WHY OUTLINING SAVES YOU FROM THE REWRITE PILE
When you sit down to outline your story before you write a single scene, something shifts. You stop thinking like a writer and start thinking like a builder. That's the whole point.
Most new writers want to jump straight into scenes and dialogue. They've got a great opening line in their head, and they just want to get on with it. But here's the problem: when you write first and figure out the story second, you end up rewriting. A lot. You'll discover halfway through chapter five that your killer couldn't have been at the scene, or that your protagonist's motivation doesn't hold up, and now you're tearing apart pages you already fell in love with.
Outlining lets you put on a few different hats before you ever put on your writer hat. Each one has a job to do, and if you do those jobs first, the writer hat gets to show up later and just write — no backtracking, no throwing chapters in the trash.
Here are the professional hats you'll need to wear:
The Brainstorming Hat — This is the first hat, and it's the loose one. You wear it when you're sketching out a few possible storylines, just to see which one has legs. This is quick work — short, messy ideas, not finished plots. The goal isn't to pick "the" story yet. The goal is to make sure whatever story you commit to actually has enough potential for twists, turns, and a full novel's worth of trouble. Don't skip this hat. Committing too early is how writers end up 40,000 words into a story that runs out of gas.
The Story Engineer Hat — Once you've picked your storyline, this hat goes on. This is where you lay out the bones of the story — what happens, in what order, and why. You can do this with short paragraphs, a bulleted list, index cards, whatever gets the structure out of your head and onto something you can look at. It won't be pretty. It's not supposed to be. This is the layer where you make sure the story actually holds together before you build anything on top of it.
The Location Scout Hat — This one comes after your story has taken shape in the engineering stage. Now you go looking for the places where all of this is going to happen. Where does the crime scene sit? What's down the street? What does the neighborhood look like? Putting in a little effort here pays off twice — it makes your story feel grounded and real, and if you've ever thought about your book being adapted for film or streaming, having real, scoutable locations gives you a head start.
Wear these three hats well, and by the time you put on the Writer hat, the heavy lifting is already done. We'll talk about the other hats you wear before the Author's Hat in our next article.
Writing a Novel in Layers
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This blog post will be a peek behind the author workflow in Layer 5 of my Novel Writing in Layers Series. I am writing Book 6, Majestic Landings, in my police procedural series, Jack Nolan Detective Series.
1. Making sure the scenes line up and flow smoothing and fill in the Synopsis box if I forgot to do it in Layer 4. I have a snapshot of the Synopsis box to the right or below. This allows me to look at my work in the Outline Mode where I can see the novel from a bird's eye view.
There are many blog posts and videos on the internet about how to write a novel. Much of the advice is general in nature and only broad-stroke tips. This video seeks to go one step further and open my last book, which is still being proofread in Layer 8, and show a work-flow demonstration.
I am in the process of finishing my 14th novel. I started out like many of you as a self-taught author who took in unorganized, uncurricularized information and had to make sense of it all. I devised this 8 Layer system to try to write a novel as efficiently as was possible. I offer it to you for whatever weight you wish to give it.
In a mystery, crime novel, or thriller, the clues and their revelations need to be planned so the story clues can remain disjointed in the beginning, but then slowly come together like a jigsaw puzzle. This keeps the reader guessing -- which is part of the mystery readers' enjoyment.
1. Who is the Ghost? Why has the Ghost arisen? Why is the Person not Resting in Peace? What is the Ghost's purpose for appearing? This is the backstory that will be dropped like breadcrumbs throughout the storyline. (Ghost-Story.png)
1. What is it about the house that's creepy?
It may help to think of yourself as more of a Town Crier.
1. Using the read aloud feature in Microsoft Word, I read the book aloud as I read along with it. This gives you an idea of how the book will sound in the reader's mind.
Although I follow a detailed outline of the story before I even start writing, each novel presents its own issues and/or problems. In this novel, I had several timelines I had to keep straight.
The second thing I do in Layer 5 is to fill out the Synopsis section. This section is in the upper right-hand side of the Scrivener platform.
Now, because I had to kind of abandon the full subplot in Layer 4, I will be finishing the subplot while I'm doing the descriptions and the synopsis box. Once I'm done with this layer, then I'll be back to discuss what happens in Layer 6!
Turn these Scrivener features off, especially if you plan to move your finished novel draft into Microsoft Word for final formatting. Because I self-publish and I need to upload in ePub and PDF manuscript, I use Word for a final proofread and formatting. I find Word is the best choice for me. The smart quotes do not translate well between Scrivener and Word. If you turn off the smart quotes, Scrivener will replace them with straight quotes and these translate better.
I'm writing my fourth novel in the Jack Nolan Detective Series. The book is still unnamed. This is Level 4 in my Eight Levels of Writing a Novel series. This first draft is down and dirty. It is the hardest lift of the entire project. At least for me, the first draft is the hardest. The characters all seem like stick figures. I find them unlikeable -- even if I liked them in the last book! Any humor doesn't seem to work. Everything just seems awkward. I have to literally force myself to keep typing. So this tip is to just keep writing. Don't check on any spellings or grammar. Don't even look back. Just keep going until you have the crime down, the main plotline down and the subplots at least in place. That will complete the first down-and-dirty draft. Every other layer will be easy compared to this one.
With bard.google.com, now it's possible to do research on the fly when writing fiction. Simply open a browser window, type in bard.google.com and start asking it questions.
Scrivener allows you to highlight text in any color you want. I use this highlighter in the Level 4 Draft to make a mental note to myself to check on things. For example: If I say that someone is coming home from a hospital in four days, I highlight this. This makes sure that this lines up with the plotline, or the crime line, or the subplot lines.
Like I mentioned earlier, I'm in the first draft of my novel and each scene begins with the same Scene Template as seen to the left.
When writing the first draft, I use the Scrivener Synopsis section in the Inspector Pane to list the clues I have dropped in that scene. Once I've finished the first draft, I can open the project in Outline View and this will give me a bird's eye view and chronology of the clues that have been dropped.
Most new writers want to get to the writing already. But in this layer of writing, all plot holes or inconsistencies will show up. Any clues that won't work when adding more suspects and motivations will show up in this layer.
n order to prevent head-hopping, which is very common among new writers, you need to be constantly reminded that each scene is in one perspective. Some writers write in first person and that's easy.
I don't know whether I am an author who is obsessed with time, or whether I use time as an element to put pressure to solve on my characters, but I have always tracked time. I find this helps me balance the story and make the story more realistic.
Location is important for two reasons. One reason is casts the scene in cement. You have chosen a stage for the scene to take place. I don't write any scene or location descriptions in this layer of writing. But I can write the action of the scene in context of a location.
Write forward only. Don't look back.
This is the second step in writing a new fiction novel. In the first step, I start out with writing four potential storylines in FreeMind, which is a mind mapping software. 
Most new writers want to start writing scenes and dialogue. They want to just get on with it. But the dark side of working this way is that when you find out your clues won't work when you need to add a new suspect, you will have written two chapters already. My process will save you from writing for the trashcan.