Chapter Outline Template

What a chapter outline does

A novel outline shows the shape of the whole book, and a chapter outline shows how to build each part. It is the middle step between knowing what happens and writing it. The sheet asks one chapter at a time what the chapter is for, whose point of view it is told from, what happens, what resists it and how it ends. You can fill it in for every chapter before you draft, for the next five, or only for the chapter you are stuck on. The samples on this page are ten chapters from one invented mystery, so you can see how the boxes fit together across a book.

Give every chapter one job

The most useful box is the first one after the title: what this chapter does for the book. The answer should be one thing, such as to introduce the village, to deliver the midpoint reversal or to destroy the evidence. A chapter with no job can usually be cut or merged, and a chapter with five jobs usually needs splitting. Check your purpose boxes in order: they should read like a story if you strip out the rest.

Hooks and endings

A chapter should open on a question or an image that a reader cannot ignore, and close on one that sends them to the next page. The ending hook does not need to be a cliffhanger. It can be a line of dialogue, a small discovery or a decision. The writers who keep readers up at night vary their endings, because a cliffhanger at the end of every chapter turns into a habit that readers see through.

Look at how each ending hook connects to the next opening hook. If a chapter ends with a key in an ashy hide and the next opens somewhere else entirely, you need a reason, because readers will feel the jump.

Point of view, threads and length

If you use more than one viewpoint, the point-of-view box helps you see the balance. A second narrator who disappears for ten chapters will feel like a stranger when they return. The threads box helps you check that every plot line and subplot is touched often enough to stay alive, and that a mystery is fed a clue at regular intervals.

Set a target length for each chapter and add them up. Chapters of 2,500 to 3,500 words suit many thrillers and mysteries, and a literary novel may run longer. Short chapters speed a story up, and long ones slow it down, so vary them on purpose.