How a Real Person Outlines | Let’s Write: Avatar Fan-fiction

Plotting has been one of the most difficult parts of writing for me. Especially because no one really shows off how they do it. That’s what I’m going to try to do today.

If you Google “how to plot” or “how to outline,” you find 3 things: tips for plotting, a plot template, and general quotes from writers about plotting. The tips are nice, but they aren’t exactly a tutorial. The templates are a decent place to start, but any reasonable work is going to break a template a million ways.

The general quotes and heady essays are the best and the worst thing you will find. Obviously you want input from the greats. Their thoughts are precious. But without guidance for application, those thoughts can be a confounding factor more than anything.

These resources aren’t useful if you don’t know how to use them.

As I work on plotting a novel, I realize all of the thought traps I’ve only recently stopped falling into are still common. So, I wanted to open myself up with the hope that this article will be a practical guide to plotting. I’m going to start with a blank document and fill it up, and walk you through that process as I go.

Starting at the Start

Since the Internet seems to want to talk about templates, let’s talk about templates. Here’s mine:

This is what all of my plot docs look like. For longer projects I use a Google Sheet because it’s easier to just toss info in, but it’s still the same information.

The only parts of your story that you really need to know at the beginning are who the story is about and what the story is going to be.

Because I think it’s fun, and will make this process easier to talk about, I’ve decided today to plot out an Avatar/Legend of Korra fanfic idea I had. I know going in that I want to tell a story about pro-bending, so at a minimum we’re going to have 3 main characters. Similarly, I know the general scope of the project. I want to write the equivalent of a season of TV, which would be 13 episodes or, here, chapters.

With a template ready, the next steps I take are as follows:

First, write a general summary. Right now, mine looks like this:

“Two pro-bending leagues have emerged: “The” Pro Bending League in Republic City is the premiere act on radio, but Kingdom Pro Bending is an amazing live show, touring around the Earth Kingdom. A few years ago, they began hosting a Championship Tournament where the top competitors of each team go head-to-head. The PBL has won three times in a row, leading fans to disparage the KPB. Our heroes are climbing the KPB ranks, and have started to look towards the Championships.”

With that initial summary in mind, create the outline of your main characters. You want to have at least one main character and usually an antagonist. For this story, we’re going to need 6. These are:

Heshu — Earthbender. Leader of the Si Wong Serpents. Brash, untrained. Ultimate competitor looking to prove himself.

Shun — Firebender for Si Wong Serpents. Intense and cocky. Wants to develop a winning reputation, cement her ego.

Koto — Waterbender for Si Wong Serpents. Stoic and skilled. Wants to make a living for himself after cyclical poverty caused by 100 Year War.

The CabbageCorp Catgators — antagonist team, lead by Teizen (Fire), then Sinah (Earth), and Nuk (Water.) Stars of the PBL, reigning champions. Want to win at all costs.

Gamu — owner of the KPB. Knows his business is failing, but is too proud to let it go quietly. Wants one win, even if only for vanity.

Chen — commissioner of the PBL. Respectful and mostly honorable, but hungry for expansion. Wants to keep his job, knows it relies on acquiring the KPB.

You’ll note that I’ve only given all of these characters 3 things: a name, a place in the story, and a desire. This is all a character really needs to be at this stage. Through the characters, we also have 2 plots developing. The two teams have a story that mostly plays out in the arena, while the commissioner/owner will serve a B plot.

B plots, and ideally C and D plots, are important for a story. Even from the start of an outline, cinematic stories should have some idea of what their B plot is going to be. We will obviously have other plotlines come up as we get more specific, but we want at least one other plot to develop in direct parallel with out main plot.

The Second Summary

If you’re a fan of football, you’ll notice something else. I am directly lifting the story of SuperBowl 3. It’s less evident in the part of the outline I’ve already noted, but I’m also planning to steal a bit of the 49ers story — the “finesse” team narrative. The 49ers were disparaged for relying too much on skill and not enough on aggression; because the skill element of bending is so crucial to the Avatarverse, I think it would be fun to flip that story on it’s head.

These are the sorts of templates that are actually useful. Because telling an original story is effectively impossible, pulling from a source or multiple sources as you plot is a great way to get started. You should (and do) have an idea of plots or plot beats that you like, and those can become your skeleton.

With those in mind, we’re going to return to and expand our summary. At this point, it should look more like an actual synopsis. Here’s mine:

In their first year as part of the KPB, the Si Wong Serpents didn’t get much done. With a little bit more training, though, they’re taking the pro-bending world by storm. Their primal and aggressive style is rubbing some people the wrong way, but it’s highly effective. On the back of Heshu, the team quickly rises the ranks and qualifies for the Championship Tournament, earning respect from fellow KPB members on the way.

Once they arrive at the tournament, they get a look at the highly skilled CabbageCorp Catgators. A team who always has their nose up, they make pro-bending look like art. The Catgators dominate their way to the finals, while the Serpents struggle their way to the semi-finals. There they face a KPB rival and win on slim margins.

This gives fans what they want: a Catgator vs Serpents Pro-bending Championship. A best-of-seven, the two teams take every game and play hard. Eventually, the Serpents come out on top.

Meanwhile, the two leagues have some dealings going on. Gamu and Chen start as friends, but terse negotiations and back-and-forth dealings start to erode goodwill. The KPB will fold soon, but Gamu isn’t desperate to sell.

This is a full story, a version you could tell someone in casual conversation. “There was a team who were new and a team who was really good, and the new team eventually won.” That’s exactly what we need. Honestly, I could probably write off of this (and for a short story I would.)

From here, we’ll go into greater detail on a chapter-by-chapter basis. Chapters are effectively short stories that create a bigger story through sequence, so the process will look much the same.

Before we do that, though, you’ll notice one more thing: we accidentally created another character, “KPB” rival. We’re going to want to add them to our character list, to remember to flesh them out. Here’s what their entry looks like:

The Full Moon Bullpigs — KPB’s top team, last year’s championship runner-ups. Highly skilled and intelligent. Want to be the team, but primarily want any KPB team to win. Toli (E), Jan (F), Maya (W).

Filling in the Details

Now that we know the main characters and we have a done-enough summary, it’s time to start filling in the actual outline. I won’t use the space under the Outline heading in the final version of the document, but we are going to use it now. At this exact moment, the goal is to get all of the ideas in your head onto the paper.

We’re going to take to the space under “Outline” to write out major plot beats, character moment ideas, and general structural notes. After a little bit of typing, here’s what mine looks like:

These are beats that we’re going to keep in mind as we fill in our chapter outlines. The chapter outlines are just going to be short synopsis, either a single paragraph or a few bullet points. Some people like to start at the end or with a climax scene, I like to start at the start, but it’s all the same in my opinion. Go down the list and fill in some details.

For reference, here’s what mine look like:

The Thought Process of the Process

I’ll spare you the full outline here, but as I’m going through I’m going to make notes on my thought process.

• The early parts of the story need to set up tension. We want one short arc in the beginning, as we build other plots in the background. Try to sort out now how to show the tension and not tell it.
• Make sure that if you have an antagonist, they’re doing antagonistic things actively. Same goes for your protagonists.
• When the A plot is boring, ratchet up tension in the B plot. It’s okay for the story to have slow moments, though.
• You don’t know the characters well enough to know everything. Be prepared for character moments to change, and for whole plots of the part to get twisted.
• If you get caught up, go back to the influences you’re pulling from. What would their next beat be?
• Cross out ideas as you go. Return to your ideas when you get lost.
• Structuralism can help provide structure. (Shocker.) Mirror moments to build out a solid skeleton.
• Everything is setup -> payoff.
• Keep your length in mind. Rhythm is the most important thing, so give and take space from plot beats where you need to.
• Don’t be scared to move between Chapters. If something happening later is relevant to what’s happening now, jot it down.
• You’re going to need new characters. Not all of them need to be fleshed out right now.
• Don’t worry if your outline isn’t smooth, it’ll work itself out in writing.
• Rooting interest is the most important thing. Make sure you’re giving readers to want something of your plot.

Your Working Outline

As I said, I won’t copy and paste the entire outline here. But you can find it here to see what the full thing looks like. Again, it’s just a series of short plot synopsis.

It’s important to keep in mind that this is a living document. This will all change the second writing starts. What you will find in your outline is direction. Whenever writing is getting lost, you’ll pick up your outline and it’ll show you where to go.

Your outline is a compass, not a map.

What’s Not Here

That is, as far as I’m concerned, a complete outline and the complete process. But there’s a few common things you’ll notice I’ve left out, so I want to address them here.

First, you’ll notice I haven’t really included any character arcs or ideas of them. As I noted above, this is because I don’t know these characters. Brandon Sanderson talks about this idea a lot — the plot is a plan, that changes as soon as it makes contact with characters. You’re going to find characters come out of you very differently than you expect, and it’s better to let it happen naturally.

But if you’re struggling with character, you can absolutely try to map them out.

Second, I haven’t done any consideration of… well, anything. I didn’t intentionally write to any act structure, any genre archetypes, or plot breakdowns. These are largely tools for editing and critique, not writing. For example, I love Vonnegut’s “Story Shapes,” but I would never write with one in mind. These things get in the way much more than they help.

You’ll notice if you read my full outline that not all of the initial ideas I had made it in. That basically always happens. I know that I’m going to write more later, so there’s no need to shove everything in. Maybe they’ll come back later as I’m actually writing.

Finally, you’ll notice that I’ve tried to keep specific lines and moments out of the outline as much as possible. If something is really, really important to the plot, I’ll write it in. But anything specific should be saved for when you’re working on the specifics, so that you’re not trying to force them in. This is, in my opinion, especially important for dialogue. If I tried to keep dialogue I wrote for these characters right now, it would look horrific in comparison to the more polished dialogue that’ll come later.

All an outline needs to be is a guide for yourself as you’re writing the story later on. Your outlines should be tailored to your needs and wants, which are going to be specific to you. My plotting process is rather lean, so I think it’s a good start for new writers, but you should be customizing this from here. Take it and run.