Plot outline examples from three kinds of novel

Here are three plot outlines of novels you can read, one romance, one mystery and one quest fantasy, each written under the same five headings. The point is how little an outline has to say. If you can fill five headings for a book that has been read for a century, you can fill them for yours, and then you can decide how much more detail you want.

If you want blank forms to copy, the plot outline template has them, and how to outline a novel walks through the steps.

The frame

Jericho Writers recommends starting with five headings and writing down only what you already know:

1. Status quo: the situation at the start, before anything has happened.
2. Inciting incident: whatever disturbs the status quo. It can be small, like an interesting boy at school, or large, like a sniper on a bus.
3. Developments: the long middle, where the character meets obstacles, victories and reversals. The victories are not permanent and the reversals are not lethal, and the stakes rise.
4. Climax: where the stakes feel like life and death.
5. Resolution: the ending, which can be triumphant, bitter or bittersweet.

Jericho's guide says an outline can run from one page to as many as ten or twenty, that it is a summary and not the story, and that it is for you alone. If it reads flat, that is fine. The inciting incident, the climax and the ending are the parts most writers know first, and the middle is usually the hard part.

These outlines condense the plot summaries on Wikipedia. They show what an outline can record and make no claim about how the authors planned the books.

Example 1: a romance, Pride and Prejudice (1813)

• Status quo: The Bennet family lives at Longbourn. Mrs Bennet wants her five daughters married, and the estate is entailed away from them.
• Inciting incident: Mr Bingley rents Netherfield. At a ball his friend Mr Darcy declines to dance with Elizabeth, saying she is not handsome enough to tempt him, and she is deeply offended.
• Developments: Wickham tells Elizabeth that Darcy treated him badly, and she believes him. She refuses Mr Collins, who marries her friend Charlotte. Darcy separates Bingley and Jane. In Kent, Darcy proposes and Elizabeth rejects him angrily. His letter then contradicts what Wickham said. On a tour of Derbyshire she sees Darcy's estate and begins to change her mind, until Lydia runs off with Wickham. Darcy quietly arranges their marriage.
• Climax: Lady Catherine demands that Elizabeth promise never to accept Darcy, and Elizabeth refuses. Darcy, hearing of it, proposes again.
• Resolution: Elizabeth accepts him, and Jane accepts Bingley.

What to notice: Every reversal comes from a misjudgment, which is why the middle is a chain of cause and effect. Elizabeth's mistake about Darcy and Darcy's mistake about Jane power it. For a romance, outline the two leads' beliefs about each other at each stage.

Example 2: a mystery, The Hound of the Baskervilles (1902)

• Status quo: London, 1889. Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson are visited by Dr Mortimer, who reads a family legend of a demonic hound on Dartmoor. Sir Charles Baskerville has died, and Mortimer saw large paw prints beside the body.
• Inciting incident: The heir, Sir Henry, arrives in London, and odd things start to happen to him: a stolen boot, an anonymous warning letter, a man following him.
• Developments: Holmes sends Watson to Dartmoor as Sir Henry's bodyguard. Watson reports on the neighbours, including the Stapletons and Mr Frankland. An escaped convict, Selden, is loose on the moor, the butler Barrymore signals at night, and Laura Lyons proves to have written to Sir Charles. Watson finds a mysterious man on a tor and discovers it is Holmes, who has been secretly investigating. Holmes names Stapleton as the murderer but has no proof, and Selden dies in Sir Henry's discarded clothes.
• Climax: Holmes uses Sir Henry as bait. In fog, they kill the hound when Stapleton looses it, and Stapleton vanishes into the mire.
• Resolution: Holmes explains it all. Stapleton was a hidden heir, a Baskerville who had painted a savage hound with phosphorus to frighten his relatives to death.

What to notice: A mystery has two stories, what the characters and reader see in order, and what really happened. The outline above is the first. The last heading is where the second finally appears, so a mystery writer's outline usually needs a separate list of what actually occurred and which clues point to it. Jericho's mystery guide and the glossary entry on a red herring go deeper on that.

Example 3: a quest fantasy, The Hobbit (1937)

• Status quo: Bilbo Baggins is a comfortable hobbit with no wish to leave home.
• Inciting incident: Gandalf tricks Bilbo into hosting Thorin Oakenshield and twelve dwarves. They plan to reclaim the Lonely Mountain from the dragon Smaug, and propose Bilbo as the burglar. Indignant, he sets off with them.
• Developments: Trolls, Rivendell, goblins under the Misty Mountains, and Bilbo alone in the dark with the ring and Gollum's riddle game. Eagles and Beorn follow, then Mirkwood with its spiders and the Wood-elves' dungeons, then Lake-town. At the Mountain, Bilbo steals a cup, talks to Smaug and spots a gap in his armour. Smaug destroys Lake-town and Bard shoots him. Bilbo hides the Arkenstone, then gives it to the besiegers to head off a war, and Thorin banishes him.
• Climax: The Battle of Five Armies. Thorin is fatally wounded and reconciles with Bilbo before he dies.
• Resolution: Bilbo takes only a small portion of his share and returns home, a wealthy hobbit, a year and a month after he left. Years later he writes the story.

What to notice: A quest runs by episodes, one place after another, so the outline doubles as a route. Thror's map is a plot device in the story itself, since it shows the secret door into the Mountain. How to make a fantasy map covers how a map can check travel times against your outline.

Growing the outline

Once the five headings are filled, expand in layers. Randy Ingermanson's Snowflake Method is one way. You start with one sentence, grow it to a paragraph describing the setup, three disasters and an ending, then give each major character a summary, then expand each sentence of the paragraph into a paragraph of its own. It follows with a page of plot, a four-page synopsis and finally a spreadsheet with one line per scene, with columns for the point-of-view character and what happens. Ingermanson says the method is only one of a thousand and that you should use what works for you.

Applied to The Hound of the Baskervilles, the paragraph step would hold the legend and the death, the arrival of the heir, the hidden watcher on the moor, the bait and the hound, in about five sentences. That is the same outline in a smaller package, which is the point. The Snowflake method is a way to grow an outline without losing the shape, and three-act structure is another frame the same story can be laid over.

Two practical checks, taken from Jericho. First, write the middle last. It is the hardest part, so fill in what you know and leave questions for yourself where you do not. Second, remember where the middle sits in word count: Jericho puts it from about 15,000 words in until 10,000 to 15,000 before the end.

Frequently asked questions

What should a plot outline include?

At minimum, the status quo, inciting incident, developments, climax and resolution. Jericho Writers adds optional notes on the main characters.

How long should a plot outline be?

Jericho says it can be as short as one page, or run to ten or twenty. Ingermanson's method grows it from a sentence to a four-page synopsis and a scene list.

Do I need to outline before I draft?

Not necessarily. Ingermanson says he has designed novels both before and after writing and finds that doing it first is quicker, but he also says the best method is the one that works for you.

Can I outline after I have drafted?

Ingermanson says the design work can be done before or after you write the novel, though he finds doing it first quicker and better.

Where Musael fits

A writer who has outlined is a writer who can see the whole book at once. In Musael the plan board holds acts, chapters and scenes as cards, and the manuscript is built on the same structure, so changing the outline changes where your pages sit. Names in your scenes link back to the codex, so the places and people your outline mentions are the same ones your draft uses.

Sources

• Jericho Writers, "How To Write A Plot Outline For A Novel (With Examples)": jerichowriters.com
• Randy Ingermanson, "How To Write A Novel Using The Snowflake Method": advancedfictionwriting.com
• Wikipedia, "Pride and Prejudice" (plot summary): en.wikipedia.org
• Wikipedia, "The Hound of the Baskervilles" (plot summary): en.wikipedia.org
• Wikipedia, "The Hobbit" (plot summary): en.wikipedia.org
• Jericho Writers, "How To Write A Mystery That Grips Your Readers": jerichowriters.com