#reverse outlining

congrats. you’ve unlocked the most ✨ cursed ✨ form of storytelling: knowing the destination but having zero map, no snacks, and one emotionally unstable protagonist riding shotgun.

aka: you know how your book ends. maybe even the Last Line™. but the middle? the plot? the scenes required to get there?

🦗🦗🦗

welcome to liminal writing hell. here’s what to do about it:

🚨 STEP 1: Write the ending anyway.

yes. even if you’re only on chapter three. write the ending now. not perfectly. not canon. just get it down while it’s burning in your brain.

this does 2 things:

gets you emotionally invested in where you’re headed

gives you a north star to align your scenes to

future-you will thank you when you're knee-deep in act 2, spiraling, and you need to remember what this mess was for.

🧩 STEP 2: Backwards logic it like a feral detective.

ask: what has to happen right before this ending can exist? then ask that question again. and again. until you’ve accidentally built a whole reverse-outline.

like:

✨ final scene: heroine stabs the love interest to save the world → she needs to know he’s the villain → she needs to see him do something unforgivable → she needs a reason to be in the same room as him when it happens → she needs to go to the city where he’s hiding → she needs to choose betrayal over loyalty

now reverse those like breadcrumbs through the forest of chaos.

🎯 STEP 3: Identify your mid-point emotional switch.

the best middles aren’t just “stuff happening.” they’re a turning point. a reversal. a Big Choice. often it’s the opposite of the ending.

ending = character sacrifices love midpoint = character believes love will fix everything

this sets up contrast + emotional stakes. the midpoint shows how wrong they are. the ending proves how far they’ve come.

no midpoint? no tension. build the middle to break them, then rebuild toward the finale.

🧱 STEP 4: Stack up your themes like Jenga blocks.

what are you actually saying with this ending?

if the ending is: “freedom comes at a price” then the story needs to explore:

what freedom means

who pays that price

how people deny the cost

how your protagonist learns to accept it

if your middle scenes aren’t touching these ideas? they’re just filler. start weaving the theme early, subtly, and repeatedly. make it hurt a little.

📦 STEP 5: Write “junk scenes” in the blank spaces.

not sure how they get from castle to climax? write a fake scene. not canon. no pressure. just vibes. let the characters mess around in the setting. argue. kiss. kill. eat soup. whatever.

you’ll learn what they want, what secrets they’re hiding, what tensions spark.

some of these junk scenes will turn out to be real. others will guide you to what needs to happen next. use them as scaffolding.

🧃 STEP 6: Accept that messy = forward.

you won’t always see the whole road. write the next landmark. write the next mistake. write the next bad scene and figure out why it doesn’t work.

knowing your ending is a gift. the rest? that’s the part where you dig.

you don’t need a perfect bridge. you just need enough planks to get across without falling into the river of I’ll-Fix-It-Later.

now go. write the scene where everything breaks.

P.S. I made a free mini eBook about the 5 biggest mistakes writers make in the first 10 pages 👀 you can grab it here for FREE:

🕯️ download the pack & write something cursed:

aka Trainstop Outlining.

Okay, look. I don't know if this is an actual method, with an actual name. But I was just explaining to someone how I outline by working backwards from the end of the book, and I figured it might help someone else too.

So this is what I call my personal outlining method. Reverse Outlining, or Trainstop Outlining.

Now, for context, I used to think I couldn't outline. It didn't work for me at all. It'd either get all confused, and tangled up, or I'd build such a comprehensive outline that by the time I got to the writing part, I was bored of the book.

Then I saw Abbie Emmon's video about "Why does it matter?" It was about why you were worldbuilding things that didn't actually matter to the character, and somehow my brain clicked with that and applied it to outlining.

So, here it is. How I begin to outline a completely new project.

I recently decided I want to write genre fiction. I have ideas and would love to try. But I have come to realize that my writing is just naturally literary leaning. Very character focused, and internally driven more than anything. Sometimes a bit passive. I was wondering, if you had a student who was the same way, how would you direct them to learn to get better at the external conflicts and the various genre conventions?

reverse outline everything. buy a really fancy notebook and a nice pen, and take down notes about every story you encounter, especially ones in the genre you'd like to write in. tv shows, movies, books, video games, everything. make a bullet point list of Things That Happen. when the story is over, review your notes and highlight the inciting incident, moments of rising action, the climax, and the resolution. notice also *when* these things happen, at what percentage of the story. find an existing structure you like, say the three-act play, and draw lines between the bullet points that signal the end of each act. draw major conclusions about the way every story works. avoid criticism; practice neutral observation. if you find a movie you like, read the script. annotate the hell out of your books. articulate and witness your own perspectives of narrative.

this is for my anon from last week, who wanted to see what reverse outlining a story looks like in practice! here is the first half of my reverse outline for the first captive prince novel! (warning for huge spoilers for the series as a whole.) it's still a work in progress (i'm doing a couple chapters a night) but it should give you a sense of how i approach reverse-outlining.

typically i make a succinct list of the scenes in each chapter (with the approx scene length in kindle book pages) and then break down each scene further into the key emotional or narrative beats. then once i've finished reading the chapter, i pause and take general notes where i synthesize what just happened in the book & try to identify the different subplots each scene is advancing. i also make observations about scene structure, flag what seem like key beats or 'pinch points' in the development of the central relationship, and try to note if there are particular passages that do something really well (so i can go back and consult those scenes as models in my own work).

i find it easiest to reverse outline with stories i know really well and have read more than once, so i already know what's coming and can better identify how & where the author is planting what i refer to as 'support beams' to hold up later revelations or subplots or character arcs that we'll see develop over the course of the novel.

you can also choose to focus on different things in your own reverse-outlining, if there are particular skills you know you want to hone. for instance, i once did a long reverse-outline of a favorite story where i just tracked scene length + the first and last lines of each scene, to better understand how/where the author chose to 'enter' each scene and how/where she chose to alternate shorter, punchier scenes with longer, more complex scenes that did a lot of plot or character work. in this captive prince reverse outline, you'll see that my attention is really focused on:

how c.s. pacat weaves in worldbuilding details (esp about two contrasting cultures with a deep shared history)

where the pinch points in the developing romance fall -- ie the beats that challenge the characters' perceptions of each other. i'm also interested in tracking how she scaffolds those moments so that they increase in intensity (and thus in their ability to disrupt the characters' mutual dislike of each other).