How I Outline a Story: My Personal Method

This is how I carry out the outlining process for my stories, informed by recent creative writing experience. It's broken down into five steps.

When I started using the OUTLINE process in my projects, even for the smallest thing I ever wrote as an aspiring writer, one of my many questions was the following: “How do you develop a GOOD outline, one that is both easy to use and useful throughout the entire story development process?”

After watching many videos on YouTube and reading tutorials on various blogs — each of them useful in its own way — I still felt like something was missing. They helped me learn small pieces of the process, but in the end they left me with an empty vase.

Even though these methods were effective for developing a good outline, there was still something I couldn’t grasp. But what was it?

While working on my current fanfiction project, I finally understood what I was missing. The elements I lacked were small, yet difficult to recognize at first. Although all those methods were useful and offered something valuable, they didn’t fully fit my personal way of working.

For this reason, I decided to share this process with you, with the goal of helping you better understand the ART OF OUTLINING.

1. THE IDEA. With a pen and paper at hand, jot down the idea as a concept in a paragraph, then write down everything that comes to mind about it.
2. CATEGORIZATION OF THE INFORMATION. Once you have gathered the information, organize it into categories.
3. ADJUSTING THE INFORMATION. This step focuses on improving the material by removing unimportant elements or adding new ones, until the idea begins to take shape.
4. MUST-KNOW INFORMATION. Before moving on to the final step, write down the most important details about the following elements: main characters, setting (main area), time period, worldbuilding, and plot.
5. OUTLINE. With all the information at hand, write a general storyline of what happens—or should happen—in the story.

STEP 1: The idea

The absolute first step you should take, before anything else, is to WRITE THE IDEA on a piece of paper, using a simple writing tool such as a pen (the best choice) or a pencil. Ideally, use a small NOTEBOOK to keep next to you throughout the entire process. And no computer. Not in this initial phase of the process.

In fact, while DEVELOPING AN IDEA from a raw version to a more polished one, using a computer can create the illusion that you are making progress. In reality, it often causes you to MULL OVER THE IDEA for hours on end. I speak from EXPERIENCE: my brain would enter an endless loop of questions like, “Is this idea interesting What if...?”

On the other hand, when you write the general idea of the story on paper in its roughest possible form, you are more inclined to make definitive statements such as, “That's it. Period. It's raw, and that's normal.”

At this stage, you are simply planting seeds in the field.

This is a very important starting point, because it helps you understand whether the idea is truly worth developing or if it is just a casual thought — “cool idea, but nothing more.”

Once you have written the idea — preferably as a GENERAL PARAGRAPH that clearly expresses the CONCEPT — you can move on to the next sub-step.

This step involves creating an OUTLINE (oops…) or a MAP of all the THOUGHTS that come to mind when you reread the idea.

It can be ANYTHING. The order does not matter. The importance does not matter. Whether you will use, change, or discard the information later does not matter. You are still in the early stages.

Genre (or genres), length (in words, chapters, or pages), inspirations, characters (traits, background information, actions, personality), a specific scene, or even the ending — whatever comes to mind.

WRITE. WRITE. WRITE.

And don’t be afraid of your thoughts, and DO NOT try to CENSOR YOURSELF. One of the most beautiful aspects of writing is the freedom to do anything.

So don’t worry about whether the process is good or bad.

What did you say? There is a word for this process

Oh yes —you’re absolutely right.

There IS a word for it, and it's called BRAINSTORMING: the moment when the brain release an information dump for a future use.

STEP 2: Categorization of the information

With all the newly created material at hand, it’s time to ORGANIZE that information.

Don’t worry about what is useful or not at this stage. For now, focus only on organizing what you have. In other words, separate the material into clear CATEGORIES.

For example, let’s say you have five A4 pages of notes, plus the original concept of the idea. To understand what you are really working with, you need to bring order to the chaos — and you do that through CATEGORIZATION.

Technical information about the text (length, genre, chapters)? Put it in TECHNICAL INFORMATION or GENERAL INFORMATION category — either one works. Scene-related material (micro-scenes, ideas, endings, developments, and so on)? Put it in the SCENES category. Character-related material (background, traits, personality, relationships, personal changes)? Put it in the CHARACTERS category.

Continue this process until every piece of information has found its place.

In the meantime, I’ll be right here, waiting for you to finish at your own pace.

COFFEE BREAK.

Finished? Perfect.

Now we can move on to the next step.

STEP 3: Control of the information

Once all the information is organized, we can move on to what I consider one of the most complex steps in the entire process.

You’re probably wondering what this step is, right?

I’m talking about QUALITY CONTROL of the information.

This happens through rereading everything and, where necessary:

1. ELIMINATING INFORMATION that is unnecessary or irrelevant to the core idea;
2. ADDING NEW INFORMATION that can add value to the idea.

At first glance, this may not seem like a problem. But the real challenge lies in understanding when the information is sufficient and when it already provides a clear overall sense of the project.

At the same time, it’s very important NOT TO OVER-DETAIL everything. The goal is not to write the story yet, but to keep a general, flexible vision of the project we are developing.

In this step, we give shape to the story — a first, coherent sense of what we want to write about.

STEP 4: Must know(n)

Before moving on to the final step — the one most of you already know as OUTLINING THE STORY — we need to do one last, important pass over our material.

Using the information we’ve gathered so far, we now write down, on a single page, the MOST IMPORTANT INFORMATION needed to start writing the story in a clean and organized way, without turning everything into a confusing “soup”.

What do I mean by that? I mean clearly defining the following elements: the MAIN CHARACTERS, the SETTING, the TIME, the WORLDBUILDING, and the PLOT.

1. By MAIN CHARACTERS, I mean the most important and recurring characters in the story, along with the role they play. For example: “John Doe is the MAIN CHARACTER of the story, and he is in love with Jane Dane, the OBJECT OF his desire. However, she has a jealous best friend, who acts as the ANTAGONIST.”
2. By SETTING, I mean the main area where most of the story takes place — not a list of every location the characters will visit. For example: “The love story between John Doe and Jane Dane is set in Rome, Italy.”
3. By TIME, I mean the historical period (or alternative timeline) in which the story is set. This is crucial because time defines technology, society, rules, limitations, and perspectives. After all, we didn’t have smartphones in the 11th century… right? For example: “John Doe is an early 20th-century farmer who falls in love with aristocratic Jane Dane.”
4. By WORLDBUILDING, I mean all the general information necessary to write the story consistently: social rules, laws, culture, traditions, and background elements connected to the characters. (a) For instance, you can’t say that John Doe was born into a Chinese family in China but suddenly speaks fluent German for no reason. (b) Why does he speak German? (c) Is there a German-speaking community? (d) Where did he learn it? When? (e) These details matter, even at a general level.
5. 5. Finally, by PLOT, I mean the POINT of the story. What is its goal? Its direction? Its final destination? (a) Is the story about John Doe winning Jane Dane’s love? (b) Defeating her jealous best friend? (c) Discovering that Jane Dane is a vampire?

What is the story really about?

STEP 5: The outline

With all the information finally at hand, we can move on to the step that everyone is probably waiting for.

And that is… drum roll… OUTLINING.

Yes — exactly.

Wait.

What was the entire process before this, then?

That’s a great question, and an important one. The whole process we’ve followed so far was already about OUTLINING the project: understanding where we want to go and why.

Now, however, we move on to a more specific sub-step: writing, in broad terms, the PATH the story will take — through key events, key scenes, and essential story beats.

This is where the story finally begins to walk on its own legs.

Now I'll pass the ball to you — how do you manage the OUTLINING process? Leave a comment below!