If you’ve already developed some notes for your MC and antagonist, odds are you’ve already got a few plot points worked out in your mind. This is where we put those into the beginnings of a little road map to set us on our way. The best part is, you needn’t worry too hard about the permanence of any of these details because the wonderful thing about writing is that if you need to adjust any of these details at any time later, you can do so.

At this point, I will either cut up a couple pieces of paper into eighths or just grab some cue cards and start writing the events out individually to be arranged into order.

You don’t necessarily need to rack your brain too hard at this stage to fill out every twist and turn in the plot ahead of you, but it is certainly a way to organize the ideas you already have.

Some especially important points to include are the inciting incident, any setbacks your MC might face, events leading up to the climax, the climax, and the denouement/resolution.

Even if the only points that you have are the inciting incident and the climax, that at least will give you the starting and ending point of your overarching storyline. That right there is the spine of your skeleton. The more impactful it is, the more powerful your story will be.

If you are the sort of writer that relies heavily on a stroke of inspiration to write, be sparing with your outline points, or you may rob yourself of the excitement for later by relishing too much in it now. You know yourself better than anyone, so do what works for you. If you are a new writer, this is a great time to experiment with different techniques to really get a feel of the different approaches. The more you practice, the more you write, the sooner you will find your rhythm, and your voice. Whatever your method is, just remember that it is good writerly discipline to sit down and write whether you feel like it or not. Writing is hard, but the more you do it, the easier it gets.

After years of pantsing it, I have found that even the most basic outline has turned a low finish rate into actual finished pieces. And that goes for everything. Short stories, my novel, nonfiction articles, you name it. If I don’t have an idea of where a story needs to go, I won’t even waste my time writing it because I’ll just be ambling through the woods aimlessly. I have so many more stories to write that I DO know where they will take me. So, when I have a really fascinating new idea for a story, but I have no idea what the start and endpoints of that story are, I write detailed notes for all of the ideas that I do have, and save it in a folder for later. This way, if I am struck with a random epiphany for any one of those stories in limbo, I can add that to my notes and then once I have enough of an idea of what I want to do with that story overall, I can begin working on it.

And if you’ve made it this far, now it’s time to do just that. Sure, you could spend months or even years on world building or fleshing out all of your character histories, but there are so many elements to your story to be discovered along the way. Start your draft now, and you can come back to all of those details in the revision process.

So what are you waiting for? Get writing.