How to Outline a Book You’ll Actually Finish

Let’s be honest about something: most books don’t die in the first chapter. They die around chapter six, when the writer realizes they don’t actually know what happens next.

I’ve watched this happen to talented authors again and again—not because they lacked the skill to write the book, but because they sat down to write without a map. And writing 80,000 words without a map is a lot like driving cross-country without GPS. You might get somewhere eventually. You’ll also waste a lot of gas.

An outline isn’t about killing your creativity. It’s about protecting it—giving your story or your message a skeleton sturdy enough to hold everything you want to say.

Why Outlining Matters More Than You Think

Some writers resist outlining because they’re afraid it’ll make the process feel mechanical, or that it’ll box in their creativity. I understand that fear. But here’s what I’ve found to be true, both in my own writing and in coaching other authors through theirs: a loose outline actually creates more freedom, not less. When you know where you’re headed, you can take detours, follow a good idea down a rabbit trail, and trust yourself to find your way back—because you know where “back” is.

Without an outline, every writing session starts with the exhausting question: “What happens now?” With one, you start with: “Okay, today I’m writing the scene where she finally confronts her sister.” That’s a completely different, and far less draining, way to sit down at your keyboard.

A Simple Outlining Process That Works for Fiction or Nonfiction

You don’t need index cards covering your living room floor (though if that’s your process, more power to you). Here’s a straightforward path:

1. Start with your one-sentence pitch. Before you outline a single chapter, you need your elevator pitch—the one sentence that captures what your book is actually about. For fiction, that’s your core story arc. For nonfiction, it’s your core message. If you can’t say it in one sentence, you’re not ready to outline yet; you’re ready to continue thinking about it.

2. Identify your major turning points. For fiction, this means the handful of moments where everything shifts—the inciting incident, the midpoint twist, the crisis, the climax, the resolution. You don’t need all fifty scenes mapped yet. You need the five or six load-bearing walls.

For nonfiction, this means your major sections or arguments—the three to seven big ideas that build toward your book’s core message, in the order that will actually persuade or help your reader.

3. Fill in the middle loosely. Once you have your turning points or major sections, sketch in what connects them. This is where a simple chapter-by-chapter list works well—even just one sentence per chapter describing what happens or what’s covered. You’re not writing scenes yet. You’re building scaffolding.

4. Leave room to change your mind. An outline is a living document, not a contract. Some of the best moments in a manuscript come from discoveries you make while writing—a character who surprises you, an example that suddenly clicks. A good outline holds the shape of your book loosely enough that you can still follow inspiration when it shows up.

What If You're a “Discovery Writer”?

Some writers genuinely do better discovering the story as they go—what’s sometimes called “pantsing,” writing by the seat of your pants (although I prefer the term Steven James uses: organic writing). If that’s truly your process and it’s worked for you before, I’m not going to tell you to abandon it.

But if you’ve started and stalled on this manuscript more than once, I’d gently suggest that at least a loose outline—even just those five or six major turning points—might be the missing piece. You can always write in a discovery style within a loose structure. What tends to sink manuscripts isn’t having too much structure. It’s having none at all.

In fact, as a fiction writer, I tend to be somewhere in the middle on this spectrum. I seem to write best when I have a loose outline—I need to know where I’m going, but I also need to leave space in between the major plot points to write the scenes organically. If I write too detailed of an outline, I seem to lose all my motivation and the joy of the creative process wanes.

Your Outline Doesn’t Need to Be Perfect. It Just Needs to Exist.

If you take one thing from this post, let it be this: a rough outline you’ll actually use beats a perfect outline you spend three months perfecting instead of writing. Get the shape of your book down, however messy, and let the outline serve you rather than the other way around.

If you’d like a second set of eyes on your outline before you dive into drafting—or help building one from scratch—that’s exactly the kind of work I love doing with authors. Go to emberinkpress.com and book an obligation-free, no-cost call, and let’s talk about your book.

Dona Watson, the founder of Ember & Ink Press, combines 40 years of writing, editing, and bestselling ghostwriting experience with full publishing services to help faith-driven authors craft and publish books that impact God’s kingdom.