Creative Writing

For the purpose of this libguide, the examples for outlining, world-building, and chapter summary are to be considered the first drafts for planning.

The information was purposefully written quickly, sparsely, and with notes to revisit later. It is purposefully vague at this point. This is to show the bare bones of a story, and that a basic idea may fit into many different genres (types of fiction). It also shows and reassures writers just how little is needed to create an outline and summarize chapters.

This outline features the story's character(s), setting, timeframe, plot, conflict, and theme (to an extent). The notes include questions the story might need to answer and things to work on later in world-building. Notes reminding the writer about different conflicts have been added below the outline, to help with future brainstorming and world-building.

Reminder: The outline may be as basic or as detailed as the individual writer needs it to be.

Outline: Joe's Life (version 1)

Characters: Joe, Joe's friend, coffee shop servers, regular customers

Setting: coffee shop, etc. (note: figure out later)

Timeframe: time when coffee shops exist (note: figure out later)

Theme: Joe just wants whatever he ordered from the coffee shop. He is so very tired. (note: figure out deep/meaningful theme later if I feel like it)

Conflict Example: Joe goes to his best friend's coffee shop every day, but they always get his order wrong. No matter what he orders, somehow it's always wrong. 

This story has at least 7 smaller conflicts just from these two sentences. A writer might use these questions to help expand on the story/plot.

Questions about the plot might be:

1. What does Joe do about the daily mistake? (speak up vs stay quiet)
2. Why is Joe always served the wrong order? What is the reason/cause?
3. Does Joe keep going to the shop to support his friend, or find another place? (stay vs. change)
4. What changes in Joe's life if he keeps going to the old shop? What changes if he tries a new shop?
5. Does Joe's friend ever find out about the wrong orders, either from Joe or someone else?
6. How does the friend react when they find out about the wrong orders?
7. Is this only happening to Joe or are others having the same problem?

The Big Questions: How does all this impact Joe? How does Joe react to all this?

Below is a basic example of a chapter summary for "Joe's Life".  Chapter summaries may be as many or as few chapters, sentences, and words as the writer prefers.

Writing Tip: If you don't know what to put for a chapter summary, just write something like, "stuff happens". That serves a placeholder so the writer can skip to a chapter that is ready to be summarized.