How to Outline a Short Story

Author_S.A.Crow

Feb 26, 2025

Why I outline?

If you are reading this blog you either want to learn to outline or you haven’t ever done an outline for a short story, yes it’s a different beast entirely. Welcome to the club. There are so many different ways to outline a story from the structure outline to the snowflake method. I used to use the structure method when outlining my novels.

What is the structure method? Well, according to Writer’s Digest it is. “THE “STRUCTURE-PLUS” OUTLINE

The structure-plus outline is the most traditional method, yielding the kind of outline that looks most similar to the one you were likely taught to create by your fourth grade teacher. These outlines contain detailed written descriptions of the individual scenes that will progress in a linear fashion throughout your novel.”

Ex:

I. SETTING: The back room at Spaghetti O’Plenty; 5 p.m.

CHARACTERS: Rhys; his girlfriend, Trina; Trina’s manager at the restaurant

PURPOSE: To complicate the plot and build tension between Rhys and Trina

a. Rhys gets his acceptance letter to a prestigious art school and, excited, goes to Trina’s work with the intention of telling her.

i. Trina goes on break and takes him to the back room.

ii. “I need to tell you something,” Trina says. “I’m pregnant.”

iii. Trina’s manager interrupts, “Trina, we need you on Table 7.”

b. Rhys is shocked, and can feel his dream of being a painter slipping away.

i. “What are you going to do?” Rhys asks.

ii. “Me? What am I going to do? We’re in this together,” Trina says, upset.

iii. Trina’s manager comes in and sees her crying. “Leave her alone and get out of here,” he says. “Trina, I said Table 7.”

c. Rhys leaves the restaurant, crumpling up the letter and throwing it away on his way out.

So why do I outline? I like to think of outlining as doing a sketch of the story. I write romance suspense and noir mystery and in both genres you need to keep track of the bad guy’s actions and the clues they leave behind. Personally I can’t do that without an outline.

What’s different about outlining for a short story versus a novel?

Why is outlining a short story different from a novel? Well, in a novel you have more time to develop character, work with subplots, and immerse the reader in the world you are creating. In a short story you have to tell a story in what is currently 5 to 10,000 words. And don’t forget you have to make it memorable.

I started my writing career, writing romance suspense novels which go from 40 to 60,000 words. These novels are also part of a series so I needed to insert subplots for other books in the series into each novel. That is a lot of words compared to the 10k for a short story. I needed to keep on track. How did I do that?

Here are my tips and tricks?

Plan it out with a short story outline table. This is the one I use https://docs.google.com/document/d/1JzSmXn6SEvJByeXD1vkjuOkpxss8wNTutmJI2kXECts/edit?usp=sharing

Pick a singular idea for the story, scene, paragraph and sentence.
Don’t know where to start RanGen has a plot generator https://www.rangen.co.uk/writing/plotgen.php

A Murphy’s Law generator https://www.rangen.co.uk/writing/murlawgen.php

Awkward moment generator https://www.rangen.co.uk/writing/awkwardgen.php

First encounter generator https://www.rangen.co.uk/writing/encountergen.php

I use their site character generator for describing non-important characters and to get names for characters.