Table of Contents
Most advice about plotting a novel starts with structure diagrams. This guide starts earlier, at the messy stage where all you have is an idea you love and no clue how it becomes 80,000 words. Six steps, each producing something concrete that feeds the next one. And because process advice is useless in the abstract, we’ll carry one example story through every step: a crew of retired witches planning to rob the museum that stole their coven’s grimoire.
TL;DR: Plotting a novel works best as a sequence: braindump everything, compress it into a synopsis, pin down your genre’s promises, build characters who can carry the plot, outline with causality instead of “and then,” and break the outline into scene cards. It’s the same ground Sudowrite’s Story Bible covers on the way to a drafted chapter, from Braindump through Scenes.
Step 1: Braindump everything
Before any organizing, get the whole mess out of your head. Scene fragments, character voices, the ending you’re not sure you’ve earned, the image that started the whole thing. Don’t sort, don’t judge, don’t format.
The witch heist braindump might hold: the image of an 80-year-old woman casing a museum with opera glasses. A rule that magic costs memory. A guard who’s someone’s grandson. The word “grimoire.” A betrayal, unattached to anyone yet.
This step matters because plot problems usually come from planning with half the material. The idea you leave in your head is the one that would have fixed act two.
Done when: you can’t think of anything new for a full day.
Step 2: Compress it into a synopsis
Now write the story in two or three sentences. Who wants what, what stands in the way, what it costs, how it ends. If you can’t write the ending yet, write the question the ending must answer.
For the witches: “Three retired witches discover their coven’s stolen grimoire on display in a city museum and plan one last working to take it back. But magic costs memory, and the spell big enough to breach the museum will cost one of them everything she remembers. The story ends when we learn who pays, and whether the book was worth a life’s memories.”
A synopsis this short feels reductive. That’s the point. It forces you to find the spine of the story, and everything you plot afterward either hangs on that spine or gets cut. Notice what the compression just did: the vague “betrayal” from the braindump now has a candidate shape, because the memory price gives someone a reason to cheat.
Done when: a stranger could read it and tell you what the book is about.
Step 3: Know your genre’s promises
Decide what shelf this book sits on and what that shelf promises. A thriller promises escalating danger. A romance promises the couple gets there. A cozy fantasy heist promises cleverness, found family, and a plan that goes wrong in a satisfying way. These aren’t restrictions. Knowing the promises tells you which plot points are load-bearing and which are negotiable.
The witches are a cozy heist, which means readers will forgive a soft magic system but never a boring plan.
Done when: you can name three books that share the shelf, and the promises they all keep.
Step 4: Build the people who can carry it
Plot is what characters do under pressure, so the characters come before the chapter list. For each major character, know three things: what they want, what they fear, and what they’d never do. That last one is the most useful sentence in your planning documents, because it’s exactly what the plot should eventually force.
Agnes, the crew’s leader: wants the grimoire back before her memory goes on its own. Fears dying as a stranger to herself. Would never spend another witch’s memories. Now the climax has a shape before the outline exists.
Sketch the world only as deep as the story needs. The memory-cost rule matters to every scene. The history of the museum’s founding does not.
Done when: each main character’s “would never” collides with something the plot requires.
Step 5: Outline with causality, not chronology
Turn the synopsis into a sequence of major events. Plotters can go beat by beat. Pantsers might fix only four points: the opening, the midpoint shift, the low point, and the ending’s direction. Both are real outlines.
The test of a good one isn’t detail. It’s causality. Every entry should force the next one, which you can check with the connector words “therefore” and “but.” Compare:
Weak: “The witches case the museum. And then they recruit a fourth. And then the alarm system is upgraded.”
Working: “The witches case the museum, BUT the wards are newer than any of them can breach, THEREFORE they recruit the young witch none of them trust, BUT she’s the security consultant who built the wards.”
Same events. The second version generates the next chapter by itself.
Done when: you can read the outline aloud using only “therefore” and “but” between entries without cheating.
Step 6: Break it into scene cards
An outline entry like “they recruit the young witch” isn’t writable. A scene is: who’s there, where, and what changes by the end. Convert each outline beat into one or more cards with a job.
Card: Agnes and the young witch, museum café, public enough that neither can hex the other. By the end: the girl is in, and Agnes has lied to the crew about how they found her.
Scenes that can’t answer “what changes?” get cut now, cheaply, instead of in revision. And once the cards exist, drafting stops being “figure out the novel” and becomes “write this scene,” which is a much smaller act of courage every morning.
Done when: tomorrow’s writing session has a card waiting for it.
How this maps to Sudowrite
The six steps above are the ground Story Bible covers: Braindump, Genre, Style, Synopsis, Characters, Worldbuilding, Outline, and finally Scenes, which feed the Draft tool. Each field feeds the next, so the AI you’re co-writing with knows your story the way you do.
Two things change when you plot this way in Sudowrite rather than in nine scattered documents:
- Nothing gets lost or contradicted. Characters, world rules, and outline live in one place, and Chat can see all of it plus the full text of your active document. Ask it the questions from this guide: does my outline pass the therefore/but test, whose “would never” does the climax break. In Chat only mode that’s unlimited and uses no credits.
- The outline becomes prose. Draft can generate Scenes from your linked Outline’s chapter summary, then write a full chapter of 3,000 to 5,000+ words from them, with Muse, the first AI made for fiction, as the default model. AI-generated text appears in purple, so you always know which words are yours.
If you’d rather see the shape before committing to steps, Canvas gives you a digital whiteboard with outline templates for the Hero’s Journey, Hollywood Beats, the Story Circle, and the Romance Outline. And for choosing among those frameworks, we have a separate guide to story structure.
Frequently asked questions
How do I start plotting a novel?
Start with a braindump, not an outline. Get every idea, scene fragment, and character thought out of your head first, then compress it into a two-sentence synopsis that names who wants what, what it costs, and how it ends. Outlining before this stage means planning with half your material.
Do I have to plot before writing?
No. Pantsing is a legitimate way to write a novel, and many writers plot only in revision. The tradeoff is rewrite volume: discovery drafts usually need heavier structural surgery. A middle path many writers land on is fixing just the midpoint and the ending’s direction, then discovering everything between.
How detailed should a novel outline be?
Detailed enough that every entry causes the next one, and no more. Test it with connector words: if you can read the outline using only “therefore” and “but” between entries, it’s a plot. If you need “and then,” there’s a causality gap. A four-point outline that passes beats a forty-point list that doesn’t.
Can AI plot my novel for me?
AI plots best as a co-writer, not a replacement. In Sudowrite, Story Bible turns your braindump into a synopsis, outline, and Scenes step by step, with you steering every stage, and the Draft tool then writes full chapters from those Scenes. The free trial needs no credit card.
The plot is a ladder, not a cage
Braindump, synopsis, promises, people, causality, cards. Each step is small, each one makes the next easier, and none of them locks you in: discovering something better mid-draft just means updating the plan. The witches would approve. Their whole plan went wrong in chapter nineteen, and that turned out to be the book.