The Reverse Outline and Titling Chapters

June 6, 2024 by Harvey

In today’s Journal

* Quote of the Day
* The Reverse Outline and Titling Chapters
* The Numbers

Quote of the Day

“Slowing down reminds you that the journey is supposed to be fun.” Anne Bancroft

The Reverse Outline and Titling Chapters

I’ve long advocated the use of a reverse outline (RO).

For those who don’t know, the RO is a separate document that you keep open and available to you as you’re writing your novel.

As a friend recently discovered, the RO is also valuable for your short story if you story has more than one scene or if it will eventually be included in a themed collection.

Or, as in the case of my friend, where the story will eventually be included in a longer work that is both a short story collection AND a novel.

No, I’m not kidding. For one excellent example see The Stories of Eva Luna by Isabel Allende. Wonderful stories, and a wonderful overall story.

So What Is a Reverse Outline?

The reverse outline is exactly what it sounds like. You don’t plan or plot or outline anything in advance. So this is more for those who believe in themselves and write into the dark, though I suppose plotters could use it too.

Maybe doing so would provide them with enough of a safety net so eventually they would see that the story unfolds more authentically if they don’t plan everything out in advance.

Anyway, you keep the RO open as you’re writing. I keep mine in a Notepad (.txt) document. Dean Wesley Smith keeps his on a yellow legal pad.

Then as you finish each major scene or chapter, you switch for a moment to the RO and make a few notes you might need to remember later:

• a character’s clothing, for example, or physical characteristics.

• Or the description of the façade of a building,

• or the name of a restaurant

• or whatever.

• Along with a few notes about what happened in the scene, if you want.

Later, when that character or building or whatever crops up again, you don’t have to remember. You can pop over to your RO and there’s the information.

Which Brings Me to Titling Chapters.

For me, a major scene is usually 800 to 1200 words—sometimes longer, seldom shorter since each major scene/chapter requires an opening to ground or re-ground the reader.

For me, a major scene is also a chapter. And some major scenes run across two or three chapters.

As I’ve mentioned more than once in recent posts, the current novel is giving me fits.

I’ve actually lost count of the number of times I’ve had to stop and switch major scenes around. I’ve moved at least 8 or 10 major scenes from one place to another in the novel, and probably more.

Don’t get me wrong. It’s still great fun to write and the story is still thrilling, but the pace of my writing has slowed from my usual 3000 to 5000 words per day to 2000 words or fewer on many days.

That’s annoying, but it’s fine. I keep reminding myself of the truism that every novel writes differently. (grin)

But those necessary switches (they all addressed and were a result of the timeline of events) would have been next to impossible if I hadn’t titled the chapters.

Because I keep an RO, for me, moving things around was a simple matter of reordering (and renumbering) the chapters on my reverse outline, then going back into the novel, cutting and pasting the chapter into its new position.

The reverse outline also came in handy for being sure the order of chapters was correct.

For this novel, in which a lot of intense action by different characters in different scenes takes place over only a few days, my RO also contains day stamps under each chapter title. E.g., this happened on Sunday, this on Monday, this on Tuesday, etc.

The chapter title is a minuscule, word or few-word description of the chapter. It’s a hint at what happens in the chapter. (Yes, I usually title the chapter late during the process of writing it.)

Now then, I write in Microsoft Word. And yes, I tried using Scrivener once and couldn’t get into it. It’s just not my sack of meat. For those of you who prefer Scrivener, I’m glad for you.

Still, I hear those of you who use Scrivener saying it’s easier to move things around there because each chapter is a separate document (or whatever—I’m not that familiar with it).

But even there, I suspect moving scenes or chapters will make more sense if you title them first so you have some idea in advance of what you’re moving.

As a side note, if you happen to be writing short stories that will one day be compiled into a themed collection or even a collection/novel, you COULD also use those stories twice: once in the collection (with original story titles) and once in a separate, stand-alone novel (with shortened titles as chapter titles).

Hey, in the world of discoverability, two titles are better than one. Just a thought.

Talk with you again soon.

The Numbers

The Journal……………………………… 840

Writing of When the Owl Calls (novel)

Day 10…. 2038 words. To date…… 23952
Day 11…. 1960 words. To date…… 25912
Day 12…. 2157 words. To date…… 28069
Day 13…. 2122 words. To date…… 30191

Fiction for June…………………….….… 10609
Fiction for 2024…………………………. 351206
Fiction since October 1………………… 654263
Nonfiction for June……………………… 5810
Nonfiction for 2024…………………… 189440
2024 consumable words……………… 540646

2024 Novels to Date……………………… 8
2024 Novellas to Date…………………… 0
2024 Short Stories to Date……………… 1
Novels (since Oct 19, 2014)……………… 90
Novellas (since Nov 1, 2015)…………… 9
Short stories (since Apr 15, 2014)……… 239
Short story collections…………………… 29

Disclaimer: I am a prolific professional fiction writer. On this blog I teach Writing Into the Dark and adherence to Heinlein’s Rules. Unreasoning fear and the myths of writing are lies, and they will slow your progress as a writer or stop you cold. I will never teach the myths on this blog.