K. M. Weiland on Outlining Your Book Backwards

K.M. Weiland lives in make-believe worlds, talks to imaginary friends, and survives primarily on chocolate truffles and espresso. She is the IPPY and NIEA Award-winning and internationally published author of the Amazon bestsellers Outlining Your Novel and Structuring Your Novel, as well as Jane Eyre: The Writer’s Digest Annotated Classic. She writes historical and speculative fiction from her home in western Nebraska and mentors authors on her award-winning website Helping Writers Become Authors.

When you think of outlines, you generally think organization, right? The whole point of outlining, versus the seat-of-the-pants method, is to give the writer a road map, a set of guidelines, a plan. It only makes sense that an outline should be simple, streamlined, and linear. An outline should put things in order. So you’re probably going to think I’m crazy when I tell you that sometimes the most effective outlines are those that are constructed backwards.

When I begin outlining a story, I usually have only a handful of scenes in mind. My job during the outlining period is to connect the dots between those scenes. I have to create a plausible series of events, a chain reaction that will cause each scene to domino into the one following. But linking scenes isn’t always easy to do, if you don’t know what it’s supposed to be linking to. As any mystery writer can tell you, you can’t set the clues up perfectly until you know whodunit. Often, it’s easier and more productive to start with the last scene in a series and outline your book backwards.

For example, in my work-in-progress The Deepest Breath, which I’m currently outlining, I know that one of my POV characters is going to be waylaid and injured seriously enough to knock him out of commission for several weeks. However, I don’t yet know how or why he was injured. I could work my way toward this point in a logical, linear fashion, starting at the last known scene (when he meets another character at a dinner party), and building one plot point upon another, until I reach my next known point (when he’s injured). But because my chain of events is based on what’s already behind me (the dinner party), more than what’s away off in the future (the waylaying), my attempts to bridge the two are likely to be less than cohesive.

By the time I work my way to the waylaying, my progression of events could have led me to something entirely different—and squeezing in the waylaying becomes a gymnastic effort instead of a natural flowing of plot. Plus, the fact that I have no idea what’s supposed to happen right after the dinner party means that I’m likely to invent random and inconsequential events to fill space until I figure out what needs to happen.

My solution?

You got it: work backwards.

Starting at the end of the plot progression—the waylaying—I start asking questions that will lead me to discover the plot point immediately preceding. How was he hurt? Where was he hurt? Why did the bad guys choose to do this to him? Why was he only injured, instead of killed? How is he going to escape? If I know these things, I’ll know how I need to set the scene up, and if I know how to set the scene up, I’ll know what scene to put in the previous slot in the outline. Eventually, I can work myself all the way back to the dinner party. Suddenly, I have a complete sequence of events, all of which are cohesive, linear, and logical enough to make my story tight and intense.

Facing the wide, blank unknown of a story can be scary. Putting one foot in front of the other, when you’re unsure of the terrain, can be overwhelming. But when you can work your way backwards from a known plot point, finding your way becomes as simple as filling in the blanks. And the result is a story that falls into order like a row of expertly placed dominoes.

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Jill here. 

Ever try outlining backward? Share in the comments below or feel free to ask questions.
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