Episode Twenty-Four: How a Reverse Outline Can Help Fiction Writers Revise Their Novels

Written By Olivia Bedford

Did you know that outlines aren't just for planning your novel? You can actually use an outline to revise as well, and it might just become your revision secret weapon.

This episode is your quick and dirty introduction to reverse outlining. A reverse outline is a versatile tool that you can use to make revision less confusing and overwhelming.

Here’s what you’ll learn in this episode:

  1. The definition of a reverse outline

  2. Why reverse outlines are particularly powerful for pantsers 

  3. How to use a reverse outline for revision 

  4. How to use a reverse outline as your revision plan

Sign up for my FREE revision masterclass and finally finish your book. You can learn more about the class here: https://ohwrevisionclass.com/

Ready to register? Choose your session and sign up here:

Choose the session that works for you and I’ll see you there! Can’t make any of them? Register anyway and I’ll send you the replay as soon as we’re done!

If you show up live OR watch the replay within 24 hours, you’ll get my book map template for free!

Here are the resources mentioned in this episode:


You can listen in your favorite podcast player here.

Thanks for listening, keep writing, and keep getting better one word at a time!

Transcript

Olivia Bedford (00:00)

Did you know that outlines aren't just for planning your novel? You can actually use an outline to revise as well, and it might just become your revision secret weapon.

Now, for all my pantsers, don't run away. This is not the kind of outline that you're used to. Even if you totally pantsed your draft with no plan whatsoever, a reverse outline can be exactly what you need to take that messy draft and turn it into a story that actually works for readers.

And you can do that without losing all of the creativity and joy that defines your process. Let's dive in.

Before we jump in with the content of today's show, I have a quick announcement. Next week, I am running a free masterclass called Finally Finish Your Book. And it is going to be all about the different mistakes that I see writers making that keep them stuck in revision. And whether you are someone who has just started revising your first draft and you want to avoid these mistakes in the future, or you are someone who has been stuck revising for months, if not years, this class is for you.

I am going to give you action steps, techniques that you can use to get unstacked and move your revisions forward. The class is completely free. There are four different times on four different days. So hopefully you can find one that works for you. I am even running a session on Saturday, May 23rd. So if you are someone who can never make weekdays work, that one was designed with you in mind. And if none of the times were for you, it's still okay. Register and I will send you the replay as soon as we're done.

The class is completely free. I'm going to make it actionable and so worth your time. And I hope to see you there on one of those four days. Again, the link to register is going to be wherever you are watching the show. And I hope to see you in one of those classes real soon.

Now on to today's show. Welcome to episode 24 of the Better Writer podcast. Today, I'm talking about reverse outlines.

And you might be wondering, why is Olivia, who has said she's a pantser, talking about outlines? And the answer is a reverse outline is nothing like the outlines you use to plan. A reverse outline is a tool of analysis and revision. And honestly, it is one of my favorite tools. I think it is so underrated and it is an incredibly powerful way to start your revision process. So today I want to talk about what a reverse outline is, how you can use it, and why it is such a powerful tool for revision, especially if you are someone who wrote your draft without outlining it first, AKA all my pantsers out there.

A reverse outline might be exactly what you need to bridge the gap between the messy draft you're starting with and the polished, readable final novel that you're hoping to create. All right, let's dive in. So first off, what is a reverse outline? A reverse outline is an outline of your already written draft. And unlike the outlines that people create at the beginning of the process, the reverse outline is only summarizing what already exists. It is not a tool of planning. So you are not trying to imagine your second draft when you create the reverse outline. That part will come later and we'll talk about that in a little bit. But you are merely documenting what already exists on the page. And the power there is that it gives you an opportunity to be brutally honest about what you created in your drafting process. 

And let's be real. Pantsers sometimes need that honesty because what you thought you wrote, what you thought you put on the page may not actually exist. And that can be a hard pill to swallow. And that's why we need to get a little bit of objectivity added to our revision process. And a reverse outline is a great way to do that because when you strip it back and we really focus on what are the plot events in the story, how does my character actually demonstrate change in the story?

When you take away all of the fluff, all of the pretty language and imagery, et cetera, what actually happens? What do readers actually observe? When you can answer those questions, you are going to have a lot of insight into what is actually happening in your story at a structural level that you might not have otherwise.

And if you are someone who has avoided outlines because you didn't want it to stifle your creativity, that documentation aspect is key. Because I think for a lot of people, the reason why outlines don't work for them is because their creativity is unleashed in the drafting process. And you can't create something from the nothingness of an outline. You need to be in a scene to figure out who your characters are. You need to be in the conflict to figure out what is going to happen next, and that is perfectly valid. The problem that often happens though is that new ideas are going to spring up out of nowhere. And as a pantser you likely have not seeded your conflicts properly, you may not be resolving your conflicts properly. You might have characters or subplots that pop up out of nowhere or disappear.

And those are things that you are going to need to address with an in-depth structural revision. And those things are going to show up in a reverse outline. And that is why it is so powerful for those messy writers who eschewed outlines in the beginning. It's coming for you now, but it's coming in a more supportive form that is hopefully going to empower your revisions, not stifle them because it is all about expanding and refining what's already there instead of trying to start from scratch with an outline that you're creating on the front end.

And ultimately, the goal of that outline is to make sure that your book works for readers. I talked a couple episodes about putting readers first, and this is one of the ways that you as a pantser can do that, because you might not feel super motivated to summarize your story in an outline form, but it is going to help you so much in understanding your story where your story is not working at a structural level where you can make your story better for readers. And I think for pantsers, I honestly think this is an essential step. There are many ways to approach a reverse outline. They do not all need to look the same, but I do think that you at some level need to get clarity on how your story is unfolding. There are different ways to do it, but you do need to get that clarity so you can make sure that your story actually makes sense. All right. Now on to the how. How do you create a reverse outline?

It is super simple. You skim your story and you summarize each scene. That's it. And obviously there is a lot of work that goes into that, you know, that two step process where, you know, if you're skimming 700 pages, that is going to take you some time, but you are not doing an in-depth read of your story here. You are not getting into the nitty gritty. We are not editing anything at this point. All you are doing is skimming and summarizing as quickly as you can because the skimming and the summarizing and the making of your reverse outline is not the point. The point is not to walk away with a reverse outline. The point is you create a reverse outline so that you can analyze it and work with it and revise from it. So you want to get through that skimming and summarizing step as quickly as you can. And, you know, honestly, I think it's one of the things where you put on junk TV or maybe music if you cannot work with TV on. I like to treat reality TV like my coffee shop sometimes. That is a story for another day. But you put on your music and you rock out and you try to get through that story as quickly as you can, whether that is a couple days or a couple of weeks, whatever that is for you. We want to get that part out of the way so you can do the parts that come next. And again, at this point, you might be wondering, why would I take the time to summarize my entire novel after I just spent all that time writing it? And again, it comes back to that idea of getting clarity and getting objectivity. 

And if you think about it rationally, novels are big. They are complex. It is hard to hold the entire story in your head at one time. And it is going to be so much easier to work with a condensed version compared to trying to hold that whole big thing in your head at one time. And I work a lot with fantasy and fantasy romance. So some of the manuscripts that I'm seeing are 400 pages or 500 pages or more.

I'm talking manuscript formatting, double spaced, et cetera. But that's a lot to work with. However you formatted it, that is a lot of text. Versus the longest outline that I have seen that was actually an outline was 17 pages. So you can imagine on one hand, know, trying to wade through four to 500 pages versus 17. And 17 is still quite long for an outline, but can you imagine how much less there is to deal with when you have 17 pages of bullet points versus four to 500 pages of prose with all the dialogue and descriptions and everything else. Because again, our reverse outline is giving us clarity on the plot. So we can figure that stuff out first before we wade into the descriptions and the figurative language and all of the stuff that needs to get fine tuned at that level. So I'm not skipping those things. We are not ignoring them forever. We are ignoring them for right now in our first round of revisions. And I have talked about this before on this show, but I will say it again. 

Revision and editing are two separate steps. We need to revise first, then we can edit. ⁓ If you have not heard me talk about this before, editing is fixing typos, fixing grammar, fixing descriptions. ⁓ Editing is fine tuning your dialogue versus revision is all that big plot level stuff making sure the conversation actually needs to be there before we go in and try to make sure that your characters are, you know, engaging in witty banter the whole time. So we want to handle revision first, then we can move to editing later. And reverse outlining is a great way to force yourself to focus on revision first and then save editing for later. Because if you're only working with that 17 page summary, there are no descriptions and no dialogue and no grammar issues for you to worry about, as long as you can force yourself to ignore them during that summarizing and skimming phase, which is why we skim and why we don't do a deep read.

And it is so important to make sure that you have forced yourself to actually revise because that is one of the biggest mistakes that I see people making in revision. They jump straight to editing and they actually skip revision completely. I've definitely talked about this before as well, but I think part of the reason that people skip that step is because it feels so complicated and overwhelming. How do you figure out if your conflicts are working? How do you figure out if your character arc is effective? And that is going to be so difficult when you're working with 500 pages at a time, but if you're working with five pages or 10 pages, or even 15 pages of bullet points, it is going to be so much more accessible to just scan that list, see how your character is changing or not, and then move on to the next step, which is actually figuring out how to fix it. Because the reverse outline is not just there to be read. It is meant to be worked with as a living document. This is what I teach in my program, Reader Ready Revisions. We use that reverse outline to analyze the story, to see what is or is not working at that structural level. Then we revise the reverse outline first.


So instead of rewriting 500 pages, we rewrite the 15 pages. All of your planned changes to conflicts, character arcs, structure, etc. They get added to the outline first.

I think that's where the real magic of the reverse outline happens because it is going to make that revision process so much more accessible because you get to test out your edits on the condensed version without completely rewriting your entire novel. It becomes a playground, a safe space to experiment and think of different changes. And I think it is just an excellent way to make revision feel doable, make it feel possible, and make it feel less overwhelming because you're not worried about the 500 page version. You're worried about 50 bullet points or less, depending on how long and how complex your story is. Another beautiful thing you can do with that reverse outline is get feedback on the revised version of your reverse outline. Or if you're completely stuck, get feedback on the original version of your reverse outline.

That is another thing that happens in Reader Ready revisions. I critique everyone's outline after they've revised it so that I can make sure they are on the right track before they have changed a single word in their actual novel. So they are getting all of my step-by-step guidance on how to analyze the reverse outline, how to revise it. Then I come in, I give feedback, I help them make it even better. Then they start rewriting their stories. And I know, it sounds like a lot of pre-work, and it is but when you sit down to actually rewrite your story, you are going to know exactly what to change. You have already tested out those changes, gotten feedback on those changes, and you are going to know that the changes you're making are effective. Will there potentially be other changes that need to be made down the road? Yes, we are not trying to fix everything in one go, but you can accomplish so much more when you've already gone through a round or two of revisions on just the outline again, it's only 10 pages so those revisions are going to happen a lot faster. ⁓ So that is where the magic happens. 

That's why I love reverse outlines as both a writer and an editor. I will also note I do also offer outline critiques as a one-off service. You don't have to be in reader-ready revisions. Obviously, I want all of you to get the full benefit of the program, ⁓ but if you are a plotter especially, you don't have a draft, you are planning to write a story, and right now all you have is an outline,

Get feedback first, especially if you are someone out there who hates revising. Get feedback on your outline before you draft your story. Let me tell you if there are significant gaps or structural issues before you start writing, and then you can avoid some of the revision pain. And again, this is especially for plotters. If you hate revising, get feedback first. It doesn't have to be from me. There are definitely other editors out there who offer this service, but you don't have to wait until you have a full draft to get feedback. And it's going to be lot more affordable to get feedback on just the outline.

So get feedback on your outlines. Whether it is a reverse outline or just an outline outline, get feedback. Make sure it's always working before you do all the work of writing or rewriting your story.

Alright, back to reverse outlining for revision. Once you've made all of your planned changes to your reverse outline, that reverse outline now becomes a checklist of revision tasks. And this is another one of the things that I think is so magical about a reverse outline. Now, all of your changes are planned and you just check them off one by one. I generally recommend using a different font or different color so you can know what is your original outline versus what is the planned changes. Or if you're doing more of a book map style, you might have a column tracking what's done or what's not. ⁓ There are many, many different ways to approach a reverse outline. It is not one size fits all at all. 

And you can then jump around in your outline if you want to. You don't have to sit down and revise your story chapter by chapter in chronological order. You can start at the end, you can start in the middle, you can start wherever you want, you can bounce around as the energy takes you throughout your revision process because you've already done the work to figure out what needs to change. And now you're just worried about execution. And I think that is another reason why a reverse outline makes revision less overwhelming. Because you are separating out the deciding and the doing. You're no longer trying to build the plane as you fly it. You're no longer trying to figure out what is going to fix my entire conflict arc while you're rewriting one little bit of it in chapter three. You're separating out the deciding and the doing, and that makes execution easier, more accessible, and less overwhelming overall. It is going to add some work on the front end, but I think ultimately it saves you time. And your outline is never set in stone. 

You are not making a binding commitment. And that is why I tell people to make a reverse outline that is digital. This is not the time to pull up the notebook as much as I love them, because you can make changes as you go. You can have new ideas and edit your reverse outline. But again, you're just testing out those edits in the outline version first, then we go apply them to the rest of the manuscript. And again, it just makes everything easier and less overwhelming because you now have this mini condensed version of your novel to play with before you go in and start making changes to all 500 pages or more of your story. 

All right, that was your quick and dirty introduction to reverse outlining. I hope you see how powerful and how magical this tool can be. If you want to learn more about reverse outlining, I'm going to link to a blog post I wrote a couple of years ago that has some additional tips and guidance on how to actually go about creating your reverse outline. So check that out if you think it will be helpful.

If you want a head start on your reverse outline, come to my master class next week because I'm giving away my book map template for free. This is a spreadsheet that is designed to help you break down every element of your novel so you can get a really in-depth view of what's happening in your story. I love book maps. I create them for all of my developmental editing and manuscript evaluation clients. And many of my students in reader ready revisions have loved this template as well. All you need to do to get that free template is show up to my master class live or watch the replay within 24 hours, I want to be inclusive of all time zones. So sign up. The link is going to be wherever you are watching or listening to the show. And I hope I get to see you at one of those classes soon.

Thank you so much for listening to another episode of the Better Writer Podcast. If this episode resonated with you or unlocked something in your revision process, please, please, please share it with a friend. My goal with this show is to reach as many writers as possible, and you can help by simply texting a friend or sharing it on social media. And if you do post about it, please feel free to tag me. I'm at Olivia Helps Writers, and it will literally make my day if I get that notification.

Thank you so much for listening. Have a wonderful day. Keep writing and keep getting better one word at a time. See ya.

Olivia Bedford

Olivia Bedford is a developmental editor, writer, and educator. She loves all things fantastical—whether that’s world-shaking epic fantasy, sweeping historical fiction, or heart-melting romance. Her greatest love is helping writers discover their voices and make their work the best it can be.

https://oliviahelpswriters.com
Next

Episode Twenty-Three: 5 Questions Fiction Writers Must Answer Before Revising