If there’s one major obstacle that prevents writers from completing their story, it’s getting trapped in the first chapter of the novel they’re desperately trying to complete, or the first act of their screenplay.
It’s understandable how this happens.
Trying desperately to write the perfect story, it is easy to fall into the trap of only seeing the first chapter, constantly rewriting and rewording it to be word-perfect, and not seeing the story as a whole, complete with a beginning (set-up), middle (confrontation) and ending (resolution).
It is not difficult to overcome this blinding obstacle.
The first step to completing the story is to write a story outline.
The outline allows the writer to construct a general list of sequential scenes and moments in the order that they will be written within a novel or screenplay.
This writing tool allows the writer to get an overview of the story beats and moments before applying them to the format of locations, scene description, and dialogue.
It empowers writers to structure and plot the story.
- The function of your story outline is to identify the story events (scenes) of the most important events in your Protagonist’s life.
- The function/ goal of the scene outline is to build and dramatise each story event, and to explore the exterior and internal lives of your story.
