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Onward to Writing Lessons

Lesson 1: Brain Boards

A brain board is a tool you can use to try to empty your head of ideas related to a particular project. If you’ve ever done a live brainstorm during a staff meeting or created a vision board for a new year of your life, you’ve essentially created a brain board.

Think of a brain board as you dumping your puzzle pieces before you start solving it.

A brain board is something you hold onto throughout the project so you can always refer back to it if needed. You may think of a few different ways to handle your plot or content, choose one, find it doesn’t work, and then want to refer back to one of your other original options.

Brain boards can be physical or digital and can be created with as few tools as a pencil and a piece of paper. Some physical brain board options include:

Chalk on a blackboard
Crayons on card stock
Dry-erase markers on a whiteboard
Markers on poster board
Grease pencils on glass
Index cards on a bulletin board
Post-it notes on a wall

For a digital brain board, you can use a Word file or Google Doc, or a free, online design interface like Adobe Express.

Anyone can use a brain board for just about any reason, including the ones I just noted: vision boards and brainstorms. Maybe you’re deciding which country you want to move to. Maybe you’re deciding what you’re looking for in a romantic partner or which job offer you should take.

The point of the brain board is to get all the ideas buzzing around in your head recorded in some form so you can refer back to it.

Don’t concern yourself with being neat or organized or even logical while creating the board. Just put your ideas down without hesitation, judgment, or editing. Remember that no one else will see this document except you, so go wild and really stretch your creative muscles!

Lesson 2: Templates

For first-time writers, templates can be a huge asset when it comes to organizing the thoughts you laid down in your brain board. Templates can be used for fiction, nonfiction, and screenplays. For screenplays, these templates are often called “beat sheets” (such as the ones described in Save the Cat!). If a brain board is you dumping your puzzle pieces, a template is like finding all the edge pieces. The template offers a sturdy framework to build your manuscript around so it doesn’t collapse in on itself.

What are templates?

Templates are simply blank outlines. They often give a brief description of what plot point or information goes where, but you have to bring your own creativity or expertise to fill in the details.

For example, here is a sandwich recipe template:

INGREDIENTS

2 slices of _____ bread
2 slices of _____ meat
2 slices of _____ cheese
1 tablespoon of _____ sauce
½ teaspoon of _____seasoning

DIRECTIONS

Place bread slices face-up on opposite sides of a plate.
Sprinkle seasoning evenly across both slices of bread.
Spread sauce evenly across both slices of bread.
Place one slice of cheese on each slice of bread.
Place one slice of meat on each slice of bread.
Bring both slices together (meat touching meat) to create a sandwich and enjoy!

You can then use this template to create a sandwich that appeals to your culinary taste. For instance, some people may choose to use slices of goat, salmon, vegan meat substitute, or bologna. Seasoning could be powdered Parmesan, cayenne pepper, Mrs. Dash, or gochujang. Breads could be pumpernickel, turnip green leaves, potato bread, portobello mushroom caps, or Hawaiian hamburger buns.

Even though the focus is on this single template, there are infinite ways to make the recipe your own and create something that reflects your own ideas and preferences. Using templates means avoiding reinventing the wheel, which saves you a lot of time and money in the long run (even immediately, in a lot of cases!).

Take a look at an example with a single-line summary of a simple story, like Little Red Riding Hood.

[Character] lives in [town] with [parent] and is sent to [elderly relation]’s house with [important package] but is [attacked] by a [predator] until a [savior] comes to [character] and [elderly relation]’s rescue.

You can take that same template and insert your own details so that you can customize the framework for your own idea with similar bones.

Tawdree lives in Cloudtown with his mother and is sent to his great aunt’s house with her new artificial heart where he’s pecked by a pterodactyl until a Falcon Troupe member comes to Tawdree and his great aunt’s rescue.

Or something like:

Santa lives in the North Pole with his wife, Belinda, and travels around the globe to deliver presents to children, but one day he’s shot down by a fire-breathing dragon and is stranded until a celestial fairy comes to his rescue.

Notice how you can add more information, rearrange segments, or even remove details to help customize the piece for your own purposes. We don’t know from these rough sketches what kind of medicine Red was taking to her grandmother, or why the pterodactyl pecked Tawndree, or how the celestial fairy knew that Santa needed help. But that’s okay! This is just a starting point. All of these kinds of details can be worked out later, but now you have the early elements of your concept in place (much like having a basic recipe that you’re going to customize as you go).

Why are templates important?

Writing can easily become a chaotic, overwhelming experience. This is especially true for new writers. Having a template is like putting a fence around the cats you need to herd. That’s not to say the act of herding them won’t still be a challenge, but at least the difficulty level has been drastically decreased.

For anyone who doesn’t have a strong grasp of market norms, reader expectations, and / or storytelling, templates make sure your piece is easier to read and more enjoyable without you having to work harder to get it to that point for your audience.

When are templates used?

I find it most helpful to use templates early on in the creative process. Getting one before you start writing is recommended. Your template can help you create a custom outline that you can use to guide your writing. If you have ever written a book or screenplay and found yourself feeling “lost,” “stuck,” or experiencing “writer’s block,” planning what you’re going to write before you do so could help reduce, or even eliminate, the likelihood of having to deal with those issues.

Where do I find templates?

Templates for books and screenplays can be found all over the web. A simple search for “[GENRE] [FORMAT] template / outline / beat sheet” on Google should get you plenty of results. Here are some examples:

Mystery short story template
Self-help book outline
Thriller screenplay beat sheet
Romance novel outline

Popular Templates

Self-Help

Self-help books are for guiding people toward gaining a new perspective or skill to improve their lives. Though there are many sub-categories, just about anything that teaches you something can be considered a self-help book, including textbooks, recipe books, and how-to guides. Here’s an example of a self-help template.

Introduction: An overview of who the book is for, why you wrote it, and what content you’re going to cover within the piece.
Section 1: A description of the problem(s) that made the reader look for a book like yours in the first place and how your solution is different from others they may have tried.
Section 2: Coverage of the intellectual concepts tied to the behavior you’re going to be asking the reader to change or adopt.
Section 3: What your solution looks like and how to incorporate it into daily life, including the benefits and drawbacks inherent in the solution.
Section 4: What to do when the reader “falls off the wagon” and finds themselves struggling to maintain the new lifestyle.
Section 5: Conclusion, including a summary of what was covered throughout the book, resources for ongoing support and learning, and a reminder of the possible benefits of using the solution you have described in the book.

Search for more self-help templates on the web.

Romance

Keep in mind that romance novels are extremely diverse (friends-to-lovers, Regency, rom-com, paranormal, etc.) so it’s helpful to find a template that fits precisely what you’re attempting to write so you get off to a strong start. This is a basic enemies-to-lovers example.

A portion of the Main Character (MC)’s daily life that discloses what their major goal is (could be directly related to romance—such as finding a fling during their summer vacation—or not, like striving to make partner at a prestigious law firm) and what love-related void is in their heart (for example, they can’t get close to women because their mother abandoned them as a child, or they steer clear of business executives because their father was one who was always too busy to pay attention to them).
The Love Interest (LI) is shown in their daily routine that is tied to blocking the MC’s goal and being a prime example of the kind of person the MC tries to avoid, socially and romantically.
An event takes place that brings these two people into contact. The MC can’t stand the LI, but also can’t deny how physically attractive they are (the LI likely feels the exact same way, which can be denoted through dialogue and behavior if you choose not to head hop or switch POVs within the same scene). They butt heads and offend one another. The MC goes home to continue their life, but the LI keeps popping up in their head.
Another situation brings them together a second time (could be related to the first one, or just a chance meeting). But this time, they get to know a different side of the LI due to a different environment or circumstance (at the park with their nephew instead of in the boardroom, for example). Maybe there is more to this person than the MC originally thought. They acknowledge this, but it doesn’t matter much because they still refuse to get close to anyone who represents their love-related void or may get in the way of their goal.
The LI reaches out to the MC with a problem that only they can solve. The MC agrees to assist, but only under certain conditions related to achieving their goal (example: “Okay, I’ll help you out by sitting with your grandmother, but you’ll owe me an interview at your firm!”).
The MC helps the LI, the LI holds up their end of the bargain. The MC gets what they want, but the results end up putting them in even closer contact with the LI (example: They aced the interview and got a position at the LI’s firm, but it just so happens that they will be under the LI’s direct supervision every day.).
The MC grows closer to the LI the more they work with them and they eventually fall into a clandestine relationship.
Something in the LI’s past comes to light that reminds the MC of their love-related void. It’s crushing to learn this since they’ve finally let their guard down and experienced a kind of love they didn’t think was possible.
They break up with the LI, quit their job, and retreat back into a bubble of depression. This gives them time to refocus on their goal and how to achieve it in a different way, even though memories of the LI pain them.
When they make moves to start from scratch on their goal, the LI comes to them begging to be given another chance. They even bring everything the MC was looking for on a silver platter—only obtainable through brutal sacrifice on behalf of the LI.
The MC decides to give the LI another chance and they have a heart-to-heart about what went wrong and how to avoid it in the future.
They live happily ever after.

Search for more romance novel templates.

Using templates to create a starting point for your project can be a massive stress reliever for first-time writers. By getting and using a document that gives you all of the main plot points or content points that readers are looking for in your genre, you can create a premise, outline, and first draft that are so well crafted that the remainder of the book development process is exponentially easier than it otherwise would have been, and can be completed in less time.

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Lesson 3: Person (The Five Ps of Premise Prep)

The Five Ps of Premise Prep

When you have ideas, characters, examples, and plot points for your fiction or nonfiction all over the place in your mind, clarity can be achieved through the act of pulling them together into a manageable list. Preparing a premise (and then creating said premise) can help you do that!

Overview of the Five Ps

The five Ps of premise prep are:

Person
Pain
Prize
Pitfalls
Promise

These cover the major elements of any piece. Memoirs, novels, blog posts, screenplays, magazine articles, contracts, product descriptions, etc. We’ll focus on fiction, self-help, and memoir throughout this lesson series to help you understand the range of situations in which you can use this particular tool. The word ‘book’ is also used since most of you are novelists of some kind, but feel free to swap it out for whatever kind of piece you’re writing (screenplay, LinkedIn post, love letter, etc.).

Person

The first P is for Person.

Fiction Person

Start your book premise by considering who the star of the show is going to be for your project.

This is the central character of your piece.

Your “Person” can be some animal besides a human, an extraterrestrial, or a mythical creature. Your central character could also be a location, a concept, or an inanimate object. You’re free to choose multiple main characters as well, as with books like Danielle Steel’s The Apartment or scripts like Paul Haggis’ Crash.

But to keep things simple, I recommend sticking to a single human being.

Self-Help Person

For self-help (and other nonfiction such as textbooks and how-to guides), your ’Person’ is going to be your audience. If you’re writing a stress reduction book for single mothers under 25, your Person is a single mother under 25 years old.

While the fiction Person was focused on whoever the reader was going to experience the story through, the self-help Person is whoever is going to experience (i.e., experiment with) the strategies you outline in the self-help book.

Memoir Person

Your Person is going to be yourself if you’re doing a memoir or autobiography.

You are the Person who the reader is going to experience your memories through.

PERSON DESCRIPTION

Once you’ve pinpointed who your Person is, you can add a few more details to describe them.

This includes fleshing out their physical appearance, defense mechanisms, mannerisms, preferences, and so on.

Imagine you lost this Person. What would you tell the police about them when filing a missing person’s report?

Imagine that you want a friend to go on a blind date with your Person. What would you think are the pertinent details they need to know about your Person before the date?

FICTION

For fiction, create this description of a concept, animal, or otherworldly being if that’s who your Person is. If your central character is a concept like love, you can still talk about its importance to various kinds of beings around the world (or in the realm you’ve created), how flexible or inflexible it can be, how it sucks people in, how it hurts people, etc.

SELF-HELP

When describing your target market for your instructional piece, don’t be afraid to stop and do a little demographic research. Being able to properly define and describe them will not only help you write for them, it will help you promote your book more effectively to them.

MEMOIR

When describing yourself for your memoir or autobiography, your perspective is helpful, but I encourage you to pull in the opinions of others as well. Your spouse, parents, siblings, children, and co-workers can often offer honest insights about you as a person that you never realized about yourself. Everything from a tendency to be self-centered to a nervous tick you didn’t know you had.

When you’ve got your Person described, it’ll be time to move on to the Pain section. But don’t overexert yourself. If all you can think of right now is a name (Qualanthie, Steve, Turek, etc.), that’s fine. If after five minutes you can’t think of anything else about your Person, completing the rest of the Ps can help, so just move on.

Remember that it’s okay to write things down that won’t make it into the book. Just like creating your brain board, you may make adjustments along the way that won’t exactly match your initial ideas. Now is not the time to edit. Now is the time to write!

Related Services

Book Coaching

Outline Creation

Outline Review

Lesson 4: Pain (The Five Ps of Premise Prep)

The second P is for Pain. This is a problematic Trait that your Person has. It will give them trouble all throughout book, with major points in your content revolving around resolving, or at least addressing, their Pain. You could name the Trait and move forward to the next P. You could also utilize the T. O. M. B. S. exercise to dig a bit deeper into what makes your Person tick, helping you create more four-dimensional fictional characters, teach your self-help audience on a deeper level, or sculpt your own persona on the page in a more engaging manner.

Fiction Pain

This Pain is often deeply tied to who your main character is as a person. One example would be passivity. A passive person may allow people to use and manipulate them and consistently put others’ needs before their own.

Sometimes, a Person’s Pain springs from a long-term pattern of circumstances that reinforces the Trait. The passive person may have been regularly verbally insulted or physically abused whenever they spoke up for themselves (i.e., asking when they can eat dinner and being slapped for it). Recurring sexual abuse, cyberbullying, or neglect would all be examples of chronic suffering that can influence the development of problematic a problematic Trait.

Other times, Pain comes from something brief but psychologically catastrophic such as being in a horrific accident, spending a few years in prison, or being the sole survivor of a plane crash.

Let’s say Xeela was neglected as a child. She was ignored when she needed help or comfort, she was often left to starve if she couldn’t find or make food on her own, and getting sick (as children often do) meant she would need to rely on the Internet or risky experimentation with home remedies to come up with treatments for herself. She had to figure out her own way to school and back each day, and learn to start paying important bills such as the electricity or water bills just to make sure that the apartment she was raised in was somewhat safe.

To deal with the resentment and loneliness that she felt because of being placed in the role of a single parent, Xeela developed many clingy, people-pleasing behaviors. She would do just about anything to keep people around her. This included giving them money, running errands for them, or agreeing with them even when they were obviously (and sometimes dangerously) wrong. This Trait often came off to others as Xeela being needy, desperate, and even creepy.

Another direction this same Pain could branch off into is one of ultra-self-reliance. Xeela could have become so used to isolation that she learned to embrace it and push other people away, even when they attempted to befriend her. Xeela coped with her trauma by learning to do things for herself that her parents would have done for her if they had been mentally healthy enough to do so. While this might make Xeela an awesome employee, manager, or freelancer, it hurts her when it comes to being a sensitive sexual partner, a caring friend, or a loving parent. The need to take care of everything herself can often lead to burnout, tense relationships with people who want balanced reciprocation of responsibilities, and even physical harm when Xeela tries to do things like rewire her house or replace her own engine in her car instead of hiring professionals to do the work.

No matter what your MC’s Trait is (such as being too trusting, aloof, arrogant, or childish), this characteristic was born from their Pain. They’ve been using it to protect themselves emotionally or physically throughout their lives.

This Trait could have been temporary armor against a painful situation. But since the trauma lasted so long, or was so severe, the armor melded into their psyche. Now they use the coping mechanism as easily as they breathe. It has been absorbed into their personality instead of being a role they can step into or out of at will.

For instance, a five-year-old being able to make dinner on their own, bathe themselves, and put themselves to bed one night each quarter while their parent (who has to pick up an extra shift each quarter to make ends meet) is at work, can be okay. The child is learning useful skills, but as soon as their guardian returns, they have another 89 days of not having to worry about that stuff. But if their parent is an alcoholic who doesn’t come home at least two nights each week (normally on the weekend), the child can start to become a pseudo-parent. They may become ultra-self-reliant because if they don’t, they won’t survive. It’s literally life or death for them.

Once you’ve pinpointed your main character’s Pain, you have a starting point for a character arc. The other end of that character arc will involve them addressing or resolving that Pain.

In this example, the child who grew up as a pseudo-parent eventually becoming an adult who trusts others to work with them (at work, in romantic relationships, in friendships, etc.) completes an arc in which the Pain is resolved (they realize they don’t have to put everything on their own shoulders all the time and that they can rely on other people to help). If, by the end of the book, the Person is entering into their first therapy session to deal with their ultra-self-reliance, that’s them addressing their Pain, even though it hasn’t fully been resolved yet.

Examples of Pain for a fictional Person include being:

Selfish
Naive
Aggresive
Pessimistic
Trusting
Anxious
Self-Righteous
Optimistic
Judgemental
Xenophobic
Humorous

Desirable Pain

Note that a Trait being problematic doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s a generally undesirable one. Consider Schitt’s Creek. Most people would treat being wealthy as a desirable thing. But in the series, the context makes that Trait problematic (losing all their wealth and not being mentally or physically prepared to live without the luxurious creature comforts they’re used to). This is why your Person’s Pain can be just about anything you can think of, but can still cause them problems on a regular basis.

Extrinsic Pain

Pain also doesn’t have to be intrinsic or inherent to who someone is. That means it doesn’t have to be tied to personality or past trauma. It can be something situational or even temporary based on the kind of book you’re trying to write. Darker pieces tend to have more in-depth, psychological Pain, while cozy pieces and books meant for younger audiences are more likely to have more superficial pain.

For a mystery novel, a Pain could simply be that the sleuth doesn’t know who the killer is. That’s a situational issue that doesn’t have anything to do with their personality or past, per se. Yet it’s a common, core Pain in any given mystery novel.

For a children’s book, a Pain could be the main character having lost their favorite bracelet. They will likely find it, so it’s a temporary issue. It’s also nothing life-threatening or imminently dangerous, merely frustrating and inconvenient.

T.O.M.B.S. for Fiction

The T.O.M.B.S. exercise gives you guidance on fleshing out how someone’s Trait came to be. While you don’t have to write out all this information within the book, understanding the mechanics behind your Person’s thought processes, emotional responses, and habitual behaviors, can help you write them in a more four-dimensional way.

Trait: The problematic characteristic (impatience, greed, etc.).

Rhodopis is subservient.

Origin: The circumstances under which the Trait developed.

Rhodopis was a slave and was treated well by her master. His favor incited jealousy from her fellow slaves, so she learned to cater to both parties.

Manifestation: The way this trait shows up in the Person’s daily life. How could someone tell what your Person’s problematic Trait is if they could only observe them, but not interact with them?

Rhodopis completes tasks on behalf of her fellow slaves to ease their envy, but also tends to their master in order to fulfill her given role in his life.

Benefits: What does having this Trait do for the Person?

Rhodopis avoids getting into arguments or fights with the other slaves and is regularly praised by their master. The life of a slave is hard, so avoiding it becoming any more difficult is a plus.

Sacrifices: What does the Person give up or miss out on because of the Trait?

Rhodopis will never take the initiative to get herself freed from slavery. She works twice as hard as everyone else because she has two masters instead of one. Being favored by the master has put a target on her back with the other slaves.

After doing the T.O.M.B.S. exercise, outside of just knowing what your Person’s Trait is, you also have an idea of where it comes from and how it impacts their daily life. This can help you write your characters in a consistent way because you understand how they would likely react in given situations.

For instance, being subservient like this, it’s unlikely that Rhodopis would randomly pick a fight with another slave, run away from her captivity, or generally make eye contact with people (lest she be seen as disrespectful). Each of these characteristics matches her Trait, reflects her Pain, and stays true to a core part of her personality.

Self-Help Pain

When it comes to Pain for self-help projects, your focus is on the Pain that pushed the reader to seek out a book like yours in the first place.

Someone looking for a book about how to paint a room has a Pain of not knowing how to effectively paint a room.

Someone searching for a book about how to pass the MCAT has a Pain of not feeling prepared to pass that particular exam.

Self-help is all about people getting the information that they need from your work so that they can apply it to their own situations (paint their own room, pass the MCAT, etc.).

T.O.M.B.S. for Self-Help

This exercise will look similar to the fiction version, the focus is simply on a (type of) Person who exists instead of someone you made up. Here’s an example.

Person: English-speaking, older teens living in the United States who want to make travel content for a living.

Trait: Wanting to financially support themselves by getting paid to travel.

Origin: Growing up watching their parents toil away behind desks, cash registers, or machinery just to make ends meet.

Manifestation: Already follows a lot of travel influencers on social media, takes any opportunity they can get to travel, and has a list of places they’d like to visit primed and ready for when they get the funds and time to fly out.

Benefits: They always have interesting stories to tell when they meet new people, they’re constantly making connections around the globe, their sense of empathy is heightened through the various cultures they come in contact with, and they feel a sense of accomplishment each time they touch down in a new place.

Sacrifices: Travel is expensive and with income being sporadic and based on what their parents give them or what they are able to scrape together from working part-time jobs while they go to school, this is a hobby they can’t do on a consistent basis. Sometimes they even have to spend a trip doing next to nothing because they can’t afford the various paid experiences that are available in the area. They technically visited a city, but they didn’t get to soak it up the way they really wanted to.

Memoir Pain

For a memoir, you’re the Person, so you’ll be exploring your own Pain. This can be challenging to do on your own unless you have high self-awareness and are comfortable with closely examining your own flaws and motivations. Don’t be afraid to enlist the help of a trusted loved one you know can be honest with you even when that honesty isn’t very nice to look at. You could also partner with a mental health professional to help you sort out your characteristics and your feelings about them.

T.O.M.B.S. for Memoir

Since your Person is yourself, for your memoir you can focus on the T.O.M.B.S. for your own life. Here’s an example.

Person: Black, female octogenarian with a PhD in confectionary technology and a lifetime of experience making candy for people in need.

Trait: Wanting to brighten people’s lives in a small, simple way.

Origin: Growing up in the ruins of my mother’s failed alchemy shop while trying to survive the third World War. Making candy was the first skill she taught me as she started me on the path to followin her footsteps. When she got sick, a lemon candy I’d made was the only thing she was able to taste that was pleasant, so I made any many iterations of it as I could. That was when I fell in love with confections and saw the power they could have to get people through tought times, even if it was just a momentary reprieve or distraction from the physical or psychological struggles.

Manifestation: I sold what I made to get enough money for the application fee to Orian Cikanas Academy. During school, I paid my way by teaching others the skills I was learning and creating custom treat baskets for holidays and special occassions. I also volunteered for a local homeless shelter near campus, making more nutritious versions of my normal candies to help with everythin from iron deficiencies to hypoglycemia.

Benefits: Even though my knees won’t let me spend much time in the kitchen anymore, I still get to share my love of cooking these sweet treats with others who have a similar interest. I’m also teaching people bankable skills that they can use to create a new career path they hadn’t considered before, or pull their families up out of poverty with the things they make and sell. Every day is filled with fun, laughter, and purpose.

Sacrifices: Teaching does take time away from Mom and she needs so much care that I’ve now gotten a live-in nurse to stay with us. At the same time I know she wants me to do what makes me happy, since she tells me this regularly, I also don’t want to miss out on what little time I have left with her.

Related Services

Book Coaching

Outline Creation

Outline Review

Lesson 5: Prize (The Five Ps of Premise Prep)

The third P stands for Prize.

Your Person’s Prize is whatever they are consciously trying to obtain or achieve. A Prize is something they know that they want and that they are actively seeking. This is often something superficial, common, or obvious to the reader, like a new job or not being bullied any more.

Prizes can be physical objects like trophies, houses, or cash. Prizes can also be intangible things like respect, power, or love. It doesn’t really matter what your MC’s prize is, so long as it reflects a significant benefit to them and you’re able to make your reader understand why your MC thinks that it is so important.

MC’s often have a single, central Prize throughout the story. Dorothy’s Prize is to get back home to Kansas. Joel’s Prize is to erase Clementine from his mind. Red’s Prize is to get to her grandmother’s house safely. Walter White’s Prize is to provide for his family financially.

For instructional pieces, the Prize to focus on is that of your reader. What were they looking for when they were searching for a book like yours? People may search for dieting and cookbooks because they want to lose weight. People may search for parenting books because their Prize is to be able to handle a toddler’s tantrums better.

For memoirs, the Prize may be some dream you’ve always wanted to achieve, such as acting on Broadway, becoming a pilot, or running for President. It could also be the attainment or procurement of something you’ve always felt was missing from your life, such as acceptance, romance, or parenthood.

This part of The Five Ps is straightforward, much like Person was. Take about five minutes to jot down what your MC is after in this story, what you’re main goal has been for your life (not forgetting that sometimes the goal is simply to figure out what your goal in life is!), or what your audience wants from your book.

This aspect of the premise is easily changed, so don’t agonize over it. Just get something down so you can move to the next step.

Lesson 6: Pitalls (The Five Ps of Premise Prep)

The fourth P stands for Pitfalls.

Now it’s time to have fun putting your Person through the wringer!

Pitfalls are just the things that stand between your Person and their Prize.

These could be physical barriers or impairments such as mountains, blindness, security guards, walls, missing limbs, wild animals, moats, or diseases. The princess can’t reach her beloved because of the wall the villain has built around the castle. The toddler can’t get the cookie tray because it’s on a high counter. The new-hire can’t get to their first day of work on time because of a traffic jam.

Pitfalls could also be psychological hurdles such as resentment, anxiety, hallucinations, pride, or issues with cognition. The princess can’t communicate well with her beloved because they speak two different languages. The toddler struggles to eat a cookie because their newfound sense of boundaries means they want to get permission from an adult first. The new-hire can’t get to their first day of work on time because of the panic attack that hit them as they were on their way out the door.

Events can also get in the way of your Person’s progress toward their Prize. An unexpected pregnancy (of themselves or someone else), getting laid off from work, bumping into an old nemesis, getting burglarized, failing a test, crashing a vehicle, or losing an important item are all events that could derail any plans related to obtaining their Prize.

The possibilities are endless when it comes to creating the hurdles that your Person will have to clear in order to get their Prize.

Memoir Pitfalls

If you’re writing a memoir, you won’t need to create Pitfalls because you already know what they are. You know the various objects, people, and events that stood between you and your goals. For this section, you’ll just be listing the ones that you plan on including in the book. Because you’ll later fill out more details about each thing (what it was, where it came from, what it was like to deal with it, how you dealt with it, the emotional impact it had on you, etc.) even a list of ten things could serve for a robust volume about your life experiences. But, you can add as many, or as few, as you like.

Self-Help

For those writing something instructional, the Pitfalls are going to be the problems that you want the reader to avoid. For example, if you’re writing a book about how to grow a landscaping business, you’re going to want to add that people shouldn’t waste their marketing dollars advertising on blogs about apartment living or to people under the age of eighteen because you won’t be likely to find any new clients there. Trying to advertise to those groups would be a Pitfall between the reader and their Prize of growing their landscaping business. For how-to work like this, you want to do your best to anticipate the problems that people may run into while trying to achieve their Prize. Of course, any direct experience you have with making mistakes should be highlighted as well so that you can help them avoid the same issues.

Write out what Pitfalls you want your character to have to deal with, which pitfalls you want to highlight in your life story, or what problems you think your readers need to know about in order to be able to avoid them.

Lesson 7: Promise (The Five Ps of Premise Prep)

The fifth P stands for Promise.

This P has two main features: Reading experience description and resolution of Pain.

Reading Experience Description

Consider what kind of reading experience you want to provide for your audience. Is your content easy-to-read overview of a topic or a piece that is thorough and technical? Is your story chilling, inspirational, or hilarious? Is the format a board book, short story, or novel? This would include what genre or niche category of reading your book would fall under. Is it science fiction, self-help, romance, or a children’s book? Does it feature non-binary, racially diverse, or non-human characters?

Use part of the Promise section to note at least a couple of these elements. For example:

His Take is a heart-warming, grumpy-sunshine romance…

Small Scarlet Cloak is a modern novel offering a terrifying retelling of…

You Don’t Say is a new-parent-friendly handbook that teaches…

Resolution of Pain

The second element of the Promise section is describing the resolution of the Person’s Pain. You don’t even need the details about how exactly the Pain is addressed or resolved, just a statement that it is. You can plug in the how later if you want to.

The greedy Person becomes more generous. The cowardly Person becomes more brave. The Person with no boundaries becomes more assertive. This is simply where your current character ARC settles by the end of the book.

For self-help, this is where you describe how the reader would have been helped by the end of the piece. They may have learned to better regulate their behavior when feeling strong emotions, understand the differences between LED light bulbs and candles, or are fully prepared to take the GRE. The Pain that pushed them to seek out a book like yours has been addressed or resolved because they have the education that they came looking for.

The Promise section of premise prep helps you start to think about how you want the book / story / screenplay to end in a way that will satiate readers. You can’t please everyone, of course, but if you focus on creating the kind of ending you might like to read if you were a reader, you’ll thoroughly entertain readers like yourself at the very least!

For memoirs, you’ll just be noting where you are at this point in your life after having overcome everything that came at you throughout your existence. You can even note what your next step is in your life (new goal, new obstacle to overcome, etc.).

For self-help, you’re going to focus on considering what central lessons or information you want your reader to walk away with. When they are finished with the book, how will their life be changed? What new skills, information, or perspectives will they have acquired from your work?

Take a few minutes to complete your Promise section for your current manuscript. Ask yourself how the Pain of your Person is resolved and what kind of reading experience you plan on providing for your reader (genre, tone, format, etc.).

Lesson 8: Premise

After using the 5 Ps of Premise Prep to suss out what your book is all about, it’s time to condense all that information down into a few sentences. In other words, it’s time to create your premise!

Premise Benefits

A premise is helpful for a few reasons.

First, it helps you clarify your idea for the piece. If you’ve found yourself writing around in circles and going off on tangents during the creative process, having a premise can provide a guidepost so you can always know when you’re wandering too far from your core story and put yourself back on track (if you want to!).

Second, when it comes time to create a synopsis or a log line, you already have a solid start if you’ve prepared a premise. Premises and log lines are kissing cousins!

Third, if you haven’t created a blurb for your book already, having a premise set up will help you write your blurb as well.

Premise Creation

Because you’ve done your preparations, creating the premise will probably take you all of two minutes. Here’s the general format, though you can rearrange things as you see fit, so long as each element is present:

[PAIN] [PERSON] wants [PRIZE]. But they must overcome [PITFALLS] in order to do so. This journey will push them to [PROMISE].or[PERSON] wants [PRIZE], but they have [PITFALLS] and [PAIN] to work through. BOOK TITLE will provide [PROMISE].

See? EASY!

To reiterate: you don’t have to stick with these arrangements. You can rearrange the elements of these sentences as you wish. This is just a starting point. You can also change it around later if you change character names, goals, pitfalls, and other components of the book. Don’t worry about spelling, punctuation, and the like. Just get the premise written!

Here are some examples.

FICTION: Overly trusting Red wants to get to grandmother’s house to deliver food and medicine. But she must overcome a clever, hungry wolf in order to do so. The experience pushes her to grow more cautious about strangers and encourages young children to do the same.

FICTION: Perfect wife, Erika, wants to maintain her celebrity status as a flawless spouse. But she must overcome her husband’s mistresses and waning interest in her, her former relationship with a colleague, and the police on her trail in order to do so. The situation pushes her to realize that perfection is an illusion that has cost her everything.

SELF-HELP: New writers want to finish their manuscript in a year or less. But they must overcome their assumptions about authorship, their limited experience with writing, and their lack of knowledge about manuscript creation in order to do so. The 12-Month Manuscript will help them become savvy artists who can complete manuscripts quickly and efficiently.

MEMOIR: As a self-conscious teen, I wanted to become a pediatrician. But I had to overcome parents who forced me into law school, a boyfriend who thought all doctors were criminals, and my own dyslexia in order to do so. My experience pushed me to develop confident and inner strength in order to learn to live on my own terms.

Lesson 9: Blurbs

What is a Book Blurb?

A book blurb is a short description of your book meant to entice readers into buying it. Much like the product description for things like lawn mowers or pens, the description should give a decent idea of what kind of experience a reader is going to have if they decide to buy and read this book.

NOTE: The word “blurb” is also used to describe an endorsement of a book that is written by someone other than you (usually a fellow author or an industry professional) for promotional purposes. So, if you hear someone saying, “I got Kennedy Ryan to blurb my debut novel!” be extremely excited for them, but know that this is what they mean, not that someone else wrote a description of their book for them.

Who Needs a Book Blurb?

Anyone who is writing a book would do well to consider writing a well-crafted blurb, in my opinion. It’s another important part of promoting your book. Knowing your Five Ps, you can even hire a copywriter to create a blurb for you using your Five Ps and your Premise (and your outline, once you create one).

When Should I Write My Blurb?

Many people choose to write their book blurb after they have completed their manuscript and had their book developmentally edited by a professional. If this is what you choose to do, go for it!

However, keep in mind that it can be helpful to write the initial draft of your blurb before you start writing your manuscript. This is because having the blurb already created as you’re writing (along with a fleshed out premise and a solid outline) can help you write a book that reflects that blurb. You can actually write with the blurb in mind so that you inject the selling points highlighted in the blurb into your content or punch them up, as needed.

Think of your manuscript as a business or nonprofit and your blurb as the mission statement. While you can certainly write your mission statement after you’ve started operations and have a few clients under your belt, how much more helpful might it be to have the mission statement written first and then operate the enterprise in a way that reflects those values?

How Do I Write a Blurb?

One of the easiest ways to write a good blurb is to mimic the format from books that you’ve recently purchased or that have a blurb that you particularly like.

For example, you may be writing a new version of Snow White that is a comedy. But the last romantic comedy you read was Breaking the Billionaire’s Rules by Annika Martin. Take that blurb and use it as a model for your own. So it might end up looking something like this:

Go to the woods.
Reject the huntsman’s advances.
Get to an outhouse.

I love being a princess, but dealing with everybody from my handmaiden to the stable boy wanting to have sex with me is getting tiresome. I’m like Aphrodite but I wish I were more like Medusa. And no one seems to recognize that being allergic to dairy ▬ when all our kingdom produces is cheese, milk, and cream ▬ makes me a disaster to live with.

Now the huntsman has “something to discuss” in the middle of the forest on a day when I just finished a royal ice cream tasting at the kingdom fair. But he’s nice, and I’m a princess so I have to be nice, and I know if I don’t stop whatever he has fantasized about our relationship it will just make things worse in the long run. But when he tries to slit my throat when we’re alone, a slippery bit of foul flatulence startles both of us and gives me a chance to escape with my life.

What would possess him to do such a thing ▬ or who would order it done ▬ and who do I have to screw to find some blackberry leaves around here?!

Having the first version of your blurb completed can serve as a guide for the writing of your first draft. You will adjust the blurb a few more times as your manuscript matures throughout the book development process.

What’s Included in a Blurb?

Some authors opt for longer blurbs that look more like synopses. But, generally, a blurb is meant to describe the setup of the story in a nutshell. In the previous example, we know that we’re dealing with a smoking hot princess who is lactose intolerant and now has people among her own staff trying to murder her. But that doesn’t tell us why the huntsman tried to kill her, what she’s going to do now, or if she’s going to find a bathroom in time to avoid an unfortunate toilet problem.

All those other details remain tucked inside the book itself. The blurb gives us enough to know whether or not we want to open it and start reading. The blurb offers questions and the reader gets to decide if they want to know the answers (which they will receive by buying and reading the book).

If you were using the three-act structure, a blurb probably wouldn’t go past Act I. Maybe the first half of the first act. That first moment when the plot becomes clear so that we know who our MC is (a sexy, lactose-intolerance princess), the inciting incident (a member of her staff trying to murder her), and what their goal is (to find a toilet / find out why he tried to murder her).

Another way to look at it is like a trailer for your book. You want people to get a sense of the story without giving it all away. The blurb (like a movie trailer) is not supposed to be the entire movie, it’s just supposed to give you some glimpses into what’s included to help persuade you to make the purchase (of tickets / of the book).

Self-Help Blurbs

For self-help, I’ve found it most beneficial to focus on what questions will be answered within the book. In this way, writing a blurb for self-help is similar to writing a course overview for a class. I want people to know that they have picked up the book that will give them precisely the answers they are looking for without them having to read the entire book first.

Here’s an example:

$10,000 in your bank account the night after you read this book. Guaranteed.

How people become wealthy quickly has escaped many working class poor throughout history. Dr. Nolania Mbeke is here to put an end to that once and for all. From podcasts, to lectures, to webinars, and this very book that you hold in your hot little hand, she’s been sharing with everyone she can the exact strategies she uses to make tens of thousands of dollars every single month completely on autopilot.

Affluence on Autopilot will walk you through:

• Setting up your free profile at AffluenceOnAutopilot.cash.

• How to select the best AI niche machines for your preferences (your likes, your income needs, your region of the world, etc.).

• Setting up your AI niche machines and turning them on “on consignment” so that you pay no upfront costs to begin generating income.

• How to file a claim with her company for a refund if you make even a penny less than $10,000 within the first 24 hours after turning on your AI niche machines.

The key to making all your financial woes vanish, literally overnight, is just a few clicks away. Stop hesitating and start hoarding cash.

Notice how, if someone were looking for ways to make money quickly, they can easily tell what they would be getting out of this book. However, the key information from the book isn’t laid out in the blurb. The key information to help someone make a buying decision is present.

For instance, if someone is terrified of AI, they know that the tactics within the book include the use of AI, so they can move on to another book instead of trying to read this one. If someone is already independently wealthy, they also likely won’t have much interest in reading this book. However, if someone has a week to come up with $2,000 in rent money after recently being laid off and having $75 in their bank account, they’d be quick to check this book out from their local library in an attempt to get back on their feet financially.

NOTE: I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: No book is for “everybody.” Every book has a target audience for whom its content will be more beneficial. Having someone decide not to read your book isn’t always a negative thing. The person who’s afraid of AI probably wouldn’t finish the book. Even if they did, they would likely leave a low-star review that’s really motivated by their own paranoia rather than the the quality of the book’s information. So, for the author, it’s best that this reader understand what’s in the book so that they can avoid buying or borrowing it and save the author from that low-star review that could have so easily been prevented. 

Remember this as you’re considering your target audience(s) for your books. As important as it can be to understand who you are writing your book for, it’s also important to understand who you are not writing your book for.

Memoir Blurbs

For memoir, noting your overall goal in life and the obstacles that have stood in your way so far is a great start. You can also note in a general way what helped you clear all of those hurdles (stubbornness, family support, a special talent, etc.).

Example:

I was born in the middle of a train robbery and I’ve had a talent for finding myself in bizarre situations ever since. Luckily, with a quick mind and a sophisticated sense of when it’s best to fight, fly, or freeze, I’ve survived into my 90s. 

From being five seconds short of becoming the First Lady of the United States, to riding polar bears on Mars, to personally taking the life of a dictator, No Biggie, invites you to relive some of the wildest moments of my existence straight from the horse’s mouth. 

After you finish reading, don’t forget to get up and go live life, don’t just sit through it!

Once you’ve found a few books in your genre, studied their blurbs (what’s included AND what isn’t!), and crafted your own, it’s time to move on to creating a strong outline.

Lesson 10: Outlining

Outlines are simply plans. Just like you plan a meal, a trip, a marriage proposal, or a vacation. And, as with those kinds of plans, things can change. You can add stuff into the mix or take elements away. Something unexpected could arise and you have to adjust your plan. All of that is just part of the creative process. What a plan saves you from is excessive feelings of being confused, lost, or not knowing what comes next. This saves you time and headache regarding your plot, your characters, and the overall content of your piece.

What Outlines Don’t Do

There are some myths floating around about what outlines do. The first step in understanding outlines is to dispel these myths.

Outlines DO NOT box you in.

One of the most common arguments against using outlines is that the outline is somehow magically restraining you from doing anything that’s not written in the outline. This is an example of you letting a tool use you instead of the other way around. As noted in the intro to this lesson, you can make changes as you go.

If you get to the end of the outline and think of a character you want to add to the story, add them.

During outlining, if you realize that a chapter explaining a concept should come before the chapter about how to use that concept, rearrange those beats in the outline.

If you finish the entire manuscript and decide there’s a scene that doesn’t fit, take it out.

You use the outline, don’t let the outline use you. Outlines are flexible, living documents that you control.

Outlines DO NOT crush your creativity.

Outlines don’t have much to do with your creativity at all, in fact. At best, they allow you to focus more on the creative process. This may be because, instead of coming up with ideas and managing how to express them at the same time, you separate the two processes. During outlining, you focus on what’s going to be included in the book. During writing, you only concern yourself with how you’re going to present the info to a reader. Like trying to pave a road as you’re driving down it, or trying to eat a cake as you’re cooking it, attempting to both create and edit ideas simultaneously splits your energy and focus, meaning you don’t give either process as much attention as you could.

Outlines DO NOT guarantee “success” (whatever that means to you).

People outline horrible movies and unreadable books. People outline (i.e., create recipes for) vomit-inducing entrees and gut-wrenching beverages. Just because you use an outline, that doesn’t automatically mean that whatever you come up with is going to be of any value to your customers, is going to be easily / enjoyably consumed, or is going to win you awards or make you millions of dollars.

Different people have different ideas of what “success” means in the literary world. To some, it’s getting their screenplay optioned. To others, it’s getting their novel into the hands of more than a thousand readers. To others, it’s all about them having written something they can be proud to call their own and even pass down to their heirs. Outlines help you organize your ideas. But if those ideas are not ones that can bring you whatever kind of success you’re looking for, the outline can’t force them to.

What Outlines Do

Now that we’ve cleared that out of the way, it’s time to take a look at what outlines are capable of.

Outlines CAN save you time.

Because you have a clear idea of what will be included in your piece in the first place, you spend a lot less time writing the manuscript than you would otherwise. As noted earlier, because you’re separating the idea organization and idea expression processes, each one of them becomes easier and faster. The less time you spend writing, the sooner you can move on to the editing process.

Some of you may be thinking: “But doesn’t it take extra time to write the outline?” The answer is ‘yes,’ of course. But, this is an investment up front that saves a lot of time on the back end. For example, let’s say you normally spend six months writing around in circles and trying to pull yourself out of plot holes. If spending an hour writing an outline can reduce that writing time to two months by eliminating all that wasted effort, you’ve just earned yourself a writing process that is now 67% faster! Pretty good for a 60-minute investment.

Outlines CAN save you money.

If you haven’t ever had a book edited before, you may not realize that the worse shape it’s in, the more it may cost you to have it edited. If an editor charges by the hour, it will take them more time to shore up a highly disorganized piece (meaning you pay for more hours and spend more money). If an editor charges by how much work they judge a book to need (based on a sample you submit to them), they may charge you more because your piece was written in such a chaotic fashion (you’re paying for more effort, so you spend more money). If an editor charges by the word, you may end up paying more when you don’t use an outline because you spend more time repeating yourself, writing scenes that clearly need to be removed, etc. This means your piece ends up much longer than necessary and you have to pay for all that extra “fluff” (more words need to be edited, therefore you spend more money).

Using an outline means going into the writing process with a clear understanding of what will and will not be included, so that your writing is likely to be stronger and clearer and you are less likely to ramble and repeat yourself (i.e., fluff up your manuscript).

Outlines CAN make other parts of the writing process easier.

Need a log line, synopsis, or blurb? Having an outline written makes all of these much easier to come up with. These are just a few more reasons that having a bird’s eye view of what’s included in your manuscript can be helpful. Your log line is part of helping you sell your screenplay. Your synopsis is part of helping you query literary agents and commercial publishers. Your blurb is helpful when you’re going indie and marketing and promoting a book on your own. Some people write their manuscript and then have to go back and re-read it and create a synopsis after the fact. By using an outline, you’ve essentially already done that up front.

Outlines are living documents that you have full control over. An outline can be a complex matrix of ideas and details or a simple list of three scenes or anything in between. An outline’s role is simply to make the writing process faster and easier for the author. Nothing more, nothing less. If you have been struggling with taking excessive amounts of time to write manuscripts, have been consistently getting feedback about how disorganized your work is, believe you’re experiencings what some newbie writers call “writer’s block,” and regularly find massive continuity issues in your work, outlining is a great way to get rid of a lot of those problems.

Types of Outlines

Outlines come in all shapes and sizes. Here are a few ways you could construct your outline:

Index cards pinned to a cork board
A bulleted list in Word
Digital cards in Scrivener or Final Draft
A list on a piece of notebook paper
A three-column table in Google Docs

Do whatever works for you!

Three-Point Outlines

A three-point outline is about as simple an outline as you can find. It is literally just the beginning, middle, and end of your book. And these phrases don’t have to be exact. The first point is something that happens / information the reader needs toward the beginning of the book, but not necessarily the very first section. The middle is something that happens / information the reader needs at some point between the beginning and end, not necessarily exactly 50% of the way through the book. Here are some examples.

Little Red Riding Hood

Red goes to Granny’s
Meets wolf
Saved by hunter

Cooking Dragon Eggs: Level 1

Differences in dragon eggs and bird eggs
Working with dragon eggs only
Easy recipes for dragon eggs

Memoir in Repose

Always loved sleep
Became a mattress tester
Now a sleep guru and mattress mogul

A three-point outline is fast and simple to create. Most people have this much of their book floating around in their brain, so writing it down isn’t a big deal. Getting a 3-point outline down can be done in as little as five minutes.

Using a Three-Point Outline

Once you have finished your three-point outline, it’s time to start writing! If you don’t think this kind of outline is helpful enough, feel free to move on to a nine-point outline instead.

For a three-point outline, start by writing out the three sections that you’ve named. Feel free to do one segment per day or per week, depending upon what kind of writing schedule you’ve chosen.

Once you’ve got the three sections written up in a rough draft, start the self-revision process.

Nine-Point Outlines

By answering two simple questions you can grow your outline from three sections to nine. Above each point, ask yourself what happened (or what the reader needs to know) just before that point. After each point, ask yourself what happens (or what the reader needs to know) just after that point. I call this process “unpacking.”

EXAMPLE:

What happened right before this?

Red goes to Granny’s

What happened right after this?

What happened right before this?

Meets wolf

What happened right after this?

What happened right before this?

Saved by hunter

What happened right after this?

If you have a third plot point that is the actual end of the book, then you can just write ‘The End’ and continue the process. Once you’ve answered the questions, you’ll end up with a 9-point list that would look something like this:

Mom sends Red to Granny’s house with food and medicine.
Red goes to Granny’s.
Red stops when she hears a sound in the woods around her.
She sees the wolf looking at her from a bush.
Meets wolf.
Wolf gets her to stop for a while.
Wolf runs ahead and eats Granny.
Saved by hunter
Hunter walks Granny and Red back to Red’s house.

Now you have a much more detailed guide for your writing sessions. In theory, you could sit down and write one bullet point each day and be done with your first draft in less than two weeks. You can also keep unpacking these points. Turn nine points into twenty-seven. Turn twenty-seven into eighty-one, and so on.

With each round of unpacking, your plot / content becomes more clearly defined.

Key Point: You don’t need to spend a lot of time thinking through a plot / content point. Just write down whatever comes to mind. Since you can change it later, you’re not locked into it. For example, if you write that a character falls off of a 40-foot ledge, but they are alive and well in the next scene, you’ll eventually have to figure out how they survived their fall, remove the fall scene, or insert some kind of supernatural abilities or happenings at some point. But, for now, you can just write the fall scene and then write the scene afterwards and you can fill in the middle later. Don’t let not knowing what takes place at this point stop you from moving forward with the outlining and even the writing process. If you write the draft and still have this plot hole, don’t be afraid to hand the problem to your developmental editor for repair. Their expertise will likely mean they can come up with a viable solution.

Detailed Outlines

For many authors, a bulleted list as an outline is fast and easy enough to produce, but offers a greater level of support than not using an outline at all. But if you’re looking for a more intricate method of planning your novel, you may want to try a detailed outline.

This kind of outline involves thoroughly laying out exactly what is going to take place in each scene as opposed to using short words or phrases to describe what happens. When you use an outline like this, each writing session has minimal guesswork involved because you know exactly what’s going to happen and how.

Here’s an example using a three-column table format (but remember that you can format your outlines however you like, you don’t have to be as big of a nerd as I am!).

EXAMPLE: Little Red Riding Hood

Chapter	Scene	Content
1	1	Hunter and his party are out in the woods looking for a pack of wolves that was sighted near the village (express this through dialogue). They hear nothing at first as they reach the spot where the pack was last seen. Then they hear pounding as some large, heavy animals come toward them. The largest wolves they’ve ever seen. The one headed for Hunter’s face dives into the air above him and he falls onto his back and blindly fires toward the animal before everything goes black.
	2	Red wakes up to the smell of pancakes and bacon. She walks out into the kitchen, sad at seeing the empty third seat at their table (where her father used to sit), and snatches a slice of bacon out of the pan before her mother can slap her hand away. Mother chides Red for being so impulsive and impatient. Mother stares at the third chair for a moment as well and goes quiet. She serves breakfast to Red and sits down to eat her own meal. She tells Red that someone from the village is coming to patch their roof before the next rain, but she promised Granny she’d send her some medicine because she hasn’t been feeling well. If Red promises to go straight there and not stop and swears she won’t talk to any strangers along the way, mother will let her go alone to grandmother’s house with the delivery. Red excitedly promises, downs the rest of her food, and gets up to get dressed.
2	1	Hunter wakes up in an unfamiliar place. He tries to sit up and feels the pain of his battered body. He’s at Granny’s house, a fellow survivor having dragged him there after the wolf he killed landed on top of him. He’s been out for a few hours. Granny brings him some tea and cookies and says he can rest as long as he needs to. But he wants to get going to make sure the wolves are taken care of as soon as possible in order to protect the village. He and his friend leave and tell Granny to stay inside until they come tell her that it’s safe. She agrees and shuts herself up in her house. The men walk away discussing what happened in the clearing. There were at least eight wolves and they went back to the clearing to find seven bodies. There’s one missing. It could be anywhere. They call for help clearing away the wolves and the dead. A few injured men are still laying in place, resting with broken bones and claw marks. Hunter sees paw prints leading back toward the village.

Key Point: Notice how there are errors throughout this outline. Now is not the time to agonize over whether or not a word should be capitalized or how a comma should be used in a particular sentence. These notes are for your eyes only. If you would like to share your outline, you’ll probably send it to a professional developmental editor so they can help your strengthen your book’s framework. They will understand where you are in the book planning process and won’t bat an eye at the errors that they see. You could also ask for volunteers to review your outline to help you avoid organizational problems with your first draft. Even if they point out where small errors are, you don’t need to make any changes so long as you understand your own prompts. Professional copy editing for the manuscript, blurb,and promotional copy will be done later, but it’s nothing you need to concern yourself with right now.

Increasing Objectivity

Because you are the one coming up with these ideas, it’s difficult to be objective about them. But there are two ways to help gain a bit more objectivity.

Take a break.

When you set your outline aside for a few days, you can come back to it with a fresh perspective. Taking this break will never create the level of objectivity that a stranger would have, but it can be helpful. Upon review you may find ways that scenes can be rearranged, things that can be removed, or places where segments / scenes could be added. This saves you from having to do this level of heavy lifting with entire pages or chapters after the manuscript has been written.

Get an outline review.

Just like you can ask a professional developmental editor to review and critique your manuscript (manuscript evaluation), you can request a review of your outline to help you avoid some common organizational issues new authors run into.

Though a review of your outline will likely be pretty cheap, if it’s too rich for your blood, consider asking one of your fellow writers to take a look at the outline and see if it makes sense and seems engaging to them. They might not have the same insights that a professional would, but it could still be beneficial, compared to revising your outline all alone.

Related Services and Books

Outline Creation: You provide your notes on your book concept and a developmental editor will give you a “starter” outline to tweak as you see fit.

Outline Review: Once you finish your outline, a developmental editor will assess it for potential problems, including in appropriate character arcs, plot holes, and logic errors.

How to Outline a Book: Fiction: A workbook I published specifically for using my outlining method for fiction.

How to Outline a Book: Self-Help: A workbook I published specifically for using my outlining method fo self-help books.

Book Outlining Basics: A super-short guide on how to outline books of various kinds.

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