I probably should've done this last week, but it's fine. Final post of my outlining process series will be next week. For now, here's how progress went in June 2025.

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Dungeons & Dragons campaign 1: Bard Campaign - Session #7 fully planned. No new update. We haven’t played session 7 yet.

D&D campaign 2: Tootskies Campaign - Session 2 is in prep. Sadly, this campaign has fallen prey to the worst big bad evil guy: scheduling. My new work schedule has ruled out Wednesday play, and the party couldn’t manage to find another day we’d all be able to make work once we got through summer, so we had to call it. It sucks, but the planning I did gave me some good fodder for future individual adventures to write.

D&D Single Adventure - No progress. June brought some serious changes, and I haven’t managed to find time to work on it yet. I’m trying.

Criminal from Birth sequel - I didn’t get as much work done as I wanted, but what work I’ve done has been good. I’m managing to get about an hour most mornings to work on it, so progress is steady but slower. Second Draft Status: 30 of 37 chapters edited. (4 since last update.) I’d hoped to be done by end of July, but might be more like end of August, which is fine, as long as I keep the quality up!

LitRPG book (working title Subscription: Life) - I’ve gotten the basic bones of an outline worked up, and I’m really excited to get more into developing the idea. Really hoping this project will be as much fun as I anticipate. 

New Short Story (My Stories) - No progress this month. Tried picking at it at the tail end of June, actually, but couldn’t get my brain to it so I worked on Criminal’s sequel some instead. 

In my last post, I discussed the 7-Point Plot Structure and how I use it to create the barest of outlines for my stories. It’s pretty simple to use, but it does leave a whole lot to be desired in the way I use it. I might only have a dozen sentences in my outline between all 7 points. Not a lot of flesh there. 

But that’s when we can really start using it to develop more than the basics.

7-Point Character Arcs
Probably one of my favorite supporting uses for the plot structure is in character arcs. I use this as a way to give my characters agency, keep track of their individual desires and actions, and to help flesh out my overall outline. I find it particularly useful when I have multiple prominent characters, but especially for the protagonist and antagonist. 

I don’t necessarily keep a Hook in place for all my characters, but I often have one, just as a sort of anchoring point for bringing them into the action. While I don’t actually have a set of character plot-outlines handy as examples, the idea is very simple. Each character has their initial outset and goal for whatever portion of the story they’re in. In simple ways, I try to create each character’s arc the way I do the main plot: Plot Turns 1 and 2 are inverses or foils for each other, as are Pinches 1 and 2. So a character might start out hating the protagonist when PT1 has them butt heads in a competition. But by PT2, the protagonist has done SOMETHING to turn the character’s opinion around, and now in PT2, they in turn do something to SAVE the protagonist. An about face, but one that will make sense as a foil for who they were at the beginning of the story.

What’s really great about doing this, is creating personal arc outlines for characters gives you as the author more information to place in your greater outline. With multiple character arcs going on across the length of the story, you can map out when in the outline these moments happen, where they overlap, and where they’ll be most effective in the story. This in turn is a great way to make conflicts more dramatic, if you have two characters’ Pinch 1 moments happening in the same chapter, scene, or general timing in your plot. 

Say we have Timmy and Nadine, a pair of school students. Nadine is our protagonist, with the plot revolving around her becoming star of the swim team.

Timmy, Nadine’s friend, has his own character arc involving family life and bullies.

Nadine’s Pinch 1 moment, where the stakes are raised, is all about her swimming rival appearing, a new student with eyes on the championship.

Sure, that’s bad, but we can make it worse by adding Timmy’s PT1 moment into the scene: Timmy reveals to Nadine that his parents are getting divorced, and he might have to move.
Now Nadine’s story is complicated by her friend’s plot point. 

What’s great is, these arcs don’t need to move at the same pace. Some character arcs might be shorter, with the whole 7-point structure playing out in microcosm within one of the main plot’s points. Timmy’s story might come to a crux and resolution before Nadine even gets to the midpoint of her story, or maybe Timmy’s story comes to a head with severe bullying during Nadine’s Plot Turn 2, and Timmy’s resolution (let’s say he kicks his bully’s ass) inspiring Nadine to take real action against her rival.

If you’re one of those people who likes complex storylines with lots of characters, this can be an invaluable practice. Giving basic outlines to all your main characters, then breaking them into their individual pieces and organizing them into timing can almost make a whole story for you. Figuring out when and where to put important plot points for a whole cast gives you lots to work with, and then you can even start merging plot points together to raise the stakes. Two characters’ Pinch 2 moments happen at the same time? Make it so their goals are counter to one another, and however the event plays out, one succeeds and one fails. That gives them the drive to compete with one another.

7-Point Series Outlines
In the same way you can shrink plot structures to suit character arcs, you can also blow them up to cover the main points of a whole series (or trilogy, or whatever). It was exactly this reason that The Deadly Studies was originally planned to be a 7-novella series. Necessity ended up making it a 10-novella series, as plot points did keep growing, but that happens. Initially, I had the overarcing plot of the whole series split into a basic 7-point structure. Each plot point was intended to be one novella. I don’t have the original outline I had, but it went something similar to this:

H - Luc loses his family, victim to an assassin plot
PT1 - Luc gets adopted by the Assassin’s Guild and trains, making friends
P1 - Luc and his friends grow apart for personal reasons. Their goals take them in contrasting directions. Luc has to leave Europe for the United States
MP - Luc makes a frenemy in Tom Statford, protagonist of the main series - this is where he is set up as the character he becomes in the main series
P2 - Unable to defend himself against the wrath of literal deities, Luc makes friends again, with Tom, despite hating him.
PT2 - Luc discovers the assassin who killed his family was his sister - She’s alive and an assassin too! But for his mortal enemies.
R - Luc ends his sister and takes his place against the Templars (this was always intended to be open ended, as it ties into its parent series, The Statford Chronicles by John G. Walker)

So even in the macro-plot of the series, I had points that mirrored one another. In PT1, Luc gained a new family. In PT2, his real family was taken away from him a second time, as he discovered his sister was not only alive, but was the one who assassinated the rest of their family.

Incomplete Outlines
Thing is, you don’t HAVE to hit every point on an outline. If you’re doing character arcs, you can interrupt an outline with a character dying. Any remaining points might get handed down to another character as part of dealing with the grief or aftermath of their death. Or it just leaves emptiness, a sense of incomplete possibility. 

As long as you’re flexible and using these points as tools, you can do a lot just staying within this structure. Is it perfect and infallible? Hell no. It’s a start, a tool to use. But I’ve found some good ways to use them.

Time for another post on writing processes, and this is going to be going into my personal outlining process. Your mileage may vary; you might be better served as a pantser. You might be even more of a planner than I am. This is just one man’s method. It’s always being refined and adjusted for each project, but it at least serves as a starting point for me.

Personally, I’ve discovered that I save myself a lot of stress and failed projects if I put more effort into my outline than if I just write as I go. Pantsing, as it’s called, leads me to frustrating places I don’t necessarily want to go, and I have a hard time backtracking when it gets to that point. As a result, my outlines come in two stages. I’ll call these stages the Short Outline and Draft Point-Five.
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For blog purposes, I’ll be breaking this into three posts. So here’s Part 1!

The Short Outline
This is the stage all my projects start in. My general structure (as of right now) tends to be the 7-Point Structure. That is:

The Hook: a compelling introduction to the story’s intriguing world and/or characters.
Plot Turn 1: an inciting incident that brings the protagonist into an adventure.
Pinch 1: the stakes are raised with the introduction of the antagonist or the major conflict or challenge
Midpoint: a turning point in the story where the protagonist goes from reaction to action.
Pinch 2: the major conflict takes a turn for the worse, and all appears lost for the protagonist.
Plot Turn 2: the protagonist discovers something that helps them resolve the major conflict or defeat the antagonist.
Resolution: the major conflict is resolved, and the antagonist is defeated.

Needless to say, the way these develop for me is usually with the Hook, or the initial plot idea I had. What makes the story start in the first place. The situation. I might already have the first Plot Turn (PT1) in my head, as well. Generally, I’ll have the most basic version of the conflict in mind. That’s at least the basic starting point of most of my stories. For illustrative purposes, we’re going to be looking at my short outline for the first book of The Deadly Studies series of novellas, Assassin’s Victim.

For this, I started with an initial idea for a first line, and a snippet of what the character was at the beginning. I also had a specific date in mind, as this was a time-sensitive plot point. 

H- [8/1/92] was the day I stopped believing in God, but I don't remember exactly why. Young lacrosse player.

Wasn’t much, but it was the hook. I also had PT1 all set, and it looked like this:


PT1- Luc is approached with a proposition- thinks its regarding his father's business, but it's actually regarding him. Templar attempt at shady recruiting. He offers to fund Luc's way onto a youth traveling lacrosse team?

It sets up the initial conflict: a stranger disturbs the normal routine with a proposition. There’s a lot to it, but it involves the eventual antagonists of the series as well as the smaller conflict of this first book itself. From there, I usually use a sort of mirroring/antithesis approach. I like using logic to make PT2, the turning point for victory, be a symbolic inverse of PT1, where the world gets upended. So rather than try to fill the next structure point, I go to PT2 and figure out how the main conflict will turn around for our protagonist. In this case:

PT2- If I become it, I can fight it. Accepts proposition/mentorship with Auguste Fosse.

So while PT1 here has Luc given a proposition (which I know he will reject), PT2 has him realizing that the greatest advantage he can get is to seize his opportunity to train and become a weapon. Only he wants to be a weapon AGAINST what he was approached by before. 
From here, it’s mostly filling in the blanks. I’ve gotten the two basic turning points of the plot. I approach the Pinches (P1 and P2) the same way, with trying to make them inverse or opposite style situations. P1, for me, often becomes the sort of last straw in taking action. The protagonist has no choice now but to go on their new path. In the case of Assassin’s Victim, P1 had to be Luc losing everything, and it had to be to the very monsters he rejected. A direct reaction to his refusal of the proposition in PT1. So…

P1- Assassination- family dies

And then to counterbalance that, in P2, he needs to regain a family. The same people who killed his family want to finish the job. But he’s not alone.

P2- Templars come searching for him. Wanting to recruit him to their cause, openly this time. When he refuses, thinking them to be the ones who murdered his family, they attempt to take his life. He's saved by a shadowy figure- Auguste Fosse.

It’s there that he gains a new father figure and the new direction to resolve the conflict altogether. In this case, becoming an assassin like he was victim of.

The last pieces of the puzzle are the final Resolution and the MidPoint (MP). MP is easy, as it’s a literal turning point. What causes the protagonist to turn from reactive to proactive. It could be an external force, but in this case, I chose to have it be a conscious decision.

MP- Ends his grief, begins his search/vendetta.

Luc resolves to change things. It’s as simple as that. And finally, the resolution. A lot of that was covered in PT1, but the final should, once again, somewhat mirror the inciting incident, resolving the conflict itself.

Simply put, R- Luc is going to become an assassin. 

So as a whole, here’s how my Short Outline for Assassin’s Victim looks:

H- [8/1/92] was the day I stopped believing in God, but I don't remember exactly why. Young lacrosse player.
PT1- Luc is approached with a proposition- thinks its regarding his father's business, but it's actually regarding him. Templar attempt at shady recruiting. He offers to fund Luc's way onto a youth traveling lacrosse team?
P1- Assassination- family dies
MP- Ends his grief, begins his search/vendetta.
P2- Templars come searching for him. Wanting to recruit him to their cause, openly this time. When he refuses, thinking them to be the ones who murdered his family, they attempt to take his life. He's saved by a shadowy figure- Auguste Fosse.
PT2- If I become it, I can fight it. Accepts proposition/mentorship with Auguste Fosse. 
R- Luc is going to become an assassin.

So… what?
Well, that’s it. That’s the basics. It’s a basic roadmap of the story, waiting to be filled with more detail. You can just go straight to writing from this. Personally, I don’t. I move on to my second part of outlining, which I call Draft Point Five, but I’ll go into that in another post in this series.
I also use the 7-point plot structure to expand outlines for larger projects, which will be in the next post of this series.