Furry Writers' Guild Forum

Pantser question: What does an outline look like?

General Writing Discussion
#1

For pretty much all of my fiction writing career, I have been a solid pantser (writing by the seat of one’s pants; as opposed to a plotter). I think this may be feeding into the phenomenon where my stories cap out at around novelette length.

Going forward, I’d like to be able to put together some longer fiction, but I would like to play with outlines and see whether they can help me hold something longer together. The thing is…I’m not entirely sure what a novel outline looks like, and I was wondering if people would be able to describe something they’ve worked with or even provide an example.

#2

In my case, an outline just looks like a page of notes about the story. :slight_smile:

There are a lot of good articles on outlining and plotting at Fiction University (actually, I pretty much recommend their articles on any topic):

#3

An outline looks as detailed as you need it to be.

Some idea of where you want to begin and end at, or that + a point in the middle as a guide post, etc. Or just scenes/events/things you want to appear like “Okay I want a CHASE SCENE” and “I want a big space ship to show up near the end”.