Greetings Scribes! Welcome back to my guide for writing a novel. This week we are going to get into the meat of the story by creating a story outline and begin plotting out a character arc. If you haven’t already, I would take some time to do the writing exercises about developing a theme and creating a character before you jump into this week’s writing exercises.

Writer’s Tools for Drafting a Story Outline

As we get into this week’s exercises, I want to discuss some tools a writer can use. I believe that writers should find the tools and process that works best for them, and the best way to do that is to know themselves and try different approaches to find fit their style.

For me, I currently use Scrivener for most of my planning and drafts. Scrivener is one of the leading long-format writing apps. It helps writers plan, write, organize, research, and more. I would recommend giving it a test drive, and as a bonus, it’s one of the few apps out there that doesn’t currently require a subscription. They also have a demo version going for NaNoWriMo that lasts a little longer than the standard trial.

For this first part of making a story outline, I like to use notecards inside Scrivener. It helps to give me a visual of my story and lets me rearrange things as I see fit. So one of the things I find most useful about Scrivener is the corkboard.

The corkboard is a virtual space where you can add cards, images, summaries, and more. As you can see in the picture above, you can also color code your cards at any time, which can be invaluable when you have multiple points of view or themes running through a project.

But if you don’t want to buy new software, you can do everything in today’s writing exercise with real notecards or presentation software. I have often experimented with this process in PowerPoint, Apple’s Keynote, and Google Slides.

Using PowerPoint to Outline Your Story

If you choose your favorite presentation software to use, I would recommend ensuring you know how to get to a view where you can view all of your cards at once. In Microsoft 365’s PowerPoint, select View from the ribbon and then Slide Sorter.

Using Keynote

If you’re using Keynote, you’ll click View and Light Table.

Using Keynote’s light table to get a view of everything

The simplest is Google’s Slides. In the lower left-hand corner of the slide toolbar, you should see a symbol that looks like a 2×3 grid of cards.

Plotting Character Arcs with Scrivener

If you are new to Scrivener, the first thing I would recommend is to click on the manuscript button over in the binder (that’s all the stuff over in the left-hand column).

This should take you to the corkboard, but if for some reason it doesn’t, you can click the button that looks like it had four cards in a brown button to get there.

Of course, if you don’t think making notecards will work for you, feel free to use any method you think will work. I think the information contained here will help any writer that’s struggling with a story outline or plotting a character arc. So let’s get to the exercises!

What is a Character Arc?

To start with, we need to know what a Character Arc is so that we can plan it.

Character arc refers to the change in a character that develops over the course of a novel, film, or another type of story. It describes a protagonist’s journey through various stages of development and includes the obstacles he or she faces along the way.

So think of a character arc as how the character is going to evolve and change through your story. It is the thing that all audiences want to see, yet all people are afraid to actually do. Character arcs bring heart to stories.

Starting at the Ends – Plotting a Character Arc

Today, we’re going to keep it pretty simple by focusing on your main character’s progression through the story. In the last couple of exercises, we really focused on who the character is and what they want, now we think about how to move them and make them evolve.

When I sit down to plan things out, I like to think about how I want my character to end the story. I want them to end up embodying whatever theme I came up with for the story.

By figuring out where you want your main character to end, you have a target.  But we have to plan out some things to get our character to that point. To that extent, your character needs to start the story in an opposite way.

To make this really simple, if you want your character to overcome a fear of heights, they need to start the story scared of heights. Of course, this isn’t the most gripping of themes, but it does provide a good example of a change we’d want to see in the story.

So let’s create our first two notecards. I call these Beginning and End, but you can call them whatever you want.

On the Beginning Card, I write how my character is going to start the theme, and on the End, I write how I want him to end the story.

Your Story Outline in Two Cards

Now, these cards don’t have to be the first and last scene of your novel, but it helps to have an idea of where your character is before they go on the torturous journey you’re going to put them through.

If you have some ideas for how to establish these ideas you wrote down on the cards, feel free to add those in. For example, I might skip a line on my Beginning card and write “Bill is invited by a friend to go on a roller coaster, but he finds an excuse so he doesn’t have to go”.

I would do the same thing with the last card. I would add the line, “Bill raises his hands and screams as he rides his first roller coast” to my The End card.

With these two cards created, we have the basis of the story planned out. Of course, there is going to be a lot that goes between these cards, we are just getting started, after all, but we know knew where we start and where we end.

Card Number 3 – An Exciting Chance to Change

Our next card is another pivotal one. If you’re familiar with The Hero’s Journey, this step coinsides the Call to Adventure. Something needs to push your character on a journey to change and reach that End card you made. Like most stories, when your character goes on an adventure, the thing they are looking for isn’t always what they find, it just gets them going on their journey for change.

So for my example about Bill, something needs to get him to change his mind and go to the roller coast. Maybe after he rejects the offer to go on the roller coaster, he finds out that his crush is going as well. So on my newest card, I’m going to write, “Bill finds out that his love interest is going with everyone else. Bill changes his mind and agrees to go.”

We just want our character to get moving, but a word of warning: Your character needs to be the one making the story move forward, not the other way around. If your character isn’t given a choice, the audience doesn’t follow along as well. They don’t get invested in your characters.

Card Number 4 – A Big Test

In the middle part of your story, your character needs to face your theme and fail. This can humanize your character to the audience and help build support for them as well.

For our example, Bill needs to face a roller coaster but, ultimately, gets scared and runs away. So to get him to even think about going on one, maybe he has the chance to ride with his crush.

So on this card, I would write: “Bill gets a chance to be next to his crush on a roller coaster. After playing it cool as long as he can, he runs away as soon as its his turn.”

We aren’t done yet, but we are pushing Bill to his limits here. We must show that the character isn’t ready to change. In my creative writing, this usually happens around the middle of the story. This is the catalyst that will make our character actually embrace change because, without that change, they won’t get the thing they want.

The Road To Change

The last card we’re going to plan out today, I call the Road to Change

This is the moment we have to figure out how our character changes. Because of what happened in the Big Test, our character now wants to change. Since Bill ran off scared but he still wants time with his crush, he will need to overcome his fear.

So back to Bill. For my Road to Change card I write, because he ran away scared and still wants his crush, he decides that he WILL ride a roller coaster.

And that’s what I’ll write for now.

The Story Outline Order

We’ve added some cards, and some of them might be out of order. So if you have the ability, let’s move things around so that we have a good view of the cards.

They should be in this order:

1. The Beginning – setting up your character for a change to come.
2. An Exciting Chance to Change – The character gets the chance to change
3. The Big Test – Your character will face and fail a test.
4. The Road to Chance – The character wants to try again to change
5. The End – Your character has changed.

With these five cards, we have a solid story outline, but we are missing all the little things in between. We’ll look at those at a later date, but for now, we have a story of character change and hopefully an idea of where to start writing soon!

General Note about writing

Never, especially at this point, think that anything you put down on the screen, document, or paper has to stay that way.  You will find twists and turns you didn’t know you wanted to take during every stage of writing.  Right now, especially for NaNoWriMo, the idea is to get ideas down on paper.

Most 1st drafts should be this way, too, I’ve found.  Don’t expect your first draft to be good.  In fact, I tell my students that their first draft shouldn’t be good!  It should be the clay that will mold a good draft!

Wrap up

Now that you have a great idea for a story outline, I’d love it if you’d show me your five cards on Facebook or Twitter, or post them in the comments below!  Check back next week for the next creative writing exercise to get you crafting that novel!