Preptober 5: The Fantasy Novel Outline

We’ve arrived! Today’s the day I create my fantasy novel outline. If you’ve been following my Preptober Blog Series, you know that I’ve been building a fantasy novel in steps, using a model I’ve adapted from a Writing.com Prep Calendar.

The first four blogs covered a premise, character list, rising action and climax, theme, and a little worldbuilding. In this blog, I consider plot complications before writing the first draft of my outline (which comes with a blank template for you to use!)

I’m excited! Let’s get started.

Complications

The Preptober calendar describes this as, “Brainstorm a list of problems you could throw at your protagonist(s) throughout the story,” and suggests using “what if” mind mapping, brainstorming, or any other method you want. I know there are plenty of plot twist generators on the Internet as well; I’ve never found they worked particularly well for me. I always wind up with plot twists like, “the nephew defaults on his student loan” when I’m writing high fantasy, and I have to do a lot of work to make it fit. But they may be useful for you!

I usually freewrite ideas as they come to me, but I look for patterns as I work and start organizing my complications into some kind of order. Let’s do an example. I’ll come up with twelve complications off the top of my head.

• Victory has to fight a smaller dragon or other fantasy monster
• Victory and Trina get lost
• A violent storm strikes
• Victory and Trina have a fight
• Victory and Trina have sex
• Somebody gets sick
• Somebody gets badly hurt
• Victory is attacked by mercenaries/assassins
• Victory loses or breaks her weapon
• Victory and Trina are separated
• Another dragon hunter attacks Flamerazer
• Someone is kidnapped

This is a pretty good representation of the range of complications I typically come up with on the first pass. Some are targeted directly at Victory, or Victory and Trina. Some will target a character, but I don’t know who yet. Some are environmental, some are emotional, and some come from the antagonist.

The latter division is the one I like to look at, because it can be tedious if all the challenges in the story are all the same type of challenges. If a reader picked up a book about fantasy hunters with swords fighting metal dragons for their magical body parts, and the whole book was filled with Victory facing only emotional struggles, they would probably feel misled. There should be swordfights and action! But it also can’t only be swordfights and action, or the book will feel very one-dimensional.

With that in mind, I’ll divide up the challenges like this:

• Victory has to fight a smaller dragon or other fantasy monster
• Victory is attacked by mercenaries/assassins
• Victory loses or breaks her weapon
• Another dragon hunter attacks Flamerazer

• Victory and Trina get lost
• A violent storm strikes
• Victory and Trina are separated

• Victory and Trina have a fight
• Victory and Trina have sex
• Somebody gets sick
• Somebody gets badly hurt
• Someone is kidnapped

The first four points have direct conflict with some other force. I included the breaking weapon here because I don’t want Victory to just drop her sword down a manhole or something. It needs to be dramatic, and probably during a fight.

Then there are some journey/environmental conflicts, which are a little sparse. Walking to a dragon’s lair should be more difficult than going through a rainstorm and maybe getting lost. Oh, it could be a magical storm, that would be cool. And some other kind of terrain challenge… we know Flamerazer lives in a den in the mountains, with a chasm, so not that. A swamp? A fire swamp? I feel like that’s been done before…

Maybe something manmade. We only have one town so far in the story. They could cross through a ruin, an old temple maybe, and I could bring in Victory’s religion somehow. A haunted temple? I’ll go with that for now.

The last five points are all emotional conflicts. (“Having sex” isn’t a complication per se, but it would complicate Victory’s journey and possibly distract her and Trina from their goal.) Getting hurt probably would happen during a combat, but the repercussions of it would happen after the combat (as they’re slowed by the injury, have to detour to find a healer, one tenderly tends to the other, etc.). It’s also the vaguest, with a lot of ‘someones,’ because it depends on Victory’s relationship with whoever the complication is happening to. I’ll probably figure out those beats as I outline and even as I write (because just because I have an outline doesn’t mean I always stick to it).

Looking over these points, I like the idea of a magical storm, I like the idea of assassins and/or a rival dragon hunter, and I feel like there’s a lot of emotional potential as well as combat potential in Victory losing her sword. I’m not sure about the kidnapping, but someone getting hurt or sick, definitely. So this is a pretty solid list.

At this point, I have all the elements I need to create the first draft of my fantasy novel outline!

Here We Go… The Outline!

I haven’t read SAVE THE CAT WRITES A NOVEL, I’ll say that straight up, but I have heard a lot about it. My outline uses the idea of “beats” that is similar to STCWAN, but mine is super simple. I hope people haven’t gotten this far expecting an incredibly detailed magic-bullet outline that will make novelling a breeze, but to be honest, everything up to this point is the real work. The outline is just putting all these pieces into one document.

My spreadsheet, which you can access as a Google Sheet, has four columns. Starting from the left:

• Chapter – Here I list chapters in numerical order. If I have title ideas I put them here, but after WIREGIRL I’ve vowed never to use chapter titles again.
• Scene – In this column, I break the chapter down into scenes. You’ll find many definitions of scene out there, but for me, it’s events that occur in one location and moves the plot forward. I usually give each scene a nickname to help with the plotting and to spark ideas.
• Details – the details of the scene, written very briefly.
• Notes – notes to myself about point of view, character issues, plot holes, or anything else I want to separate out.

That’s it! Let’s see how this looks in practice.

SCALE HUNTER Outline Part 1

In the third blog, I handled rising action and climax. I’ll put those points into the spreadsheet first.

You can see how I’m already coming up with more story questions and expanding on plot points in the notes column. One thing I didn’t mention before is that chapters should end on some sort of action. An adage I heard once (can’t remember where, unfortunately) is that if your reader is sitting up in bed at one in the morning, and they get to the end of a chapter, they should be thinking, “just one more.” That’s why in Chapter Two, I noted they need to run into trouble right away. I can’t end a chapter with “and then they started walking” or something similarly low-key.

I also start noting subplots here. I like to call them out separately so I can make sure they won’t get dropped or forgotten, and so they don’t all happen within the space of three chapters. The love story will be one subplot; probably something about Victory’s religion as well. Maybe losing her sword will be a third?

Subplots break up the action of a novel so you can control the pacing better, and they also add layers and depth to a book. Subplots, in my opinion, are the main difference between a novel and a short story (other than length). This goes back to what I said earlier about the complications all being of the same “type.” Subplots give your book dimensions and nuance, and keep it from feeling flat.

After the first two chapters, I abandoned numbering them because I don’t know how many chapters I’ll have yet, and I have to put the complications. It seems from an initial glance that the part between leaving town and reaching Flamerazer’s lair will need the most filling out, so I’ll start there.

SCALE HUNTER Outline Part 2

I’ve put in a bunch of the complications and moved some of my notes into the description in this pass.

I also named the two subplots here so I can keep track of them more easily. I’m seeing how the religion subplot could tie into communicating with Flamerazer. I also put the kidnapping in, even though that was my least favourite complication. I might change it, but I felt like there had to be something after the mercenary attack besides just killing them. A second confrontation with the mayor? This might also change if Trina is the mayor’s daughter.

You can see from this example that, for me, creating an outline does not mean detailing every single incident to the point where the writing is connect-the-dots. There is plenty of room left for creativity and expansion in the outline! One chapter is, “Some kind of deadly monsters in the tunnels.” I’ll develop that either in another outline draft or during the writing itself.

What’s Next?

Is that it, then? Is it time to start writing?

You certainly can. I have at this point, depending on how I feel about the outline. You can get a Google Sheets copy of my spreadsheet here, though it’s easy to make your own from the images posted.

I think this one still needs some work; I know from experience my chapters tend to be around 5,000 words each, which at 15 chapters makes a 75,000 word novel—a little short for fantasy. (I’m looking for 90k-110k.) I haven’t addressed the lost weapon subplot, if I use that, and also Flamerazer doesn’t have much to do in the second half. For these reasons, I’m going to write one more blog to Expand Setting, Expand Characters, and Finalize Outline.

But maybe you’re at the point where you’re ready to write. If so, I wish you all the best and I hope the journey is rewarding! Feel free to friend me on NaNoWriMo.org, and I’ll blog at you again soon.

Featured image by JOHN TOWNER on Unsplash

Image Text

Outline Part 1

Title: Scale Hunter

Chapter	Scenes	Description	Notes
Chapter One	Status Quo	Victory heads to the council meeting to try to convince them she should get the bounty. She stops to see her mentor and get a last-minute pep talk.
	The Council Meeting	The Council and mayor argue with Victory about whether she’s ready or not. In the end she convinces them, but the mayor requires her to bring a junior mage along with her—Trina.	Why? Maybe Trina’s his daughter or something? That would add complication to the fight with the mayor.
Chapter Two	Saying Goodbye	Victory bids goodbye to her siblings. They are sad.	Work in something a little more compelling.
	Subplot 1	Victory visits Trina’s shop to pick her up before they leave. There’s some backstory on how magic works, maybe a little tension between the women to set up their love story later.
	Leaving Town	The duo leave town and almost immediately run into trouble.	Rival dragon hunter blocks their path, wanting to snipe the contract? How would that work?
Chapter	End of the Journey	The women reach the mountains where Flamerazer’s lair is. Victory lowers herself into a ravine to reach the dragon’s cave.
Chapter	Battle with Flamerazer I	Victory reaches Flamerazer and attacks. They have a pitched battle, and Victory almost dies.
Chapter	Battle with Flamerazer II	Victory escapes death (perhaps with Trina’s help) and puts Flamerazer at her mercy. She’s going to kill the dragon when…	Still have to decide why Victory spares him.
Chapter	First Contact	Victory and Trina struggle to communicate with Flamerazer. In the end, they manage to talk to each other. Victory is shaken by the knowledge that dragons are intelligent.	How do they communicate? Why has no one ever done it before?
Chapter	Back to Shady Pines	After returning to Shady Pines, Victory and Trina seek an audience with the mayor. He freaks out and orders them away.	Maybe after the mayor contacts Oretoren, he summons the magical assassins to attack V & T. Maybe that’s how they know the mayor is against them, and earlier he actually acts nice.
Chapter	To the Tower	Victory and Trina journey to the tower to confront Oretoren.	Need some conflict here.
Chapter	New Magic	Victory, Trina, and Flamerazer work together to craft a new magical effect. Victory battles Oretoren (or a magical guard?) at the top of his tower, until Trina and Flamerazer can unleash their attack. Oretoren is neutralized.	Something dramatic after the spell goes off? Trina collapses?
Chapter	Denouement	Victory says goodbye to her siblings. She’s heading for the dragon territory to become an ambassador. They’re sad to see her go. She leaves with Trina for their journey to dragon territory. The end!	Maybe leave it nebulous if Trina died or not until Victory walks out to the caravan. Do they escort Oretoren?

Outline Part 2

Chapter	Scenes	Description	Notes
Chapter One	Status Quo	Victory heads to the council meeting to try to convince them she should get the bounty. She stops to see her mentor and get a last-minute pep talk.
	The Council Meeting	The Council and mayor argue with Victory about whether she’s ready or not. In the end she convinces them, but the mayor requires her to bring a junior mage along with her—Trina.	Why? Maybe Trina’s his daughter or something? That would add complication to the fight with the mayor.
Chapter Two	Saying Goodbye	Victory bids goodbye to her siblings. They are sad.	Work in something a little more compelling.
	Love Subplot 1	Victory visits Trina’s shop to pick her up before they leave. There’s some backstory on how magic works, maybe a little tension between the women to set up their love story later.
	Leaving Town	The duo leave town and almost immediately run into trouble.
Chapter Three	Rival Battle	Victory and Trina fight a rival dragon hunter and learn to work together.
	Religion Subplot 1	Victory is grieved that they fought another hunter, and asks forgiveness (?) from her goddess. Trina is curious about Victory’s faith.
	Onward	The women continue their journey, and are caught in a violent magical storm.
Chapter Four	The Storm	A magical storm batters the duo, and Trina has to use her magic to shield them.
	Love Subplot 2	Trina and Victory take shelter in a cave and learn about each other.	And there’s ONLY ONE BED!
	Tunnel Escape	Victory finds some tunnels? And follows them to get away from the storm.
Chapter Five	Monster Fight	Some kind of deadly monster in the tunnels!
	Entering the Ruins	The tunnels emerge into a ruined temple of Victory’s god.
Chapter Six	Exploring the Ruins	Victory and Trina explore the ruins and maybe fight a ghost.
	Religion Subplot 2	Victory meets another ghost, but a friendly one? A priestess?
	The Lair in Sight	The women leave the ruins and see Flamerazer’s mountain on the horizon.
Chapter Seven	End of the Journey	The women reach the mountains where Flamerazer’s lair is. Victory lowers herself into a ravine to reach the dragon’s cave.
Chapter Eight	Battle with Flamerazer I	Victory reaches Flamerazer and attacks. They have a pitched battle, and Victory almost dies.
Chapter Nine	Battle with Flamerazer II	Victory escapes death (perhaps with Trina’s help) and puts Flamerazer at her mercy. She’s going to kill the dragon when…	Still have to decide why Victory spares him.
Chapter Ten	Failure to Communicate	Victory and Trina struggle to communicate with Flamerazer.	How do they communicate? Why has no one ever done it before?
	Religion Subplot 3	Victory uses whatever she learned in the temple ruins to communicate with Flamerazer.	Could be a magical reason for the communication block.
	First Contact	In the end, they manage to talk to each other. Victory is shaken by the knowledge that dragons are intelligent.
Chapter Eleven	Back to Shady Pines	After returning to Shady Pines, Victory and Trina seek an audience with the mayor. He seems nice, but after they leave they’re attacked by mercenaries.	I think Flamerazer should give them a ride back to Shady Pines to avoid having to walk all the way there.
	Merc Attack	Mercenaries attack the women and Trina is kidnapped.
Chapter Twelve	Rescue	Victory rescues Trina.
	Love Subplot 3	Love scene?
	Going to the Tower	The women resolve to got to the tower together.	Work on this.
Chapter Thirteen	To the Tower	Victory and Trina journey to the tower to confront Oretoren.	Need some conflict here.
Chapter Fourteen	New Magic	Victory, Trina, and Flamerazer work together to craft a new magical effect. Victory battles Oretoren (or a magical guard?) at the top of his tower, until Trina and Flamerazer can unleash their attack. Oretoren is neutralized.	Something dramatic after the spell goes off? Trina collapses?
Chapter Fifteen	Denouement	Victory says goodbye to her siblings. She’s heading for the dragon territory to become an ambassador. They’re sad to see her go. She leaves with Trina for their journey to dragon territory. The end!	Maybe leave it nebulous if Trina died or not until Victory walks out to the caravan. Do they escort Oretoren?