This is just a guideline for outlining a story.

Target Audience: Decide who your target audience will be: men, women, children, teens

Genre: Decide what genre your story will be: sci-fi, mystery, horror, fantasy, etc.

Title: Decide on a title for your story! Sometimes choosing a title before you begin can give you a hint of what the story will be about and what direction it should go.

Length: Decide the approximate length you want your story to be.

Planning: Think about your story. What is it about? Who is in it? What happens?

Description: Write a short description of what your story is about.

Lay it out: Write individual ideas for your story on filing cards. Make sure you have a separate card for each character and each scene. As you come up with more details you can just add them to the cards.

NOTE: Personally, I prefer to lay my characters and scenes out by using a flowchart. Each character and scene gets their own box and the boxes can be moved around, enlarged, etc.

Rearrange: If you write your book in chapters, or sections, it is much easier to rearrange parts of it if you need to. Something that happens in chapter 12 may have more impact if it happened in chapter 10, or you may have introduced a character in chapter 3 and then you realized you won’t need him until chapter 14.

Characters: Who will be in your story? List all of your characters and give a brief description of their intended role in the story.

Location: Where is your story taking place? Describe the location, weather, time of day, etc. If you tell us about the places and things, we can see them as clearly as you do.

Plot: What is going to happen in your story? The things that happen in a story are called the plot. How does your story begin? What happens next? How does it end? Think it out, otherwise things could happen in the wrong order. You have to be at a place before you can leave it.

Conflict: Conflict is the key element to all stories: It sparks the readers' interest and holds their attention throughout the story.

Complications (Rising Action): The story develops through a series of incidents or situations that add to the complexity of the story.

Crisis: Crisis is the turning point where the fortunes of the protagonist either improve or decline.

Climax: The point in the story where the protagonist’s problems are solved, where the reader’s curiosity is satisfied and his/her fears allayed and expectations fulfilled. The climax is the highest point of action in the story. Have you decided how, when, and where the problem will reach its peak?

Resolution: Have you decided how the problem will be solved and by whom?

Anticlimax: The part that comes after the climax. Once the climax is past, the reader’s interest sags, so minimize, or eliminate further explanations and conclusions.

Theme: What does it all mean? Define the theme/moral of your story in one sentence. Theme is the main or central idea in a story. The theme is the message of the story. Theme is different than plot and a story may have several themes, explicit and implicit.

Where and When: Decide on a setting and time for your story.

Conflict: Determine what the conflict of the story will be. Do you have a specific problem the hero/heroine has to solve?

Character Chart: Make a character chart describing each of your characters.

Character Sketch: Who will be the main character in your story? Write a one-page description of this person including physical attributes and personality as well as who his/her friends are, what he/she does, etc. Be as descriptive as possible and to try to create a good sense of the main character.

Characteristics: Try to include personal human qualities such as bravery, jealousy, leadership, cowardice, gentleness, cruelty, kindness.

Physical Features: Such items as having a big nose, beauty or muscular strength are not really characteristics but physical features. These should also be included in the character chart.

The End: Decide how you want your story to end.

Twists: Decide how and where you will use surprises and twists in your story.

Clues: Decide how and where you will plant clues or red herrings(false clues) in the story.

Plot: The arrangement of a series of incidents or events which lead, by cause and effect, from the opening of the story to the climax. The story itself. Everything that takes us from point A to point Z. Do you have a rough outline of each scene and chapter?

Viewpoint: Decide on a specific point of view from which to tell your story.

Flashbacks: Decide when and where you might be able to use flashbacks.

Foreshadowing: Decide when and where you might be able to drop some hints of things to come?

Setting: How do your surroundings (weather and location) affect you and other people around you? How does the setting of the story set the mood and tone and can it also serve as a metaphor for the story itself?

Local Colour: If the regional setting, landscape, dialect and customs are exploited for their inherent interest and oddity, it is often referred to as "local colour".

Atmosphere: A cloud of feelings with which you envelop your story. For example, you might use secret panels, bats and cobwebs to create a mysterious or spooky atmosphere. You might use sunshine, flowers and music to create a happy or romantic one and falling leaves and rain to create a sad one. Have you planned the types of atmosphere you will need to use to create the moods you hope to achieve?

Mood: The feeling aroused in a reader by the events in a story. The feeling may be of pity, terror, joy, sadness, excitement etc. A story does not have a mood; it has an atmosphere, which can create a mood in the reader. Only the reader experiences the mood. Decide on the mood or moods you want to create in your reader?

Suspense: A tense feeling of waiting or expectation aroused by various means; hinting at actions to come, putting the hero in danger etc. A story does not have suspense, it creates the feeling in the reader.

Dialogue: Decide what type of dialogue you will use. Normal, Slang, Dialect, Formal

Action: Have you planned action that will keep your story fast moving and exciting?

Imagery: Use imagery to try to involve the five senses.

Conclusion: Make certain the conclusion of the story is believable.

Ending: Make certain all loose ends are tied up.