Step One:

Know Your Options

I prefer to work linearly, which basically means I need to know the beginning, middle, and end, preferably with the scenes in each stage. There are numerous methods if you're the methodical kind of crafter:

Roman Numeral and Alphabet List

This will look much like the notes you took in high school for history class. I can even give you an example with the outline I wrote for this article:

  1. When I was a pantser. . . .
    1. I wasn't concerned with structure
    2. I was hardly concerned with spelling and grammar
      1. "(sp?)"
      2. It was legible, but it definitely wasn't as edited and polished as it could be
    3. Character development was sporadic
      1. Reina from What is Perfection? Starting out as an uber insecure girl to the point of melodrama, fearful of her mother, to standing up to her and a gigantic spider demon and not caring how she gruesomely died in prison.
    4. I didn't finish any of my longer, more serious works
      1. Cheater was a one-shot, but I always planned on making it a trilogy that each could stand on their own.
      2. What is Perfection? Started as a one-shot, but because people liked it, I expanded on it. That story was finished, but the sequel and eventual triquil was never finished. What is Perfection as it is is garbage.
      3. YYH x NBC crossover finished, but it was silly and super low-stakes
      4. YGO oneshot with Charlotte loving the Beatles was a request, again, silly, and low-stakes
      5. I Forgot Again, Demon Diary, again, silly and low-stakes

Yes, I even outline articles before writing them.

If you want an idea of how to apply this to fictional stories, it could look something like this, utilizing Swain's Large and Small-Scale Scenes:

  1. I. Set-Up
    1. Setting
      1. Location, time, and date
      2. Events
        1. Important past events
        2. Important current events
      3. Characters
        1. Main protagonists
        2. Supporting characters
        3. Antagonists
        4. Minor Characters
    2. Scene 1:
      1. Goal
        1. Motivation
        2. Reaction
      2. Conflict
        1. Motivation
        2. Reaction
      3. Disaster
        1. Motivation
        2. Reaction
      4. Reaction
        1. Motivation
        2. Reaction
      5. Dilemma
        1. Motivation
        2. Reaction
      6. Decision
        1. Motivation
        2. Reaction
    3. Scene 2
  2. Act 1

Or, instead of scenes, you could take notes chapter by chapter, or use broader strokes outlining by acts, and take notes of larger events rather than every little detail.

Three-Act / Five-Act Structure

Whether you split the story into three or five acts is up to you, but how you use this is up to you. I've seen people write a page summary of each of the acts, bullet point a list of scenes in each act, and I've seen people use a mountainous diagram, where anything the writer wrote above the line happened outwardly, or propelled the character and the plot towards the end goal, and anything under the line happened inwardly or became a setback for the characters or plot.

Tentpoles

The tentpoles method also uses the three/five-act structure, but is far more minimal. Basically the writer writes a sentence or a paragraph of each of the acts, and that's it. The outlining is done. From there, the writer pantses it from one act to the next.

Hero's / Heroine's Journey Template

Joseph Cambell's Hero's Journey condenses stories into stages that often happen in stories in a cyclical pattern. Character encounters a problem, they leave home, they face the problem, they fail until they either die or they succeed and maybe return home. That's the basic story in the most basic stages, but Cambell has noticed more specific stages, such as finding a mentor, or a mother-figure, etc. While Cambell's archetypes produce a physical payoff, the Heroine's Journey often focuses on emotional development in characters through overcoming what is expected of them (fighting the patriarchy [hierarchy] and traditional female [gender] roles, but these can be applied to any character), and there are numerous different versions by different writers.

You don't have to choose one, and you don't have to have all of the stages in your book, but you can create a template for yourself to fill out. As for how much is up to you, whether it be a sentence, a paragraph, a page or more.

The M.I.C.E. Quotient

The MICE Quotient is a story template created by Orson Scott Card based on four fiction factors: Millieu (setting), Idea, Character, and Event. If your story's overall focus is the setting, your story is probably science-fiction, fantasy, or western; if idea is the focus, the genre will probably be a mystery; if character, then slice-of-life; if event, then action or adventure. While novels will typically contain all four quotients, shorter stories may focus entirely on one or two. That being said, the way Card's template works is that the beginning is a mirrored reflection of the end.

Spoilers, if I outlined using the MICE Quotient for Part 1 of Sequestered Mind, it would look something like:

  • M: Storm Hawks train in tumultuous weather, highlighting their vehicles, weapons, and gear.
    • I: Starling seeks help finding her teammate.
      • E: Fight Repton for clues to the whereabouts of Starling's missing teammate.
        • C: Mysterious merb, Maggie, appears that might have answers, but she and Starling fights, resulting in Starling leaving.
          • C: Storm Hawks and Maggie get to know each other and Maggie becomes a Storm Hawk member:
          • C: Maggie tells the team the complete truth about herself, and her childhood relationship with Cyclonis.
        • C: Maggie and Starling make up, with Starling telling Maggie that she would always be an Interceptor, and that no matter what, they were friends.
      • E: The Storm Hawks along with other Sky Knights battle Cyclonis and her Talons until Cyclonis retreats through the portal to the Far Side.
    • I: The team wonders if they'll find the answers they seek, and if Falco's (Maggie's father) theories of the Far Side were correct.
  • M: Storm Hawks fly through the portal to the Far Side to catch their first eerie glimpse of a crystal-starved land.

It doesn't have to be a one-to-one reflection, such as Starling leaving because of Maggie to Starling and Maggie becoming friends, as long as M matches to M, I matches to I, C matches to C, and E matches to E.

Mary Robinette Kowal and Shalon Sims created a worksheet based on this template to give you an easier way to fill in the blanks.

Snowflake Method

The Snowflake method, by Ingerman, takes a single sentence of your story's overall theme, and expands on it little by little. You start with that sentence, and then you write one sentence for the setting, the first disaster, the midpoint, the second disaster, and the end. You write short character summaries, focusing on their internal goals, conflicts, obstacles and motivation. Then you go back to your one-sentence five-act summaries and expand those sentences into paragraphs. Go back to your characters and write a half page to a page about them--anything you can think of. Then go back to your five acts and expand those paragraphs into a full page. And you keep expanding and writing more and more until you have your story.

Fabula

If you prefer physical, textile sort of outlining, where you can stick cards on a board, then you may enjoy the Fabula method. The Fabula method is a stack of cards you can buy online that you pin to a wall or a board as your template, and then you add details with sticky notes or index cards. The cards model primarily after the Hero's Journey with addition to creating a solid foundation about the overall story, and keeps the afterthought of editing and revising in mind.

Plot Grid

The plot grid is a great tool to use to organize your scenes, intertwining plots and subplots, and to see where you can introduce foreshadowing elements, or if a subplot is lacking or underdeveloped. To create a plot grid, you first need a major plot that covers from beginning to end, and a few subplots that intertwine within the story. For example, in Part 1 of Sequestered Mind, "Cyclonis" represents stopping the Cyclonians from taking over Atmos, but it also represents Maggie's personal trauma with Cyclonia and Cyclonis, herself. That was my major plot point. The subplots were "Starling + Kite", finding Kite and navigating Maggie's tumultuous relationship with Starling, "Storm Hawks + Piper + Stork", Maggie forming comradeship and friendship with the Storm Hawks (but mostly Piper and Stork), and "Falco + Brotherhood", Maggie trying to find clues to her father's whereabouts, which also meant finding and investigating a secret society.

Some scenes or ideas can fit under more than one plot-point, so I merge cells on LibreOffice Calc, or I copy and paste the cell under multiple plots.

Sometimes I add a column just for scenery to remind myself to set the scene, especially when I'll be world-building the Far Side in Part 2, but in Part 1, I could have used it for the terras, the Brotherhood's hideout, and, of course, the Condor, the Storm Hawks's carrier ship that they live on. I didn't, so now in the revision process, I have to go back and add that in (mostly about the Condor).

Besides these columns is where I can split the sections into chapters, but you can split it based on time and location, individual scenes, which perspective the story is being told from, or whatever you want or all of the above with as many columns as you need.

While the plot grid method is more of a visual method of planning stories, if you need something even more visual, fear not!, there are some outlining methods for you too!

Mind Maps / Mind Trees

Mind maps expand one simple idea into a web of interconnecting ideas that eventually forms a cohesive story.

The character finds a dragon egg.

Who is the main character?

How did the egg get there?

Where?

What does the character do with the egg?

What does it hatch into?

Who else wants the egg?

Why?

And on and on until all ideas are written down with colored lines or strings are connected to each other.

Flow Charts

This is similar to mind maps; however the key difference is during the course of planning, you ask questions, and you answer that question with multiple possibilities. This is the basic way of plotting a choose-your-own-adventure, only (unless you are writing a CYOA) you eventually choose one path per question, and you write more notes about each choice made.

Moodboards / Story Boards / Collages

Instead of writing scenes out in a standard outline, you can draw it, like when an animator or movie director make story boards for their upcoming movie, or create collages in order to capture the tone you want the scene to have.

Book End

You have a basic idea of the overall story, and you want to pants it, but you want to make sure you have a soft landing. What can you do? You plan the ending, or multiple possible endings. That way, you'll always have a destination or a light at the end of the twisting and winding tunnel you had written your story into.

Zero Draft

This is not the same as pantsing a story! The goal of the zero draft is to write the story as quickly as you can without stopping. That means if you're getting stuck on a scene, you put "[write an intense fight scene here where bad guy slips and falls to his death]" and continue on writing until you reach the end. This could be significantly shorter than your finished first draft, or it could be five times longer, and either is fine! The point of this is to get all of your ideas down in the order you think it should go, in a way that kind of sort of reads like a story. It's a great way to scratch under the shell of characters past their character outlines, you can see if your plot, goals and motivations are working, and this is a great opportunity to go back and see if there are any loose ends without it being the first draft.

Heck, you can use the Zero Draft, and expand on it in another outline before writing your first draft.