How Do You Outline a Novel?
Outlining a novel comes down to eight steps: clarify your core idea by identifying who the story is about, what they want, and what stands in their way; establish your beginning, middle, and end before mapping anything else; choose a structural framework that fits your story; build your character arc alongside your plot; map out your major scenes; identify and plan your subplots; check your pacing across the full outline; and leave room to discover things as you draft. The outline is not the destination. It is the tool that gets you to the first sentence.
Step 1: Start With Your Core Idea
Before you map out scenes or structure chapters, get clear on what your novel is fundamentally about. Not the plot, but the idea underneath the plot.
Ask yourself three questions: Who is this story about? What do they want more than anything? And what is standing in their way?
Those three answers are the engine of your entire novel. The scenes, the subplots, the setting all grow outward from them. If you cannot answer all three clearly yet, spend time here before moving on. A fuzzy core idea produces a fuzzy outline.
Step 2: Know Your Beginning, Middle, and End
You do not need every scene figured out before you start outlining. But you do need to know three things: where your story opens, where it turns, and where it lands.
Something happens at the start that sets your story in motion. Something happens in the middle that raises the stakes and forces your character into a crisis. And something happens at the end that resolves the central conflict, for better or worse.
Even a rough version of these three points gives you a destination to write toward. Many first-time authors skip this step and end up with a strong beginning and no idea how to finish. Know your ending before you outline anything else.
The way your story opens is also worth thinking through carefully at this stage. Our guide on mastering the art of the hook covers how to engage readers from the very first page, which feeds directly into how you structure your opening.
Step 3: Choose a Structure That Fits Your Story
Once you have your three anchor points, a structural framework helps you fill in the space between them. There is no single correct structure for a novel, but a few proven models work well for first-time authors.
The Three-Act Structure
The three-act structure divides your story into setup, confrontation, and resolution. It is the most widely used framework in fiction and film, flexible enough to work across genres, and maps cleanly onto the beginning, middle, and end you already identified.
The Hero’s Journey
A variation that follows a character leaving their ordinary world, facing trials, reaching a crisis point, and returning transformed. It works well for adventure, fantasy, and coming-of-age stories.
The Save the Cat Beat Sheet
Developed by screenwriter Blake Snyder, the Save the Cat Beat Sheet breaks a story into 15 specific beats with suggested pacing. It is more detailed than the three-act structure and useful for writers who want a tighter roadmap.
Pick the one that feels most natural for your story. You can adapt it as you go. Writer’s Digest and Jane Friedman both cover these structural frameworks in depth and are worth consulting as you work through this step. For a closer look at how genre shapes structural expectations, see our complete guide to book genres.
Step 4: Build Your Character Arcs Alongside Your Plot
One of the most common mistakes first-time authors make in outlining is planning the plot without planning the character. Plot is what happens. Character arc is how those events change the person at the center of the story. Both need to be outlined together.
For your main character, identify where they start emotionally and where they end up. What belief or behavior do they carry into the story that the story will ultimately challenge or dismantle? What does growth look like for this specific person?
Your plot should create the conditions that force that change. If your character arc and your plot are working in the same direction, your story will feel purposeful and emotionally satisfying. If they are working independently of each other, readers will finish the book feeling like something was missing, even if they cannot name what it was.
For practical guidance on building characters that feel fully realized, see our guide on 10 tips and techniques to create compelling characters.
Step 5: Map Out Your Major Scenes
Now you are ready to start filling in the outline itself. Begin with the major scenes, the ones that move the story forward in a meaningful way. These are turning points, confrontations, revelations, and decisions that change the direction of the story.
For a standard novel, aim to identify somewhere between 20 and 40 major scenes to start. You do not need every beat figured out. You need enough waypoints that you always know where you are headed next.
A practical method is to use index cards or a spreadsheet with one scene per card or row, noting what happens and why it matters. Seeing your story laid out this way makes gaps easy to spot and fixes easier to make before you have written yourself into a corner.
When planning how scenes connect and build on each other, our post on foreshadowing and plot twists is worth reading alongside this step.
Step 6: Identify Your Subplots
Most novels carry at least one or two subplots alongside the main story. A secondary relationship, a professional challenge, a friendship under strain. Subplots add texture and give your main plot room to breathe.
As you outline, note where each subplot begins, how it connects to the main story, and how it resolves. Subplots that start and disappear without resolution are one of the most common structural problems in first novels, and they are much easier to catch and fix in an outline than in a completed draft.
For a deeper look at how subplots function within a novel and how to use them effectively, see our post on developing subplots to maintain momentum.
Step 7: Check Your Pacing
Once your major scenes are mapped out, read through your outline from start to finish and pay attention to momentum. Are there long stretches where nothing changes for your character? Are you saving all the tension for the final act? Is the midpoint of your story actually in the middle?
Pacing problems that are invisible in a chapter-by-chapter draft are obvious in an outline. This is one of the greatest practical benefits of outlining before you write. You can restructure a scene list in an afternoon. Restructuring a completed manuscript takes months.
Step 8: Leave Room to Discover
A good outline is a plan, not a contract. As you write, your characters will surprise you. A scene you thought would be minor will turn out to be pivotal. A subplot you planned carefully will stop working and need to be replaced.
That is not a sign that your outline failed. It is a sign that your story is alive. The outline gives you enough structure to keep moving when things get difficult. It does not need to predict every moment.
Some authors outline in great detail and follow it closely. Others use a loose framework and fill it in as they draft. Neither approach is wrong. For a deeper look at both methods and how to figure out which suits you, see our post on outlining your story: plotter versus pantser.
The Outline Is Not the Hard Part
First-time authors sometimes spend so long perfecting an outline that they never start the actual manuscript. The outline is a tool, not the destination. At some point you have to close the planning document and write the first sentence.
When your draft is done and you are ready to move toward publication, having a trusted reader look at your manuscript before you submit it is one of the most valuable steps you can take. Our post on why skipping a beta reader is one of the worst writing mistakes covers how to find the right readers and what to do with their feedback.
If you have a finished or nearly finished manuscript and you are thinking about what publishing looks like, Page Publishing works with first-time authors from manuscript to finished book, handling the steps that come after the writing is done. You can also read about the experiences of authors who have published with Page Publishing to get a realistic picture of what the process looks like from someone who has already been through it.
You put in the work to write the book. Make sure it reaches the readers waiting for it.
