How It Works

Overview

The Premise is the core of your story. It includes the Drivers (Characters, Arcs, Themes, Settings, or Events) that you would mention in a two sentence summary of the story.

The Structure section focuses on the Secondary and Minor Drivers and their relationships to the Premise. Have too many characters? Review their relationships to the Premise and see if their structral purpose can be combined into a smaller cast.

Outlining your Chapters is where everything comes together. Drag beats into the chapters were they take place. Review the timeline to remind yourself how many chapters its been since a plotline or theme was last advanced. Then write in a distraction-free canvas.

Premise

Setting up your Premise gives Lynit Coach enough information to help you catch structural issues as you write. There are four steps to setting up a Premise:

1. Summarize your premise
2. Create your Premise Drivers (at least two)
3. Create relationships between your Premise Drivers
4. Create your Milestone Beats

From one writer to another

Outlining Tip #1

Connecting Characters to Setting and Themes is the quickest way to add depth to their personality. Be mindful of the key aspects of society that shaped the environment the characters grew up in. It may be details about how social status is structured, what growing up in a rural town was like, or how magic made life easy for them. The trick is to capture how these different elements affect the character, and dive deeper into their opinions on it. A character will be in harmony with certain things and in direct contrast to others. These nuances will make them come alive on the page.

Structure

Secondary and Minor Drivers are variations, expansions, or tools for interrogating concepts defined in the Premise. Be careful of introducing completely new ideas here.

Chapters

Plan your Chapters by adding Beats to them. Reorganize chapters or move Beats to different Chapters to test out a different flow of your story.

Click the name of your Chapter to get to the Text Editor. You still have quick access to your Chapter cards.

Drivers

Arcs

Move a situation forward in a specific order. Often a question is posed such as, "Will the main character achieve their goal despite a particular challenge?" Or a problem is presented and the implied question is, "Will the Main Character resolve the problem despite a particular challenge?"

Characters

The force that drives the story, and why the reader is emotionally engaged. Main characters also have an internal growth arc that progresses forward in a specific order. It's important to remember that characters grow by living through and making decisions along arcs. If you don't know how characters will react to the events of your story, then it is difficult to know how they will grow and change.

Events

Events are best used for capturing larger moments that take place in the story. For example, it could be a festival, tournament, wedding, an important backstory event, or the idea of a scene that you want to capture before you know how it fits into the overall story.

Themes

Don't settle for preaching a cliché theme like "love conquers all", push yourself to present a novel idea or new way of looking at something. Maybe love conquers all but...

Setting

Setting is more than a specific location. Its the collection of environments that shape the characters and events of the story. If a story an art dealer, then the setting would likely be a combination of art gallaries and the kinds of people who go there.

Create as many drivers as you need. They don't need to be fully fleshed out when you just starting to outline. We recommend starting with the drivers you are the most excited about, the reason you are writing this story.

From one writer to another

Outlining Tip #2

As you think about your story, you have to decide where to begin the outlining process. Start with the Driver that is most prominent in your mind's eye or the big question of your story. Outlining this one thing first will give your story a backbone for the other Drivers to follow. Then repeat the outlining process for all the elements you have created. If you haven't already, combine the different actions that happen in each arc into the summary for each chapter. As you move from chapter to chapter focus on how the Beats fit together vs just listing the different plot points. You should be able to read the summary as a cohesive snippet. Keep in mind that these summaries do not need to be perfect as they will likely change as you iterate over the story, but they will set a strong foundation for the narrative.

Relationships

Relationships are the backbone of outlining in Lynit. They capture the key structural relationships between elements. There are two types of Drivers: Supporting and Opposing.
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Supporting Relationships capture harmony or complementary ideas. They help Drivers overcome their weaknesses. We use the special name (Ally) for Characters and (Protagonist) between a Character and an Arc.
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Opposing Relationships capture opposing ideas that lead to direct conflict, whether conceptual, verbal, or physical. Opposing Relationships attack each other's weaknesses. We use the special name (Opponent) between Characters and (Antagonist) between a Character and an Arc.

Learn More

Check out Learn With Lynit more resources on how to improve your craft and outline skills. It is in the left sidebar in Lynit.

Writing is a process. It is iterative by nature. Remember to have patience with yourself as you write, rewrite, learn, and adapt. We’ve all been through it, but now Lynit is here to be a companion along the way.