Revising Your Novel: 7 Key Benefits of Crafting an Outline
In the world of writing, developmental edits play a crucial role in shaping a Work in Progress (WIP) into a polished masterpiece. One essential tool that authors should consider employing during this stage is outlining.
Creating a new outline during developmental edits offers a clear, big-picture framework to reorganize and strengthen the novel’s structure. This practice helps in identifying plot holes or pacing problems, and planning how scenes and character arcs fit together logically and purposefully.
The new outline acts as a guide, helping authors work outward from the overall story structure and theme towards detailed scene-level revisions. It allows for reordering or rewriting scenes, such as shifting the protagonist’s point of view or the climax sequence, to improve narrative impact and readability.
Moreover, a new outline clarifies how different story elements build towards the resolution, ensures smooth transitions between chapters or sections, and aligns tone and pace consistently throughout the novel. This bird’s-eye view is crucial to making large-scale improvements and setting a solid foundation before proceeding to finer copyediting.
Outlining forces the author to focus on the major moments of the novel, rather than minor details. It can help remember pertinent events and maintain consistency in a novel. Even if one is not an outliner, an outline can save a lot of work during this stage.
In summary, creating a new outline during developmental edits reveals structural weaknesses and gaps for targeted revision, helps reorder and tighten narrative arcs for greater clarity and flow, provides a roadmap to align scenes, themes, and character development coherently, and makes the manuscript easier to edit in manageable layers, from big picture to fine details.
This practice is widely recommended by structural editors and developmental editors to ensure that a novel’s fundamental story design is strong and engaging before final polishing. Outlining can help streamline the plot and organize thoughts during the revision process, making it a valuable tool in making a story stronger and leaving a lasting impact on the reader.
Kelsie Engen, a passionate reader and blogger, contributes this guest post to emphasize the importance of outlining during developmental edits. She highlights that consistency is key when creating an outline, and an outline can be as detailed or as simple as needed, from a quick jot down of plot points to a detailed outline with every scene.
In previous posts, we’ve discussed subplots and plot holes. Outlining can help address pacing issues in a novel, ensuring that the story moves at a steady pace that keeps readers engaged. So, the next time you embark on a revision journey, don’t forget to take a step back and look at the bigger picture – it could make all the difference.
During this revision journey, creating a new outline during developmental edits can help address pacing issues in books, ensuring that the character arcs unfold in an engaging and steady manner. This outline, acting as a guide, can reveal the first draft's structural weaknesses and provide targeted revisions, ultimately leaving a lasting impact on the entertainment value of the finished novel.
