Planning your narrative should receipts whatever cast works bad for you.4. Identify your characters. You will most likely have a protagonist (often, but not always, the good guy) and an antagonist (often, but not always, the bad guy). A more accurate way to say it is that the protagonist is the main character, regardless of his good or bad side.
Catch the barn door picture. Figuring absent what your notebook is in reality approximately makes all the discongruity. This seems light to reply at fundamental, until you go to condense it to 100 paragraph or less. It is, on the contrary, the anterior issue you demand to go over yourself, then return on paper.All stories retain characters with goals, and those goals are obstructed by other forces, causing clash. Clash is the root of your novel. Knowing this will give you an idea of your "Big Picture," the overall plot of your novel.
2. Answer the Major Dramatic Question. The major dramatic question (or MDQ) is a sort of short-hand way of describing your novel. Determine the single biggest question that your plot poses, and figure out the answer. Remember that the protagonist does not have to "win" for the story to be good. What matters is the character is trying to achieve something.
3. Chart your course. With rare exceptions, your story will follow this path: exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, and resolution. In your outline, write a description of each of these steps. Your exposition should not take up too much room (and remember it need not all be in the final draft of the novel), as it merely sets the stage for what's to come. The rising action takes up the bulk of the novel and your outline; it's where all the conflict occurs. The climax is the moment when all your elements collide in a cohesive, dramatic way. The falling action usually happens very quickly and wraps up any loose ends. Lastly, the resolution delivers a satisfying--not necessarily "happy"--ending to the novel. Keeping track of these elements as you write should give your first draft a more cohesive, completed feel.
Some authors swear by outlines, and those writers won't break ground writing without one. Dawn by using tried and genuine methods when planning your novel, and expand on that to catch what works finest for you.
Instructions
1. The antagonist is the character who constantly makes the protagonist's life harder (i.e., creates the conflict that is the basis of your story).You may find it helpful to write biographical sketches of these characters. Don't worry too much about their physical description unless it is critical to the story. Focus instead on their goals, desires, dreams, and past life. Creating a character sketch can often reveal plot points or interesting subplots that might have gone unnoticed in a simple outline.5. Listen. The only rule for outlining your novel is that there are no rules. Your first brainstorming or outlining session is not etched in stone (much to the relief of most writers everywhere). Listen to your novel! Forcing it into a box where it does not belong will result only in lost time and frustration for you. You might find your characters going in a direction you hadn't envisioned in your outline. That's alright. Forcing them to obey your outline is almost always a bad idea.The outline is a tool, not a rule. When writing your first draft, don't be afraid to wander off the path. You can always find your way again with the original outline.
