Episode Thirty-Nine: Reverse Outlines Don’t Work Without This…
It's no secret that I love reverse outlining. I genuinely think that a reverse outline is the best revision tool for pantsers or anyone else who is just starting out and has a messy draft.
However, I also know that there might be a writer out there who has tried reverse outlining in the past and wanted it to fix their messy draft, but it didn't work.
If you’re the writer who tried and gave up on reverse outlines, you might think that reverse outlines just don't work, or maybe that they just don't work for you. And that is possible - I will never say that any strategy is one size fits all - but it's also possible that you were missing the two things that make a reverse outline successful: a standard to evaluate that reverse outline with and a strategy for turning that outline into action.
In this episode of the Better Writer Podcast, I’m exploring the biggest reverse outline mistake writers make and the two elements that are critical for turning a basic summary into a powerful revision tool.
If you’re thinking about giving reverse outlining a second try OR you’re thinking about trying it for the first time, this episode is the perfect starting point!
If you want my full revision checklist - a step-by-step overview of the entire four phase revision process I teach my clients - for FREE, click here.
You can listen in your favorite podcast player here.
Thanks for listening, keep writing, and keep getting better one word at a time!
Transcript
Please Note: This transcript was automatically generated and only lightly edited.
Olivia (00:00)
It's no secret that I love reverse outlining. I talk about reverse outlines all the time. And I genuinely think that they are an excellent revision tool for many, many writers, especially pantsers or anyone else who is just starting out and has a messy draft. However, I know that there might be someone out there who has tried reverse outlining in the past, they wanted it to fix their messy draft, and it didn't work and you got stuck and you gave up. And you might think that reverse outlines just don't work, or maybe they just don't work for you. And that's possible. It could be true that you are just not a reverse outline type of person. I will never say that any strategy is one size fits all. But it's also possible that you were reverse outlining incorrectly. And specifically that you were missing two key things that are required to actually make a reverse outline helpful and successful as a revision tool.
So today I'm going to talk about what that mistake is, what you are probably missing, so that if you decide to try reverse outlining in the future or if you've never tried it before and want to give it a try, you'll know exactly what you need so you can be successful and actually get the most out of this tool. Let's get started.
Welcome to episode 39 of the Better Writer Podcast. Today I'm talking about why reverse outlines don't always work. And I am not talking to the person who doesn't need to reverse outline. That would be any plotters out there. If you have a super solid outline that you stuck to, you probably don't need to re-outline your story. And if you're thinking that you want to try it, you may be procrastinating on work that actually needs to get done. Sorry for the call out so early into this episode, but I am the queen of finding things that are productive. That was in the air quotes. If you're not watching this video and ignoring the work that actually needs to get done, so my plotter friends who have really good outlines and really stuck to them. You don't need a reverse outline. I'm probably not the writing coach for you either, unless you want to talk about how you know scene writing or something like that. But this is not that episode. This is not about the people who don't need a reverse outline. This episode is about the people who know that they need something like a reverse outline. They know that they need to figure out what is going on in their draft. They know that they need a tool for assessing structure. And so they tried a reverse outline and it didn't work. And they got stuck in revision and they gave up on it.
And I obviously, don't know every situation out there, but I would guess that you were reverse outlining in the wrong way. And I'm not talking about you made your reverse outline incorrectly. As long as you summarized your story in some way, shape, or form, you did your reverse outline correct.
I'm talking about what comes after. And that is the part that people miss. A reverse outline is simply a means to an end. It is a tool that we use in our revisions. But you actually have to know what to do with that tool in order for it to be successful. The mere act of summarizing your story may make you realize something about your book that you didn't know before. But for most writers, The mere act of summarizing is not enough to then tell you what you need to do next. That is just the first step.
And honestly, it's barely even a step, it's really the preparation for the actual revision. So creating the reverse outline by itself is just you getting ready to do the work. It's not the work itself. And that I think is what a lot of people get wrong. They think that the reverse outline is supposed to magically unlock everything, and it doesn't.
You need two things on the back end to make that reverse outline successful, or you just have a summary of your story. And those two things that you need on the back end are a clear set of standards that you are actually going to use to evaluate that outline, and you need a revision strategy that is going to turn the outline into action in your draft.
And that's what today is all about. Those two things. The standards that you are evaluating yourself on and the strategy that you're using to actually turn the outline into revisions that show up on the page.
All right, let's talk about number one, the standard that you're going to evaluate yourself on. And I want to be super clear. This is not a rubric. It is not something that you are going to Google and find on the internet because it is personal to you and your book.
There are obviously going to be common things that we want to look for in all fiction stories. And there are going to be common things we want to look for across all books in your specific genre and subgenre. But your specific goals and what you need to do in your story is not going to look identical to the person sitting next to you in a writing class who's writing a completely different genre.
So what I'm talking about right now is not checking off the Save the Cat beat sheet and making sure that all of your beats fall into the right place. Unless, of course, save the cat is helpful for you, but I am not talking about choosing a system and checking your outline against that system. I am talking about having a personal understanding of what your book needs to do to be successful and reach the readers that you are trying to reach. So for me and what I teach when I'm working with writers is that first off, we need to know what we are trying to create. You have to know your genre at this stage of the process because the type of conflict that works in a romance is different from the type of conflict that works in a thriller, is different from the type of conflict that works in a contemporary middle grade story. Those types of books are very, very different. And you have to have an understanding of the expectations of your genre, the standard tone and conflict and structure and you know character arc of your genre. What are the expectations for the type of book that you are trying to create? We have to know that first.
That is the foundation of the standard that you are setting for yourself. Then you have to figure out what kind of experience are you trying to give your readers? Are you more on the cozy fun side of your genre or are you on the dark side of your genre? Sometimes that is going to be determined by your subgenre itself, but there's always variation within that. Are you leaning more literary or are you going very simple, accessible? Those are not good or bad. I'm not putting a value judgment on either. There is room for both, but you need to know where you want to fall and that is going to change the type of person that you're trying to reach, the type of book that you're ultimately writing.
This is also a good time to start thinking about your publishing plan. Do you need to wrap up your book and give it at least a satisfying enough ending that you can pitch it as a standalone with series potential if you're trying to get an agent? Because right now it is a difficult market for selling a series. Or are you self-publishing and you want to end with a cliffhanger because you know that is gonna get people clicking your pre-order link, which you control because you're self-publishing and you don't have to worry about whether you get a three book deal or not. You know the series is coming out as long as you sustain the motivation to write it and you know actually revise it and get it done.
So I don't believe that publishing paths should determine everything that you do in your story, but there are a few key decisions that are definitely going to be influenced by your intentions as a writer and your goals for how you're going to get your book into readers' hands.
And speaking of readers, they really should be at the center of this vision. This is not just about, I want to write a fun, amazing book. And yes, you should be having fun, you should want to hold yourself to a high standard of excellence, but above all, you should be thinking about the things that readers want from you. What kind of conflict, what kind of characters, what kind of experience are they looking for in your book?
There is no right or wrong answer. It's just what's true for you, your book, and your specific goals.
And so when you are thinking about your standard for yourself, it is not about trying to fit the mold of what you think is the most marketable right now or what is popular right now in this moment. Of course, if you're writing a genre that happens to be popular, you can lean into that. But I sometimes hear the sentiment from people that I should have written a fantasy romance, or I should add a romance subplot because that's what's selling now, or I have to have spice or I have to have this or I have to that. And that has never been true. There are readers for all different types of books. There are readers who are specifically looking for books that don't have romance and don't have spice. Sure, those books may not be going viral, but that doesn't mean they're not selling. And it doesn't mean that there are not writers out there making a living in very small niches because they have found their readers and they have leaned into who they were trying to reach.
So when I say figure out what readers want from you, I am not saying water down your story so you can make it as palatable and mainstream as possible. I am actually saying the opposite. Figure out what your specific niche wants and then lean into that hard and make it incredible for them.
Alright, I've kind of gotten onto a tangent. when we're thinking about the reverse outline specifically, you are focusing on high-level craft elements, your structure, your plot, the conflicts that you are developing over the entire story, and the character arcs which are also developed over the whole story. And those elements are critical. And you might think that what readers care about is clean prose and a readable story. And they do, yes. But the things that are actually going to hook them, make them want to read your story, make them want to recommend your story to their friends are all happening at the high level in your story.
People are hooked by characters. They want to fall in love with characters, and those characters need to be developed effectively over the course of your story. People are hooked by conflict. Things need to go wrong because happy people are boring people. And that does not to say your characters can never be happy or that you can't have cozy conflict, but there has to be conflict. Something has to be going wrong in your story, and we need to make sure that those things are developed.
Your standard that you've set for yourself is going to tell you what is appropriate for your genre, and then you need to make sure it is there on the page at every level. If there are certain things that your story needs to do at a structural level, for example, romance has a very clear structure of your characters need to meet each other, they need to not be in love, then they need to fall in love against obstacles, and they need a happy ending. If you have not hit the happy ending brief, you either need a different genre or you need a different structure, you need a different place for your story to end.
So once we know what we are trying to create, once we have a standard with which to evaluate our story, we are going to look at that reverse outline with a very critical lens that is focused and specific. If you are writing a thriller and your story needs to have a fast-paced high-stakes conflict throughout, you are going to look at your reverse outline, you are going to evaluate every scene or chapter that you summarized and look for high-stakes conflict.
You are going to look for places where your story drags. If your characters are sitting and just looking at each other for five chapters in a row, that is probably not going to work for a thriller in the way that it might work for something that is slower paced or where characters sitting and talking is the conflict.
And again, there are going to be, you know, certain things. You could have a very tense conversation happening in a thriller. That is not to say that just because your characters are sitting, it is flawed, but you really need to look at that conflict. Is something actually happening that is high stakes? That is life and death. Do we need to move? Do we need to break up those conversation scenes and put them in different places in the story? Obviously, right now I am only talking in hypotheticals, which makes this a little bit challenging and a little bit less specific than I would like it to be, which is why my course is full of specific examples pulled from all kinds of genres, and specifically genre fiction itself. So lots of thriller examples, mystery examples, fantasy, etc. etc.
And the key is that once you have your standard, you are going to look at your reverse outline, not just as a summary of your story, but you are going to look and evaluate: have you hit the mark at a plot level? Is your story doing what it needs to do structurally to make your readers happy? And if the answer is no, we need to do something about it. So that is where we start with a standard that we are using to evaluate the reverse outline.
If you don't have a plan for actually analyzing and evaluating the reverse outline, it's just a summary. It's not going to do anything for you by itself. It is just a tool that allows us to see the story in a condensed, more accessible format. Then what we do with that condensed accessible format is analyze it to figure out what is actually happening at a plot level and is it going to work for readers.
Alright, now we get to part two. Once we've done that work, we have our analysis. We then need a strategy that turns that analysis, that information into action. Now, I do not recommend taking that analysis and running straight into your draft, which is very tempting because once you see a problem, you want to go fix it.
However, there's a better way, or at least there's a way that I think is better for a lot of writers and is what I teach. So I recommend revising the outline first because instead of testing your edits on 300 pages of your manuscript, let's test your edits on three pages of an outline or even 10 pages of an outline is so much more accessible than trying to rewrite the entire draft just based on what you saw in the outline. So we revise the outline first.
We test those changes in the outline itself. For example, if you are that thriller writer and you realize that your characters are just sitting and talking for five chapters in a row, instead of jumping back in and adding a bomb going off in the middle of that conversation, put it in the outline. Then what are the ramifications? How do the next 10 scenes need to change? How do the next 50 scenes need to change over the course of the story because of that bomb? Test all of that in your outline first.
If you are the romance writer who didn't have a happy ending, chart out that happy ending, the new pathway to a happily ever after, in your outline first. Do not go rewrite the last 50 pages of your book in a way that isn't going to actually make sense with everything that came before. And I think that's the real beauty of a reverse outline. If you realize that your ending is not working, test the ending in your outline, rewrite that, then you can go and see what else do I need to change in chapter one and chapter two and chapter three to chart a path to that new ending. And we do that within the summarized version. Personally, I like marking those changes with a different font, bolding it, different color, whatever works for you. Or maybe if you're using bullet points, you have a sub bullet, whatever it is. There's no right or wrong way to create the reverse outline as long as it gets done. All right.
Once you have edited your outline, you are happy with it, there is a bonus step that I recommend, which is to get feedback. Especially if you are someone who is not confident about how you've actually analyzed and edited the outline, get feedback from someone who does outline critiques, like me. I will read your outline, give you feedback on just the outline. And I think writers are always shocked by how much I can pull out of just the outline itself. And you'll get comments, you will get an editorial letter from me, and then you can go and apply that feedback to just the outline. Again, we're only working with 10 pages. We're only paying to get feedback on 10 pages as opposed to 500 or whatever it is. so it is much more accessible, and it's also going to be so much more helpful than you going through an entire round of revision before you can find out if your planned changes are actually going to help anything.
Obviously, there are some trade-offs, you are not going to get the same level of nuance as you would if someone was looking at your full manuscript. But again, I think writers are always surprised by how much I can get out of just the outline because it really does show a lot. I can tell if your characters have agency. I can tell if your character has any sort of arc or not. I can tell if your conflict is developing in a logical way. I can tell if there is a subplot that is popping out of nowhere. As long of course, as your subplots are part of your summary, but that's a different story.
So as long as I'm getting enough detail in that reverse outline, I can tell so much about your story and I can give you really helpful, insightful feedback that helps you plan out what to do next in your revisions.
Alright, I did say we were turning the outline into action. So the final step and the one that I think really helps people the most in revision, the one that transforms revision from a daily slog into something that feels doable. Not necessarily easy, but doable, is using your reverse outline as a checklist for your actual revisions. So you've written your reverse outline, you've analyzed it, you've edited the outline. Now that outline is a guide to all of the changes that you need to make in your draft. And the beautiful thing about that is that you are no longer stuck trying to work your way through from page one to the end, figuring out what your story needs as you go. You now know everything that you're trying to accomplish in that revision. You've made the big decisions, you've already evaluated the entire plot without having to do it in your head, without having to keep track of, well, I'm in chapter one, but I know this thing is coming and I think I'm gonna change the thing anyway, so I th I better do this. No, you've already made those decisions. So you don't have to do the deciding and the doing at the same time. The decisions are done. Now all you have to worry about is the actual on-page execution. Obviously that is a big job, but it's gonna be so much easier when you have a clear pathway from point A to point B.
And I think as someone where, you know, I definitely have varying levels of energy, and if I know that I need to totally rewrite a scene, I can do that on a high energy day, and I can save the scene that just needs a couple tweaks for a low energy day or you know, whatever it is. So I think that sometimes people think that any outline is going to cage you. And I think a reverse outline is really good at freeing you up to use your mental energy where you need it most, which is in deciding how to actually do the thing on the page, which is not easy.
Save your mental energy for actually figuring out what is the witty line of dialogue that your character is going to say that shows readers who they are. How are you going to develop their internal thoughts so that we see the moment of transformation as it happens?
Save your mental energy in writing sessions for figuring out how to do the thing. Give yourself the freedom of having already made the decisions in your reverse outline. That is how a reverse outline actually becomes a tool for revision. We start by analyzing it, then we edit the outline, we turn it into our revision checklist of every high-level change that needs to be made. Then when we sit down to write, we are only focused on how we are going to execute those changes in each chapter or scene. I use those terms not interchangeably, but I know some people will write in chapters, some people write in scenes.
Anyway, you are going to go through chapter by chapter or scene by scene, however you think, and all you need to do is focus on executing the changes that you already planned. And you don't have to worry about introducing a brand new plot hole because you've already done that in the outline. You figured out all the implications of the changes you wanted to make. You checked for things that suddenly became redundant or things that no longer make sense because you cut out the scene that that was building to you know however many pages before. So when we do that work in the outline, we allow ourselves to be so much more creative in revision because we are not trying to hold the whole thing in our head. If we decide to change something along the way, guess what? We can still edit the outline.
And instead of chasing every plot bunny in the draft, rewriting our story again and again and again, we get to test that change in the outline, and if it doesn't work, we forget it ever happened and we keep going with the original plan. Or we come up with plan D and it's even better, or plan E, X, whatever it is. and so that is the way that a reverse outline actually frees you up in revision. That is how a reverse outline actually works. So if you are someone who tried reverse outlining but didn't have a strategy for actually using the reverse outline, I would highly, highly encourage you to try again.
A reverse outline doesn't magically unlock anything by itself. A reverse outline is a tool that only works if it is supported by a strategy that is going to make use of that tool's features. Just like a hammer by itself does not build a house. You have to have a plan, a blueprint, you have to know how to actually use the hammer, we have to know where we're putting nails in, etc., etc. That just shows you how much I actually know about construction. But the metaphor is not the point. The point is, if you have tried reverse outlining and you think that it doesn't work, it's possible that you just didn't know how to actually use a reverse outline, or you were told to make a reverse outline and then that's where the story ended and you didn't know what to do with the thing.
Use it as a tool to guide your analysis. Make sure you actually know what you are analyzing, what you are looking for, what your story needs to do. Then once you have that clear, you can revise your reverse outline so that it actually matches the story that you are trying to tell, the story that your readers are looking for, and that becomes your revision checklist.
All right, I hope that this episode has demystified the actual work that goes into a reverse outline and what actually makes them a functional, successful revision tool.
And if you are interested in getting a little bit more context for what should go into that reverse outline, what you should actually be looking for, I have a revision checklist that walks you through all four stages of the revision process, starting with the types of questions that you should be asking or thinking about as you set your vision for your book. Then I talk all about what to look for in your reverse outline and how to make decisions about how you're going to revise it before you jump into actually rewriting your story in step four. So that checklist is available to you for free wherever you are listening to this show. You'll find it in the show notes. Again, that is a free revision checklist that is going to walk you through the entire revision process that I teach. All right.
Thank you so, so much for listening to another episode of the Better Writer Podcast. I can't believe that we are one episode away from episode number 40. That just blows my mind. So thank you so so much for being part of the journey. I am so grateful that you're here listening. If this episode helped you at all, please consider sharing it with a friend. I want to reach as many writers as possible with the show. And any share, comment, you know, texting it to someone, it all helps. And I really appreciate it. All right. Have a wonderful week. Keep writing. Keep getting better, one word at a time. See ya.
