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How do you outline a short story? You might assume that you’d want to use a story structure, but sometimes they can feel quite overwhelming for short stories. So, today we’ll talk about two other ways I’ve outlined short stories: character arcs and first drafts.

Outlining With Character Arcs

As a refresher, a character arc is the emotional journey a character takes throughout the story. They start in one place, and we see them grow and mature, and they settle into this new version of themselves.

We all go through character arcs repeatedly throughout our lives. You’re probably not the same person you were six months ago, a year ago, five years ago. So it’s important that your characters have similar growth cycles, or one important arc, depending on the scope of your story. We want our characters to mimic real life as much as possible.

Using the character arc to outline a story is a great way to create a character-driven story, which is when the story focuses more on a character’s inner-doings than the plot. We’re not necessarily going on a big quest like a hero’s journey, but we are following a character closely who’s usually grappling with something emotional, hence the character arc.

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How to create a character arc

Character arcs can feel really overwhelming especially to new writers, so I like to break them down into three parts to start with. You can do this with a brand new character and make up the answers as you go, or you can take a previous character and use this to refine their character arc.

The Now

The first part is The Now. Where is your character currently? And by currently, I mean the beginning of your story. I have a few questions for you to discover who they are, and we’ll build off of these answers in the other two parts of this framework.

• What are their best character traits? What about them makes people, your readers, like them?
• What flaws do they have? What ideals or beliefs do they have that aren’t so flattering? What about their life philosophy feels a little iffy?
• What’s something that they want? Do they want to be a better person, or are they not really focused on that? Do they want to be smarter, more trusting, funnier?
• And what do they actually need? What is a trait they’re lacking that would really be beneficial to develop? Maybe this is something they don’t even see about themself. 
• What is their motivation in life? What moves them to be a better person? What inspires them? Why do they get out of bed in the morning? This might be the motivation to get the thing they want.
• What does your character fear? What are they afraid of becoming? What are they afraid will happen if they don’t get that thing they want. 

The End

Next, I want you to think of The End. This is where they are when your story ends. So let’s take a look at these same questions through the view of this new version of your character. Make up these answers as you go and we’ll fill in the gaps next. It’s okay to just guess as to where your character is ending up if you are starting from scratch. If you have a character already in the works, try to consider what in the first draft of your story has changed for them. 

• What are their new best character traits? Do they change, or not?
• What are their flaws now? Even if your character learns something and becomes a better version of themself, they still have flaws. Our characters don’t become perfect in one story, or ever. But if your character learned a specific lesson that had to do with one of their flaws, maybe that’s off the list now.
• What do they want now? Did they achieve their goal from The Now section? What’s next on their agenda?
• What do they need now? Did they get the thing they needed, whether or not they originally knew they needed it? What’s the next step for this character?
• What’s their new motivation? Did that change based on whether or not they got what they wanted or needed?
• Now what do they fear? If they’ve grown throughout this story, they might not be scared of the same things now. 

The Bridge

Next we’ll connect these two sections by figuring out how your character goes from The Now to The End. This is where the outlining can really begin. 

Let’s start by talking about how we grow as people. Usually, we learn things the hard way. Some big obstacle has to come up for us to overcome and in the process we become a little bit better of a person that way. We make mistakes and realize our wrong doing, and we have to apologize or work really hard not to make the same mistakes again. 

So, to start outlining, we need to think about what is going to happen to get your character from The Now to The End. What roadblocks can you throw in the way of your character so they trip and fall and have to pull themself back up? 

If your character becomes a more trusting person, maybe they have to form new relationships or rebuild old ones. If your character becomes more empathetic, maybe they have to have some fights with their significant other about not being there enough for them.

Take some time to consider what lessons they need to learn, and how they can learn them.

After you get these points figured out, I suggest moving into your first draft as you usually do, using these ideas as checkpoints along the way.

Outlining After a First Draft

Sometimes the best way to figure out what’s happening in your story is to word-vomit onto the page and see what comes out. For me, it often takes one or two drafts to recognize the plot or character arc starting to form. I can get something down on the paper and then rearrange and refresh where I need to. 

I like to get a general idea of a story down and then outline before a revision. This gives me the space to get to know my characters and their story without the pressure of sticking to an outline right away. Nothing has to happen in this first draft. I can go in with my tool belt of craft elements and tune it up into something that will grip the readers’ attention.

Basically, this form of outlining is just revision, but a bit structured. Sometimes I like to do my word vomiting and then pick out the pieces that are working and lay them into an outline, then I’ll connect dots and fill in gaps in the outline as needed. You can rearrange your plot points as you do this, you can split them up, and you can get rid of them completely if you want to. 

This gives you a constructive way to go into your second draft rather than just fine tuning and guessing at what needs to be filled in.

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