How to Outline a Novel: 6 Methods That Work (and Which One Fits You)

Every novelist outlines. Some do it before the first draft, in color-coded spreadsheets. Some do it in their heads on long walks. Some do it after the draft, when they print the whole mess out and discover the middle is three chapters of people having coffee. The question isn’t whether to outline a novel. It’s how much, when, and with which method.

Here are six outlining methods working novelists actually use, and the kind of writer each one suits. To keep it concrete, we’ll outline the same story six ways:

Maya, a night-shift 911 dispatcher, takes a call from a terrified girl who says she’s been kidnapped. Then the girl gives the address. It’s Maya’s house.

Before you pick a method: three things every outline needs

Whatever structure you use, a useful outline has three things in it.

1. A protagonist who wants something specific. Not “happiness.” Maya wants to find the girl before sunrise, and she wants to know why her house.

2. Something in the way that gets worse. Obstacles that escalate. If chapter 20 is no harder than chapter 5, the outline is a list, not a story.

3. An ending you’re aiming at, even if it changes. You can’t steer toward nothing.

1. The three-act structure

What it is: Beginning, middle, end, with two big turns that push the story from one act into the next.

The idea goes back to Aristotle’s Poetics, which said a whole story has a beginning, a middle and an end. The modern version comes from screenwriting, especially Syd Field’s 1979 book Screenplay, which described a “paradigm”: a setup act, a long confrontation act, and a resolution act, with a plot point at roughly the one-quarter and three-quarter marks that spins the story in a new direction.

For a novel, the rough proportions are:

• Act One (about 25%): the world, the character, the inciting incident, and a decision that commits them.

• Act Two (about 50%): escalating complications, a midpoint that changes the game, and a low point.

• Act Three (about 25%): the climax and resolution.

Maya in three acts:

• Act One: A routine night shift. The call. Maya sends a patrol car to her own house; it’s empty, and her colleagues think the call was a prank. She decides to find the girl herself. (Plot point one.)

• Act Two: She traces the call and learns the kidnapper has been watching her for months. At the midpoint, she realizes the girl is the daughter she gave up for adoption sixteen years ago. Then her best friend on the force turns out to have lied about the night of the call. (Plot point two.)

• Act Three: Maya goes in alone, without backup she can trust, and gets her daughter out.

Best for: Everyone, as a starting skeleton. It’s so loose it fits almost any story.

Watch out for: The sagging middle. Act Two is half the book, and the model says little about what goes in it. That’s why the next method exists.

2. The Save the Cat beat sheet

What it is: Fifteen “beats,” each placed at a specific point in the story.

Screenwriter Blake Snyder introduced the beat sheet in Save the Cat! (2005), named for the moment early in a film where the hero does something likable, like saving a cat, so the audience roots for them. Jessica Brody adapted it for fiction in Save the Cat! Writes a Novel (2018), with percentages for where each beat lands in a manuscript.

The beats, with Brody’s approximate placements:

1. Opening Image (0–1%): a snapshot of the hero’s life before.

2. Theme Stated (5%): someone hints at the lesson the hero needs to learn.

3. Setup (1–10%): the hero’s world, flaws and what’s missing.

4. Catalyst (10%): the life-changing event.

5. Debate (10–20%): the hero resists or hesitates.

6. Break Into 2 (20%): the hero makes a choice and enters a new world.

7. B Story (22%): a new relationship that carries the theme.

8. Fun and Games (20–50%): the “promise of the premise,” the scenes the reader came for.

9. Midpoint (50%): a false victory or false defeat; the stakes rise.

10. Bad Guys Close In (50–75%): external pressure and internal flaws tighten.

11. All Is Lost (75%): the lowest point, often with a “whiff of death.”

12. Dark Night of the Soul (75–80%): the hero processes the loss.

13. Break Into 3 (80%): the realization that points toward the solution.

14. Finale (80–99%): the hero acts on what they’ve learned.

15. Final Image (99–100%): the mirror of the opening image, showing change.

Maya’s beats, briefly: Opening Image: Maya calm on a headset, telling a panicked stranger exactly what to do, while her own life is empty. Theme Stated: a colleague says, “You’re great with strangers. Try it with people.” Catalyst: the call. Midpoint: the girl is her daughter. All Is Lost: her daughter’s phone goes dead and the only person she trusted is compromised. Final Image: Maya on the headset again, but now there’s a photo taped to her console.

Best for: Commercial and genre fiction, and anyone who struggles with pacing or the middle of the book.

Watch out for: Formula. Followed too literally, every book hits the same notes at the same page. Treat the percentages as a smoke detector, not a law: if your catalyst arrives at 35%, the book probably starts too slowly.

3. The Snowflake Method

What it is: Start with a single sentence and expand it in stages, the way a fractal snowflake grows from a simple triangle.

Randy Ingermanson, a physicist turned novelist, created the method and laid it out in How to Write a Novel Using the Snowflake Method. His ten steps, condensed:

1. Write a one-sentence summary of the novel.

2. Expand it to a paragraph: the setup, three disasters, and the ending.

3. Write a one-page summary for each major character: their goal, motivation, conflict and epiphany.

4. Expand each sentence of your paragraph into its own paragraph, giving you a one-page synopsis.

5. Write a fuller synopsis for each major character.

6. Expand the one-page synopsis to about four pages.

7. Build full character charts.

8. Turn the synopsis into a list of scenes, ideally in a spreadsheet.

9. Optionally, write a short narrative description of each scene.

10. Write the first draft.

Maya’s step one: A 911 dispatcher races to find a kidnapped girl who gave the dispatcher’s own address. Step two gives you three disasters: the police dismiss the call, the girl turns out to be her daughter, and her closest ally is part of it.

Best for: Analytical writers and complex plots with many threads.

Watch out for: Running out of steam before step ten, or a draft that feels like typing up homework. If that’s you, stop at step four or six and start drafting.

4. The hero’s journey

What it is: A mythic pattern of departure, trials and return.

Joseph Campbell described the “monomyth” in The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1949), identifying seventeen stages in myths from around the world. George Lucas credited Campbell as an influence on Star Wars. Christopher Vogler, a story consultant at Disney, condensed the monomyth into a twelve-stage version for writers in The Writer’s Journey:

1. The Ordinary World

2. The Call to Adventure

3. Refusal of the Call

4. Meeting the Mentor

5. Crossing the First Threshold

6. Tests, Allies and Enemies

7. Approach to the Inmost Cave

8. The Ordeal

9. Reward (Seizing the Sword)

10. The Road Back

11. Resurrection

12. Return with the Elixir

Maya on the journey: Her ordinary world is the dispatch center. The call is literal. She refuses at first (procedure says hand it off). Her mentor is a retired detective who taught her to listen for what callers aren’t saying. The Inmost Cave is the house where she lived when she was pregnant. Her elixir is something she’s never had: a family.

Best for: Fantasy, adventure, quests, coming-of-age stories, and any book where the protagonist leaves a familiar world and returns changed.

Watch out for: Forcing it. Not every story needs a mentor or a literal return. Vogler himself presented the stages as flexible. Use it to check that your hero is transformed, not as twelve boxes you must fill.

5. The 7-point story structure

What it is: Seven key moments, designed backward from the ending.

Author Dan Wells popularized this method in a widely shared series of workshop talks; he has said he adapted it from a story structure guide for a Star Trek role-playing game.

The seven points:

1. Hook: the starting state, the opposite of where the character ends.

2. Plot Turn 1: the event that sets the story in motion.

3. Pinch 1: pressure from the antagonist that forces action.

4. Midpoint: the character shifts from reacting to acting.

5. Pinch 2: things go terribly wrong; the plan fails or an ally falls.

6. Plot Turn 2: the character gets the last piece needed to win.

7. Resolution: the climax and the end state.

The trick is the order you design them in. Wells suggests starting with the resolution, then writing the hook as its opposite, then the midpoint as the hinge between them. The turns and pinches fill in after that.

Maya backward: Resolution: Maya, who keeps everyone at arm’s length, holds her daughter’s hand in the back of an ambulance. Hook: Maya alone, competent and closed off. Midpoint: she stops reacting to the kidnapper’s moves and sets a trap of her own. Pinch 2: her friend’s betrayal. Plot Turn 2: she recognizes a background sound from the original call and knows exactly where the girl is.

Best for: Writers who know their ending, series writers who need each book to have a clean arc, and anyone who wants structure without fifteen beats.

Watch out for: Thin middles. Seven points across 90,000 words leaves a lot of open ground, so add a scene list between the points.

6. Discovery writing with a compass

What it is: Writing without a full outline, but not without direction.

Some of the best-loved novelists don’t outline in advance. In On Writing, Stephen King says he puts characters in a predicament and watches them try to work themselves free, and calls plotting “the good writer’s last resort and the dullard’s first choice.” E.L. Doctorow compared writing a novel to driving at night: you can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way. George R.R. Martin describes two kinds of writers, architects who plan every room and gardeners who plant a seed and see what grows, and counts himself a gardener.

The danger is ending up with 40,000 words and no idea what the book is about. So bring a compass: a handful of things you decide before you start, and nothing else.

The compass:

• The question the book asks. Will Maya find the girl? Will she let anyone in?

• The protagonist’s want and the wound behind it. Maya wants control because she once lost it.

• Three to five landmarks. Scenes you know you’ll reach: the call, the empty house, the revelation, the betrayal, the rescue.

• An ending image, in pencil. You can change it. You just need somewhere to walk toward.

Then write. After each chapter, add a one-line reverse outline entry: what happened, what changed. When you get lost, read the reverse outline. It will show you which thread you dropped.

Best for: Character-driven writers, writers who lose interest once they know the ending, and literary fiction.

Watch out for: Revision. Discovery writers usually do their heaviest structural work in the second draft. Budget for it.

Novel outline methods compared

Which outline method fits you?

Do you lose interest once you know how a story ends? Try discovery writing with a compass, or the 7-point structure kept to seven lines.

Have you abandoned drafts in the middle? Use Save the Cat. Its middle beats (Fun and Games, Midpoint, Bad Guys Close In) are exactly the scaffolding a sagging middle needs.

Is your book a quest, a portal fantasy or a coming-of-age story? The hero’s journey was practically built for it.

Do you have a dozen plot threads and a cast of thirty? The Snowflake Method’s scene spreadsheet will save you.

Not sure? Start with three acts, add Save the Cat’s midpoint and all-is-lost beats, and see if that’s enough. For many writers, it is.

You can also mix them: Snowflake to develop premise and characters, then Save the Cat to place scenes. The method is a tool, not a membership.

Outlining tips that work with every method

Outline in scenes, and give every scene a turn. A scene has a goal, conflict and outcome. If it ends exactly where it began, cut it or combine it.

Keep it movable. Index cards, sticky notes or a visual board you can drag around. If moving a scene is painful, you won’t do it, even when a character surprises you and you should.

Know your antagonist’s plan. A lot of plot problems are antagonist problems. If you know what the villain is doing offstage, the hero’s obstacles almost write themselves.

Build your outline in Chapterly

If you outline visually, Chapterly’s visual boards let you lay out beats, scenes and research as cards you can drag into order, then write the book in the same place, with your outline, characters and locations right next to the manuscript.

And if you’re still looking for the premise to outline, the plot generator will give you story ideas by genre to start from. Pick one, choose a method above, and give yourself an afternoon. An outline doesn’t have to be perfect. It just has to get you to the next scene.