Three Novel Outline Mistakes and How To Avoid Them
They’re not instruction manuals.
I’m the author of over 20 published novels, and I always use an outline when I write. But whenever I try to teach writers how to outline, they resist. They often explain that they’ve tried outlining before, but it hasn’t worked for them.
When I dig a little deeper, however, I usually discover that they’re making one of these classic mistakes:
Capturing too little
Outlines don’t need to capture everything, but they do need to capture certain information. If you want to use an outline to write a novel, you should make sure that you’re giving yourself enough material to work with.
“Jenny goes to the store,” doesn’t really suggest what might happen there or why it matters, which is the essence of what you want to capture in an outline.
Novels are all about character motivations and the way people change over time. Your outline should show your characters reacting to events, not just the events themselves.
Taking the outline too literally
Many writers have told me that they don’t like outlines because they take the “fun” out of writing. I understand that completely…creative discovery is the best…
