How to Outline Your Fantasy Novel (The Hourglass Method)

in over 12 years of writing fantasy novels The Hourglass outlining method is the single most powerful tool I have developed so far it is the main reason why I've been able to publish four fantasy novels and I've also seen it produce incredible results for the 22 writers that have gone through my fantasy outlining boot camp suffice to say this course was revelatory for me the cohort was a transformative experience it has been immensely helpful in ways that I couldn't have even imagined it probably has saved me months or years of wandering with the story so

in this I'm going to show you how to use The Hourglass outlining method to plan your own fantasy novels so that you can be writing gripping plots captivating characters and emotionally resonant stories that readers love and it all begins by first understanding why outlining is so powerful so when I was 14 I started writing my very first fantasy novel and 360 days later I had finished the first draft of a story called the Aon Academy it was a lot of fun and it ignited my passion for writing but unfortunately that first book sucked the characters

were boring the plot didn't make any sense and it was just a huge mess I spent the next couple of years editing and even rewriting the story two or three times from scratch but after struggling with this manuscript for around 5 years I realized it just wasn't working see my initial idea had these structural issues that were infecting and crippling the story at its core and I didn't have the skill at the time to identify what those issues were and I certainly didn't have the skill to know how to fix them so after 5 years

of failure I decided decided to try a different tactic see at this time I'd heard quite a few authors talk about the idea of outlining of planning your story in advance so that it was easier to write but I was really skeptical and nervous about this whole idea of planning my novel because at the time I thought isn't writing supposed to be this really spontaneous creative fly by the seat of your pants thing won't outlining stifle my creativity and make me less excited to write my story still I knew I had to try something new

so I moved on to my next fantasy novel and this time I outlined the story for a couple of weeks before I started writing 60 days later I had finished the first draft so outlining straight away had allowed me to write this story six times faster the Aon Academy took me 360 days to write the first draft with this second novel it only took 60 days and Not only was that first draft much quicker and easier to write but as I read back through it I realized hey this story is actually working of course there

was still plenty of edits to be made but the story structure the character arcs and the World building it was all rock solid and most important there was just a sense of cohesion and emotional resonance to the story that book was later published as across the broken stars and it was pivotal in launching my author career gave me confidence in my storytelling abilities and gathered incredible Reader reviews and now fast forwarding to today and I am a full-time fantasy author and story coach and I've now published four fantasy novels and even a video game as

well and I can all credit that back to learning how to outline effectively so my outlining process has evolved with every book I've written but the purpose behind all all of my outlines has always been the same an outline should help you know what to write so give you Clarity around the direction of your story it should help you write it in the best way possible so bringing all these different ideas and elements together in the most cohesive and entertaining fashion and then lastly it should make you excited and motivated to write it so giving

you that enthusiasm to pursue your story and I think this last Point here is really really critical far too many writers think that outlining will sap your energy and excitement to write your story but if you outline correctly with the method I'm about to show you in this video it will have the complete opposite effect take this comment from one of my fantasy outlining boot camp students it actually had the opposite of what I expected in that I thought an outline would kill the creativity but in fact with that bird's eye view it gave me

more to work with more to add in so what is the key to building an effective outline that meets these three goals here well first of all unlike some other methods I do not suggest starting with structure I think that for most writers that is a huge mistake and is incredibly counterproductive instead you want to approach outlining the way that the R Brothers approached designing their first airplane see the R Brothers didn't spend years designing their plane before they went out and tested it instead they broke the problem of powered flight down into all these

different little stages and then they tested them individually so they built a wind tunnel to quickly test lots of different Wing designs they flew kites to understand the principles behind lift and control they made gliders to test their ideas further and it was only then once they done all of this testing that they actually added engines to attempt powered flight properly the R Brothers had an iterative mindset unlike a lot of their competitors who would spend months or even years building a prototype only to take it out into a field crash it try to learn

some things spend another few months or years building the Prototype before doing that again the R Brothers had a much quicker feedback loop so they would make a prototype really quickly they would take it out into the field they would crash it they would modify it and fly it again a few hours later and they might be able to get four tests in the space of one day whereas their competitor might only do four tests over a whole year who do you think is going to win in that scenario obviously the right brothers and that's

all because they were able to test fail learn and then repeat that process over and over again now when it comes to writing if you just write your fantasy novel with no outline maybe it takes you a year or 2 years to finish that first draft then you look back at what you've done if you're lucky maybe you have someone to give you feedback or give you some thoughts on what you've you realize all of the mistakes you made in that first draft because everyone's first draft is garbage I can guarantee you that and then

you try to fix those in your second draft now there is absolutely nothing wrong with this method however it is a very slow feedback loop and that can make it hard especially when you're starting out to rapidly improve however when you outline before you start writing your story you are able to prototype and test out all these different directions before you commit to actually writing your story in the space of one week you might come up with five different variations on how your story could unfold you can look at all those different variations and decide

to take this element from the first one this element from the second one maybe you decide that this element from the third one is really bad and that steers you back into a different direction and then you can repeat the process over and over again in other words an effective outline is almost like writing the first draft and learning from it but instead of taking 6 months or a year or 2 years to learn from that you can do it over the course of a couple of days or a couple of weeks outlining helps you

speed up your feedback loop and that's why I say my students improve so damn quickly when they go through my fantasy outlining boot camp because every single week I'm giving them tailored exercises and activities to do to build out the outline in their story I'm giving them feedback every week they're getting feedback from the other students as well and as a result they get months or even years of progress compressed down into the seven weeks that we run the program so honestly helpful to have uh likeminded people to work with and bounce ideas off with

and and sending in our stuff every week to to to meet the assignments and getting feedback from everybody so now that we've covered the purpose and the key mindset behind effective outlining let's dive more specifically Into The Hourglass outlining method so I divide this into three distinctive phases the first phase is something I call exploring the suburb then we have finding your stories core and then lastly putting it all together now if you want to outline your novel effectively all you have to do is move through these phases from beginning to the end but it

is important that you do the right things in each phase to make this work let's start by looking at Phase One exploring the suburb so if you had to find a new house to live in would you just Google a place and buy it online and move in without ever checking it out with your own eyes probably not that's a big commitment that's a big expensive purchase you would want to actually go to the suburb first you would want to explore around get a sense of the vibe the atmosphere there maybe even chat to your

neighbors basically just get a sense of is this going to be someplace where I'm going to enjoy spending the next 10 years 15 years 20 years 50 years of my life potentially and that is what the first phase of The Hourglass outlining method is all about in this phase your goal is simply just to brain dump everything you know about your story that might include things like interesting character ideas cool scenes unique worldbuilding Concepts or interesting magic the emotions you want readers to feel as they go through your story and anything else that comes to

mind don't worry about how it all works together don't worry if it's good just focus on vomiting all your ideas down onto the page like I tell my students I strong suggest doing this in a notebook because there are multiple studies that show how handwriting boosts creativity and anecdotally for me as well I find that I tend to be much more creative and free flowing and spontaneous when I am actually writing pen on paper now here's something very important to know this part of the process is not about just recording your ideas it is actually

about generating new ideas through this process of just stream of Consciousness dumping everything that you know or that you've thought about your story remember we are in in a exploration phase right now the focus is just volume and variety quality should not be a consideration at this point in the process inside my outlanding boot camp I have a lot of exercises and questions that I get my students to go through as they go through this phase of exploring their story that includes thinking about the plot and the World building and of course characters how you

can make them feel more three-dimensional how you can develop a distinctive sense of voice and personality for them and how you can start to think about their character arcs and this is one of the most fun parts of running the boot camp I just love pting my students to think about all these different ideas for their story that they may have never considered before and is the most satisfying thing when I see those light bulb moments Flash before their eyes as they have some major Epiphany around their story or around their characters I think from

the very first time I got a critique from Jed like my brain was on fire with just like how much uh there was to think about and how much there was to improve in my story and it just filled me with passion to keep going and keep writing and keep improving and one tool that I find produces a lot of light bulb moments is something I call the triangle of story so broadly speaking your fantasy novel is comprised of three elements which are all deeply Interlink first you have your characters then you have your plot

then you have your setting and then lastly theme is created through the intersection between these three things and we're going to get to theme in much more detail later in this video because most writers interpret theme wrong but when you interpret it in the correct fashion it actually becomes an incredibly powerful tool for helping you better refine your story and to create more cohesiveness in your narrative so the reason why I bring up the triangle of story is because when you're in this stage of the outlining process you probably have one of these things really

welldeveloped for example you might have this really cool zany worldbuilding concept that is super original and unique and just fires you up with passion but you might not really know what type of characters exist in this world or what type of characters make sense to follow in your story and you might not have much of an idea about the plot of your book as a whole this means that your triangle of story is unbalanced and your goal in this part of the outlining process is to beef up the parts of the triangle that you haven't

given much thought to so if you're more worldbuilding focused right now then your goal in this exploring the suburbs part of the process is to ask yourself questions like what type of characters might exist in this world or what type of characters might face a lot of conflict in this world and then what type of plot is going to be interesting to explore in this particular setting for example and if you just think about your own experience as a reader the best fantasy novels are the ones where there is a very tightly interlined and interwoven

triangle of story for example it's impossible to think about Harry Potter the character without thinking about Hogwarts which is a setting or Harry's quest to defeat Voldemort which is sort of plot and character and of course as soon as you think about Harry Potter you think about quidditch which is a worldbuilding concept you think about rod and amione which are other characters and so forth so you want to be thinking about how you can flesh out the less developed aspects of your triangle of story as you go through this explor in the suburbs phase and

when you do this you might get some epiphanies like this one here by Christine who went through the second cohort of my fantasy outline boot camp well trying to figure out how my protagonist character intersected with theme I somehow jumped ahead today and created a plot Point outline for his whole through line now on the topic of ideas you might be wondering Jed what actually makes for a good story idea this is one of the most common things that I often get asked by new writers out there and when I started out as a writer

I thought that ideas were everything I thought they were the most important aspect of your story and I see many people with this attitude out there in fact I've lost track of the number of times where someone has sent me an email saying Jed I've got this incredible idea for a story I'll let you write the whole thing edit the novel and publish it and we can split the profits 50/50 and I always laugh when I see that because the reality is that ideas are fundamentally cheap any idea can be turned into a good story

if your skill level is high enough however there is a bit of a caveat to that and the third level of understanding what makes a good idea which I would say is something I've only really come to understand in the last 1 to 2 years is that while ideas are cheap and while any idea can be turned into a good story if you're skilled enough there are some ideas with a higher difficulty of execution and there are some ideas that have just such a cool concept that they are going to be much easier to write

and in particular you want to be focusing on a story idea that is just so damn exciting to you that Concepts like needing discipline or motivation to write it are just not even considerations because it is such a cool idea you've always wanted to read this story yourself so you just feel an effortless sense of motivation and enthusiasm to sit down and plow through this story as fast as you possibly can for example when I outlined the Thunder Heist which is my pirate fantasy novel in March of 2022 I actually sat down and did a

brainstorm where I asked myself what are my favorite tropes to read and explore in stories and I came up with things like oh I love mainly Urban settings I love fast-paced thrill rides which is one of the reasons why the thunder Heist has reviewers saying all the time that they finish it in 1 to two days because it is a very short book it's certainly not thick by any means but it is designed to be fast-paced and a very quick read and then also I just love stories where there are characters who dislike each other

but they're forced to work together and they become friends over the course of the narrative and if you have read the Thunder Heist you'll see how all of these elements wo their way into the final story and because I was focusing on tropes that I found super fun it was really quick to write this story story I finished the first draft of 60,000 words in just 47 days I think to date it is the quickest I have ever written a story and that's because I was just so focused on packing in all of these ideas

and tropes that I found fascinating and I've seen the same principle in action with many of my outlining boot camp students for example Paul delis Santos who went through cohort one of the boot camp about a year ago from when I'm recording this video he went away from that boot camp and wrote the first draft of his novel clash of the crystals in just 5 months after finishing the program and that's because I was really pushing him in the boot camp to just pack in everything that he found interesting about stories at the time so

that when he came to writing the thing it felt very effortless and easy and fun to go ahead and do that he's now in the process of editing his story which has this awesome cover artwork here and he's going to be publishing this next year it is worth every penny to take advantage of this program because you learn so much from Jed himself so once you have explored the suburb you're going to have all these different ideas and concepts for your story the next stage is to start putting them together in a more cohesive fashion

and to do that you need to move on to phase two finding your stories core So based on my students feedback I would say that my teachings around the whole finding your stories core are maybe the most useful section of the fantasy outlining boot camp and that is because most writers and I'm sure you can relate to this as well have no trouble coming up with all of these different ideas and character Concepts and World building ideas and Magic systems but the struggle is how do I actually bring these things together in a cohesive way

that feels like they're all deeply interrelated and sort of interlined with each other and if you are in that position then this next exercise is going to help you quite a lot so the big idea here is that once you have explored the suburb and generated all these different possible directions for your story your job is now to find the Core Essence of your narrative and there are two big elements that this Core Essence is comprised of the first one is developing your story's premise and the second one is refining your your theme so let's

start with the premise the premise quite simply is just a one- sentence summary of your story it's going to describe your main character the interesting traits they have their goals their motivations maybe their flaw perhaps a suggestion of their character Arc as well it's also going to describe the core conflict of your story the plot of your story as well and it's also going to include your Stakes as well which is the answer to the question of why should readers actually care about this story you can basically think of your premise as a on sentence

outline to give you an example here is the premise for Harry Potter and the philosopher stone when an orphan boy Harry Potter learns that he is a wizard he's thrust into a magical school where he must stop the world's most dangerous wizard from returning to power now if you're a student here you'll probably notice that we are missing Ron and herione we're missing the mention of quiddit we're missing the mention of the dley we don't even have the names of the different Hogwarts houses in here and that is actually totally fine because one of the

biggest mistakes I see writers make when they are developing their premise is they try to stuff every single aspect of their story into this one sentence description and that actually defeats the point of this exercise because the whole goal of writing a one- sentence premise for your story is to give yourself this really clear Guiding Light so that you as an author know what direction you're trying to take your story in so how can you actually craft a great premise that makes it easy to write a fantastic fantasy novel well I like to follow the

following process so number one is to ask what does your main character want for example in the Thunder Heist my main character kef is a pirate who is trying to steal a device that channels electricity from lightning to power the city of zorth a floating city ship made from hundreds and thousands of different boats on a monster infested sea the next step is then to add Stakes so this is answering the question of why should readers care in the Thunder Heist kef wants to steal this device to get revenge against zorth a corrupted city that

has wronged her in the past because she grew up there as a child in a abusive and institutionalized environment the next step is to consider incorporating your setting especially when you're writing a fantasy novel your setting might be a major character in its own right and it might be a really central part of what makes your story entertaining or appealing to readers now again this doesn't mean that you need to cram every aspect of your unique setting into your premise but if there are any big details that are important to the overall direction of your

story I would suggest trying to get some of these in the next step is to try to keep it as concise as possible again your goal is to distill the essence of your story into one sentence and the reason why I I want you to distill it into one sentence is so that you can get a very clear sense of what is really driving your story and then the fifth step is to refine and test write your premise down show it to your friends to get their feedback getting feedback on your premise is such a

big part of the outlining boot camp I run and that's because again your premise is such a high leverage tool for guiding you to know what type of story you're setting out to write your premise is also a really good way to check if your concept is interesting enough if you're going around different people your premise and it's maybe not getting them so excited or they're not really asking questions about other aspects of your story then maybe it's a sign that the premise does actually need to be tweet a little bit in order to make

it sound more interesting or more entertaining now the other big thing to refine in this finding your story's core phase is your story's theme like I mentioned earlier in the video I think most writers view theme in a unuseful way they view it as a one- sentence thing like love or revenge or mortality I would say that's more subject matter and there's nothing particularly wrong with that but does it actually help you write your story I would argue probably not it is much more useful to Define theme as John truy does in the anatomy of

story as a moral Vision about how to live in the world that is expressed and explored through the different characters and the actions they take in your story now this doesn't mean that your job as a writer is to preach a particular political message or Ram an ideological belief down your reader's throat that is the last thing you want to be doing in your story instead it is about developing a sense of depth to your fantasy novel by having it explore a a complicated moral question that fascinates you for example in Joe abr's Grim dark

classic the blade itself I would say the theme is that war in politics corrupts even the noblest of intentions some characters agree with that theme from the beginning and their actions Express that other characters reject this theme and they struggle against it and then some other characters still might Begin by disagreeing with the theme but over the course of the story they come to accept it instead and it provides this sort of really interesting moral pundry that is underlying every interaction and every moment and scene in that book another example in mistborn the final Empire

by Brandon Sanderson which is about a pluy group of Thieves who are trying to steal a Priceless treasure from the dark lord who has controlled this nation for a thousand years the theme is that crime and deception are sometimes required to overthrow a corrupt system now theme is a complicated and nuanced thing we basically spent an entire week going over it in the fantasy outlanding boot camp which is a 7we program all up so that shows you how important it is to get this right your premise and theme acts as this Compass or this guiding

line that guides every decision you make in your story it makes sure that every plot point every character decision even every line of dialogue feels like there is some kind of cohesive controlling idea operating behind all of these things whenever you're struggling look to your theme and look to your premise use them as a guide rather than spending hours ruminating on what direction to take your story in having that theme and premise really clearly defined is just going to give you so much Clarity around what you should be doing as a writer and that makes

it a lot quicker to get back on track and avoid writers block as one of my boot camp students said the most valuable things that I ever took out of the class were definitely the premise and the theme premise and the theme are guiding lights that I will always be using in the future because they make your my stories so much more cohesive so as we close off the finding your story's core phase of the outlining process I suggest for my students to create a one-page guiding principles document this is something that you print off

and you have it next to you when you write so that you have an easy referenceable guide for what you're attempting to accomplish in your story and I suggest including on this guiding principles document first of all your one sentence premise pretty obvious why you would want to include that then writing down your theme also describing your main character's arcs in brief detail on here as well and then lastly a high level synopsis that describes everything that happens in your story from start to finish including how the story resolves again so that you have a

clear sense of the big picture of where this whole story is going and again this one-page guiding principles document it's something that we Workshop in a lot more detail inside the boot camp okay so you finished the first two phases of The Hourglass outlining method you've explored the suburb and you have found your story's core now it's time to move on to the third phase putting it all together so the reason why I use the analogy of The Hourglass for my outlining process is because these first two phases are about taking all your different ideas

funneling it down until you understand what is the the essence or the nucleus of your story and then expanding back out from that to develop your character arcs your plot structure your scene by scene outline or maybe your chapter by chapter outline and then by the end of this third phase you should essentially have an outline that allows you to go ahead and start writing your first draft a really important caveat here like I say to my students outlining is a nonlinear process there are going to be times where you're jumping back and forth between

different parts parts of this hourglass sometimes you will need to jump back and re-evaluate your story's theme or you might need to go back and explore a few different directions for a character's Arc for example so there's always some element of bouncing around from phase to phase depending on what the story needs and this is why I run the boot camp as a live program with plenty of my personal support and feedback and guidance as we go through the process because it's not a one-sized fits-all method you always need to adapt the method to be

the most suitable for the particular story you're trying to tell if you are finding this video useful then I would strongly consider applying for my 7we fantasy outlining boot camp not only do we go into far more depth about every aspect of the outlining process but you will have my personal guidance support and feedback along for every single step of the way so that you can bring your fantasy novel to life in the best way possible plus you'll also be joining a really cool small community of dedicated fantasy writers to give you even more feedback

and accountability along the way the community aspect um from the group is absolutely brilliant the fact that I've also now got a whole bunch of people who I feel are in the same boat and who are serious about wanting to take things forwards with their writing as well to discuss ideas with and to to just sort of Workshop things um is brilliant so yeah I'd highly recommend it if you can sign up and yeah enjoy I've run three cohorts of the fantasy outlining boot camp so far with 22 students in total applications for cohort 4

of the boot camp close on October the 14th and the boot camp itself kicks off on October the 21st we've already had quite a few students come into this cohort so there are only a few spots remaining but if you are serious about improving as a Storyteller and you know that you are ready to take this next step to level up with your writing then I would love to work with you inside the boot camp you can apply by going to Jed her.com for/ outline or by scanning the QR code here on the screen and

if you are watching in the future after cohort 4 applications are closed you can still use the link in the description below this video to join the wait list and be notified When Future cohorts launch before I announce the to the general public now continuing on with The Hourglass outlining method this putting it all together phase tends to be the longest part of the process I like to start this phase by developing your characters in more detail and of course you will have done a lot of character development in phases 1 and two of the

outlining process already but here is really where you drill deeper and first of all I think it's really important that you understand what is it that actually makes a great Fantasy character broadly speaking a great Fantasy character is going to be deeply connected to your triangle of story they're going to feel quite interwoven with your plot and with your world building they're going to have a distinctive sense of voice and personality to them they're going to be someone who we care about them maybe we don't necessarily like them but we find them interesting to follow

next there is something unique about these characters their decisions are unique their motivations are maybe fresh or different from what we've seen before there is just something that makes them feel special and that makes them feel like they stand out from the crowd they also are quite rational that is they act in character and they don't just change their Minds for no good reason and then next they have interesting relationship Dynamics with the other characters in your story and then lastly for most characters they are interesting because we see them change and evolve of course

there are some characters who experience flat character arcs we'll get to that a bit later on but generally speaking most great fantasy stories are about a person wanting something struggling to get it and then being forced to change as a result of their Pursuit now I cover a lot more character writing advice in my video titled how to write Fantasy character AR better than 99% of writers which is a 70-minute really in-depth masterclass and of course we go into this in a lot more detail inside the fantasy outlining boot camp with my feedback and guidance

along the way but let me just give you a quick overview of how to write an emotionally gripping character Arc in your fantasy novel and it always starts by understanding the five core components of a character's Arc first of all you have your character's ghost which is some influential often times traumatic past event that influenced their perception of the world this ghost has led to the character developing a lie which is a misconceived understanding of how the world operates and what is important which is usually causing them to hurt the people in their lives and

to hurt themselves as well this lie results in your character having a want a desire that they think will bring them a sense of fulfillment and completeness if they can achieve it however in reality your character actually needs their need the need is the thing that will actually make them feel complete and whole and the only way to get to the need is to understand their truth this is the Revelation that helps the them to overcome the lie and almost acts as a bit of a personalized antidote to the corruptive influence of that lie so

with those five core art components you then have three different directions for where to take your character's Arc the first type of Arc you could write is a positive character Arc where a character goes from a place of incompleteness to fulfillment in other words they get better over the course of the story an example of this is Bill baggin in The Hobbit he goes from being scared of the world outside the Shire to become a confident and eager Adventurer next you have a negative character Arc in this scenario your character actually Begins by properly understanding

the truth and they usually have their need at the beginning of the story but then the LIE enters into their life and it has a corruptive influence that often leads to quite a tragic end for them most tragedies in fact are using this sort of negative Arc structure if you think about something like McBeth for example he goes through this process of beginning the story as a faithful servant to the king only to kill the king so that he can take over his throne and then lastly you have a flat Arc in this scenario your

character largely stays the same and the focus is more on how they change the world around them for example Ned Stark in a Game of Thrones Begins the story by believing in the importance of honoring one's Oaths and he ends the story in the same way the conflict in a flat Arc usually comes from your character struggling to impose their beliefs on the world around them and the world often refusing to go down without a fight so when it comes to structuring a positive Arc your character Begins by fully believing their lie as a result

of their ghost they are ignorant of the truth at the beginning of the story and they are going to be pursuing their want initially however as they go through the course of your narrative they're going to realize that hey believing this lie it's actually hurting me so as a result they start to test the truth a little bit more they flirt with the idea of the truth but the truth is challenged it's not easy to change their mind and to accept the truth in this way they're tempted to return to the lie and the climax

of the story comes down to this Croc moment where they have to decide do I go back to the lie or do I accept this new truth and then because you're writing a positive Arc they are going to pick the truth and reject the lie so for example bbo baggin in The Hobbit by JRR tolken he goes through this character Arc of going from Comfort to courage to heroism his ghost is the fear of the unknown world that lies beyond the Shire at the start of the story and the LIE he tells himself is that

Adventures are unnecessary and dangerous and he basically doesn't want to experience one for himself his want is to maintain his peaceful uneventful life in the Shire and his need however is to embrace Adventure step out of his comfort zone and find the courage to grow and become a true hero which leads to the truth that he accepts at the end of the story that courage and a sense of adventure are qualities that he actually possesses and that he can do great Deeds when it comes to structuring a negative Arc with your characters they will begin

the story by fully believing the truth and they already have their need so You' think there's no problems here but of course that's not the case what's actually going to happen is the LIE is introduced into their life they are tempted by the lie and they might begin to start chasing their want ignoring their true need the LIE begins to overtake the truth and the the climax of the story has this last moment where they can step back they can reject the lie and return to the truth but the want is too tempting and they

fully embrace the lie and reject the truth so for example if you look at Cole Shivers from best served cold by Joe abocom his ghost at the beginning of the story is his violent past as a warrior his truth is that he can build a new life a peaceful life if he stops using violence to fine purpose and he already sort of has his need at the beginning of his story he's moved to a new country of steria he's trying to elect go of his anger and his ego and he's attempting to move on from

this violent past however his want is to regain Respect power and affection and the lie that he begins to kind of realize over the course of the story is that he's learned just to stick at the place he's at and as this kind of line of dialogue shows or these this exchange of dialogue shows here rather he goes back to this belief that he is a killer he's not able to move on from the lie and then lastly when it comes to structuring a flat Arc your character is going to begin by fully believing their

truth and they usually have their need at the start of the story the problem however is that the world believes the lie so there's conflict there because your character believes the truth World believes a lie they Clash the world attempts to reinforce this lie your character's truth is challenged but the character remains steadfast because this is a flat Arc they're not really changing their beliefs over the course of the story so you have a couple of options here the first option is that the character's truth triumphs and replaces the lie in the greater world the

second option is that the LIE Vanquish is the truth and that your character is defeated so a great example of a flat Arc is Ned stuck in a Game of Thrones by George aradin the ghost that is powering his Arc is his loyalty to King Robert barathon and his truth is that we must do what's right no matter the cost he's a man of Honor his need is to remain true to his Oaths but the LIE the world temps him with is that sometimes our Oaths should bend for the greater good and the want he

has is to stop Westeros from falling back into war and you will see here how the need and the want are in conflict with each other he kind of knows that if he rejects his Oaths so if he rejects his need he can achieve his want which is to stop Westeros from falling back into the war But ultimately because he sticks to his truth and his truth is too strong for him he doesn't allow his Oaths to bend and he doesn't become a manipulative political schemer like some of the other characters in this story and

it results in his execution now that is character but you might be wondering how I actually outline my plot the first thing to understand is that plot equals character and character equals plot you can only understand characters by the actions they take in other words the plot and the plot of your story just refers to the things that your characters do so more specifically here plot exists to force your characters to make difficult decisions that reveal their true nature and sometimes force that true nature to change so if you have already outlined your character arcs

using the approach I've just given you that's already going to give you a very solid foundation of your plot but moving beyond that I like to use structure to refine things even further and the difference between plot and structure is that plot is just about the things that happen in your story structure is the way that those events are arranged and contrasted and um compared to each other because fundamentally we experience emotion in a story through contrast and comparison if you want to write a happy ending then the best way to do that is to

make your character really miserable earlier on in your story if you want to write a tragic ending then the best way to do that is to make your character really happy earlier on in your story and if you want to write a story that ends with a sense of truly epic scale it's going to feel more epic if we begin the story with really humble small scaled Beginnings in other words the greater the variance between the trough and peaks of your story The more emotional weight your story is going to hold fundamentally it is the

sequence of highs and lows that actually makes us bond with a character just seeing them Triumph all the time wouldn't be that exciting just seeing them despair all the time wouldn't be that entertaining either rather seeing them go through these cycles of Triumph and despair and Triumph and despair that is what really makes us emotionally connect to a character and if you are wanting to write better emotion in your fantasy novels this is something I covered in much more detail in my video titled how to create emotion in your fantasy novel so go check that

out if you want more guidance on the emotional side of writing but now to get a little bit more tactical with the specifics of structure I like to use ninepoint story structure to arrange the events in my narratives so this begins with a hook where you introduce your main character and especially their flaws and Desires in a compelling way ideally you're also trying to show a char characteristic moment here as well so put simply a characteristic moment is where you see your character do something that 99% of other characters would not do in this same

situation and it gives you an instant clear snapshot of who they are what's important to them what their flaws are and what's different with them compared to other characters for example the hook of The Hobbit by Jr tolken is basically showing Bilbo just living a comfortable cozy life in his hobbit hole in the sh with no desire for adventure or exploration next we move on to the inciting incident so this is where the Ordinary World of your character is disrupted by a key event that sets your story in motion if we look at The Hobbit

this occurs when Gandalf brings 13 dwarves to Feast at Bilbo's house and there's a quote here where Bilbo basically describes how as he's listening to the dwarf sing he kind of has this sudden desire to go off and actually have an adventure for the first time in his life but this thought doesn't last long because he starts thinking about dragons and the destruction they might cause because the dwarves are trying to recruit him to to go off and basically steal treasure from smow the dragon and so he shutters he goes back to just being a

plain Mr baggin of Bag End Underhill yet again and he actually goes to sleep planning to refuse this adventure next we move on to entering the new realm so this is where your protagonist is taken from your Ordinary World and thrust into the extraordinary world of your story in the case of The Hobbit this is where Bilbo changes his mind and leaves his Hobbit Hole to join Gandalf and the dwarves in their quest to steal treasure from smoke next we have the antagonist threatening your main character where pressure is applied to your character through the

introduction or some kind of key action from the antagonistic forces in your novel In The Hobbit this occurs when Bilbo finds the one ring and he plays Golem in a game of riddles next we have your midpoint Revelation this is a moment of sort of key personal Insight an epiphany the main character has where they finally understand the truth but they don't let fully go of the lie and this is in a positive Arc it's a bit different if you are telling a negative Arc or a flat Arc instead in the case of The Hobbit

this occurs when Bilbo is all alone in the merkwood forest and he has to kill a giant spider all by himself he sees the truth that he is brave enough to do great deeds and there is a great quote here from the story somehow the killing of the giant spider all alone by himself in the dark without the help of the Wizard or the dwarves or of anyone else made a great difference to Mr baggin he felt a different person and much fiercer and Bolder in spite of an empty stomach and that comes literally at

the 50.4% mark of my addition of The Hobbit so pretty much smack bang in the middle this moves us to plot point 6 more antagonist pressure basically the protagonist new understanding of the truth is challenged here by your antagonist really stepping up the intensity of the LIE they're forcing more conflict on them they're making it more difficult for your character to believe and to live out the truth in the case of The Hobbit this occurs when Frodo sneaks into the Lonely Mountain to steal treasure from smow the dragon and his truth is really tested there's

a quote from the story here about how at this point Bilbo stopped going on from there was the bravest thing he ever did he fought the real battle in the tunnel alone before he ever saw the vast danger that lay in weight next this leads us to the darkest low this is the most suffering your main character has faced so far at this point the LIE has never looked so strong or so tempting and it sets course for the final confrontation between protagonist and antagonist in the case of The Hobbit this occurs when smow attacks

Lake town and Bilbo kind of realizes the horrific consequences of his Adventure all these people are dying as a result of the adventure that he set off on this then leads to your climax so this is a final confrontation between your protagonist and antagonist and in this scenario either the truth or the LIE will die it won't be possible for the to both coexist from this moment on one has to beat the other so in The Hobbit this occurs when Bilbo survives the Battle of the Five Armies and then this leads into your closing image

so this is where you'll see your protagonist living with their new truth and need usually there is some kind of mirroring that reflects the opening image of your story to show how your character has changed and evolved in the case of The Hobbit bilber returns to the Shire but he was no longer quite respectable he took to writing poetry and visiting the elves and though many shook their heads and touched their foreheads and said poor old bag and though few believed any of his tales he remained very happy to the end of his days so

once you mapped out those nine key plot points in your story it's then time to construct a scene by scene outline to go into things in a little bit more detail and again if you would like my personal help on structuring your plot and actually outlining your scenes then once again I really suggest you apply for my fantasy outlining boot camp link is in the description below this video when it actually comes to writing your scene by scene outline this can take a lot of different forms it could range from a short two-page document like

this one I made for the Thunder Heist or it might be a much longer more detailed thing like this 23-page document I made for Kingdom of Dragons which actually began as index cards in notion initially if you want to learn how to properly structure and Stitch your scenes together and you want to see how I actually build out the scenes in my own novels then check out this video over here inside you'll learn the six steps to write great scenes in your fantasy novel and you'll even get a link to a robust notion template you

can use to lay out your scenes keep writing and keep striving