book, but it is the most convenient approach for some. While outlining a story, you describe all the main events, connect them, change their sequence, and add details when writing a book. Ultimately, your outline is a mini-version of the text, shedding light on the plot without excessive details.
• Cards. You may have used or seen this tool while learning a foreign language. Flashcards help not only remember new terms but also organize your thoughts. For example, you can write down key events on different paper pieces and then swap, rearrange them, and write your narrative. In this way, your text may change many times, but you will remember the main ideas.
• Mind map. It is another interesting outline tool for brainstorming. Choose any mind mapping service or use paper sheets. For example, place your main idea in the great bubble and secondary ideas around it. Place heroes in bubbles of a different color and connect events and heroes with lines to create essential connections. Consequently, build a story from the schema you created.

Now, after studying the types of plans and what a book outline looks like, you already know how to compose them. Additionally, we will analyze this issue in more detail later.

What Does a Book Outline Look Like? 6 Key Steps for Creating a Successful Outline

Step 1: Lay the foundation of your story.

Start with the basics. Describe the main story idea and its characters. Write down the key events that will take place in the book and the main characters’ features. Refrain from dwelling on the details. Afterwards, you need to describe the general picture of your future book.

Ask yourself these questions:

• What happened?
• When did it happen?
• Who were taking part in the events?
• Where were the main events?
• What is the result of these events?

Congratulations! You have the basis of the story, adding details to which you will write a book.

This step must be taken when writing fiction and nonfiction books. It is the first answer to how to make a book outline. Questions help build the story’s skeleton and make it easier for you to work with it.

Step 2: Describe your characters.

Describe each character’s appearance, personality, and movement throughout your book. It is an essential step to take before describing the main story. Otherwise, you can fall into the trap of having the story happen independently without the characters in it. Moreover, you can create characters looking passive, uninteresting, and unclear about their actions and why.

To correctly reveal the hero of your story, answer the following questions:

• Who is this?
• What is their character?
• What do they look like?
• What do they like or dislike?
• What decisions led them to this story?
• What kind of relationship do they have with other characters?
• How do they act in critical situations?
• What decision led them to the end of your story?
• Why does the reader need to know about it?

Describe all the characters in your book according to this scheme, starting with the main characters. This way, you can add the exemplary character in the right place at the right time in your book.

Step 3: Describe the location.

If you need to know: “how to write a book outline for fiction”, don’t miss this step. The place where the events in your book take place is also crucial since it directly affects the character’s self. Do they have to wander through the forest or explore a fictional castle? Do they travel around your hometown or explore the depths of the oceans?

All these conditions will affect their decisions, state of mind, and results of actions. Therefore, this step is essential if you are writing a fiction book.

Additionally, describing the place of events in nonfiction literature is also crucial. At a minimum, your reader should understand where the research or events in the story occurred.

Step 4: Gather all the events, characters, and locations into one structure.

It’s time to work on creating the story! You can choose one of the ways to create an outline and write it down. It can be a mind map with the main idea in the center, cards, or a plan with numbers. You can use stickers, programs, or tables like J.K. Rowling did for her masterpiece.