Novel Outline Template
A book outline you can download and fill: a story skeleton that tells you which chapter each key moment lands in, and a chapter-by-chapter planner for plot, subplots, setups and payoffs, word targets, and status.
Start a book with this structure — no sign-upA novel outline template is a planning sheet with one row per chapter: what happens, what has changed by the end of it, who is on the page, which setups it plants or pays off, and how long it should run. This one has two layers. First the story skeleton: seven key moments (hook, inciting incident, first plot point, midpoint, second plot point, climax, resolution) plus two optional pinch points. Type in your book length and the spreadsheet tells you which chapter each one lands in. Then fill the chapters between them. Download it as Excel, Word, or PDF, or copy the plain-text version below.
Or fill it in online, right in LitMemo.
Start a book with this structure — no sign-upTemplate preview
The chapter outline columns, filled for chapter 7 of the example
| Field | Example |
|---|---|
| Ch · Working title | 7 · The Green Ledger |
| Key moment | First plot point (25% of the book) |
| What happens | Under the boathouse floor Maren finds the green ledger: the $40 went to Ada Moss, widow of a man drowned in 1987. She hides it and lies to the harbormaster when he comes by. |
| What changes by the end | She chooses to dig. There's no going back to closing the books and moving on. |
| POV · Story day | Maren · Day 9, Tuesday night |
| Cast on the page | Maren, Calvin Reese |
| Main plot · Subplot B · Subplot C | Ledger found · Eli doesn't know yet · Jonah's storm story stalls |
| Plants (→ ch.) · Payoffs (← ch.) | ← ch. 1: the $40 advance with no receipt |
| Target words · Actual | 3,400 · 3,650 |
| Status | Concept → Draft → Revision → Final |
Printable blank version
The Excel file has five tabs: Start here, Skeleton (type your word count and it finds the chapters), Chapter outline (40 rows with POV, story day, subplot, setup and payoff columns, a status dropdown, and word totals), Scene list, and the filled 27-chapter example. It also opens in Google Sheets and Numbers. The Word and PDF versions hold the skeleton, the word-count table, and a six-column chapter planner in landscape, with room to write.
Or fill it in online, right in LitMemo.
Start a book with this structure — no sign-upField guide
Fill the skeleton first: it decides which chapters carry the big turns. The examples come from the same invented book as the image above, The Salt Ledger, a small-town mystery planned at 80,000 words in 27 chapters.
Story skeleton: the key moments to fill before the chapter list
| Field | What to write | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Hook (0–5%) | The first scene: the protagonist in their normal world, doing something that shows who they are. The question the book will answer should be visible here. | Ch. 1. Closing the cannery's books, Maren finds a $40 cash advance to her father every month since 1987, with no receipt. |
| Inciting incident (~10%) | The event that breaks the normal world. It happens to the protagonist; they haven't chosen anything yet. | Ch. 3. At her father's funeral the harbormaster asks her, quietly, for “the green ledger.” |
| First plot point (~25%) | The end of Act One. The protagonist chooses to engage, and the normal world is gone. | Ch. 7. She finds the ledger, sees the money went to a drowned man's widow, hides it, and lies to him. |
| Pinch point 1 (~37%, optional) | The opposition shows its strength and raises the pressure. Useful when the first half of Act Two drifts. | Ch. 10. The harbormaster offers to buy the family house, and her brother says yes. |
| Midpoint (~50%) | A reversal or revelation that changes what the protagonist wants or knows. Act Two turns from reacting to acting. | Ch. 14. The 1987 log: the harbormaster captained the boat, and her father helped cover it up. Protecting Dad's name becomes telling the truth. |
| Pinch point 2 (~62%, optional) | The opposition strikes again, harder, and the cost of continuing goes up. | Ch. 17. He moves to shut down the cannery, putting Dot out of business. |
| Second plot point (~75%) | The end of Act Two: the lowest point, or the last piece of information. Everything the protagonist has avoided is now unavoidable. | Ch. 20. The cannery office burns with her copies, and her brother helps the harbormaster take the original. |
| Climax (~90%) | The confrontation the book has been building toward. The protagonist makes the choice they couldn't have made in chapter one. | Ch. 24–25. She goes out on the water for the first time since she was nine, finds her father's carbon copy, and reads it aloud at the town meeting. |
| Resolution (95–100%) | The new normal. Echo the hook so the reader can measure the change. | Ch. 27. In her own bookkeeping office, she keeps paying the widow the $40, openly. |
Chapter outline: what each column is for
| Field | What to write | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Working title | A label for you, so you can find the chapter. It doesn't have to survive into the finished book. | The Green Ledger |
| What happens | Two or three sentences of events, in order. | She pries up the third floorboard, finds the ledger, and lies to Reese when he comes by that night. |
| What changes by the end | One line on what is different at the end of the chapter, for the plot or for the character. A chapter where nothing changes is one to cut or merge. | She chooses to dig. |
| POV and story day | Whose head we're in, and when the chapter happens in story time. These two columns catch most timeline slips in multi-POV books. | Maren · Day 9, Tuesday night |
| Cast on the page | Everyone present. Read down the column to see who has vanished for ten chapters. | Maren, Reese |
| Main plot / Subplot B / Subplot C | One short line per thread per chapter, or an empty cell. An empty column for ten rows is a thread you dropped. | Ledger found · Eli doesn't know · Jonah's story stalls |
| Plants and payoffs | Write the chapter number of the other half: → 14 means planted here, pays off in 14; ← 1 means it pays off something from chapter 1. | ← 1: the $40 advance |
| Target and actual words | Start from the average on the Skeleton tab, then adjust chapter by chapter while keeping the total. A chapter running at twice its target is usually two chapters. | 3,400 / 3,650 |
| Status | Concept, Draft, Revision, Final. This column turns the outline into a progress tracker. | Draft |
Plain-text version (copy & paste)
The skeleton and the chapter planner as plain text, ready to paste into Google Docs, Word, Notion, or Scrivener. The word-count table converts the percentages for common book lengths.
■ Story skeleton Hook (0–5%): Inciting incident (~10%): First plot point (~25%): Pinch point 1 (~37%, optional): Midpoint (~50%): Pinch point 2 (~62%, optional): Second plot point (~75%): Climax (~90%): Resolution (95–100%): ■ Where the key moments fall 60,000 words → first plot point ~15,000 · midpoint ~30,000 · second plot point ~45,000 · climax ~54,000 80,000 words → first plot point ~20,000 · midpoint ~40,000 · second plot point ~60,000 · climax ~72,000 100,000 words → first plot point ~25,000 · midpoint ~50,000 · second plot point ~75,000 · climax ~90,000 120,000 words → first plot point ~30,000 · midpoint ~60,000 · second plot point ~90,000 · climax ~108,000 Chapters = book length ÷ average chapter length (80,000 ÷ 3,000 ≈ 27) ■ Chapter outline (one row per chapter) Ch | Working title | Key moment | What happens | What changes | POV | Story day | Cast | Main plot | Subplot B | Subplot C | Plants → ch. | Payoffs ← ch. | Target | Actual | Status | Notes 1 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Concept | 2 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Concept | 3 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Concept |
Filling the two layers in order
- Fill the seven key moments first. If the second plot point won't come yet, know at least the climax, and come back to it before you plan Act Two in detail.
- Decide the book length and the average chapter length. 80,000 words at 3,000 a chapter is 27 chapters; the Skeleton tab does this division for you.
- Put each key moment into its chapter. With 27 chapters: inciting incident in chapter 3, first plot point in 7, midpoint in 14, second plot point in 20, climax around 24.
- Fill the chapters between them last. Sketch every row in a line if you can see that far, and write the full entries only a few chapters ahead of where you're drafting; the draft keeps teaching you things the plan couldn't know.
What to add to the chapter outline, by genre
- Romance: the relationship is the main plot. Use the Main plot column for where the two leads stand at the end of each chapter, and a subplot column for the external story.
- Mystery and thriller: split Plants into clues and red herrings, and note which suspect each chapter points at. The outline is where you check that the reader had a fair chance.
- Fantasy and science fiction: add a column for the world detail each chapter introduces. It shows you the chapters that stop for exposition, and confirms that everything the climax relies on was introduced early.
- Serials and web novels: add the publish date, and copy each chapter's last line into Notes. Reading that column shows you every hook at once.
Novel outline, book outline, story outline, novel planner
Different names for the same planning document. Publishers and nonfiction writers tend to say book outline, screenwriters and short-story writers say story outline, and a novel planner usually means the outline plus the character and setting notes around it. This template is built for a novel: one row per chapter, a few dozen rows, with the three-act skeleton on top. For a story you plan scene by scene, use the Scene list tab. For the character and world notes, there's a separate free story bible template.
Using it in Google Sheets, Word, or Scrivener
- Google Sheets: upload the .xlsx to Google Drive and open it with Google Sheets. The formulas and the status dropdown come across.
- Word or Google Docs: use the .docx. Each table row is a chapter; press Tab in the last cell to add a row.
- Scrivener: make one document per chapter and paste the What happens cell into its synopsis, so the corkboard shows the outline.
How to fill in this template
An outline answers the question that can stall a draft in the middle: what is this chapter for? Fill in what happens and what changes, and you can see which chapters move the story and which ones only fill space. That's cheaper to fix in a spreadsheet row than in 4,000 words of draft.
The skeleton is the part most chapter templates leave out. Seven key moments, each pinned to a percentage of the book, give the chapter list its shape: you know chapter 14 has to turn the story around before you know anything else about chapter 14. Change your target length and every landing chapter moves with it.
The subplot columns borrow from grid outlines, where the main plot and each subplot run down their own column, one cell per chapter. J.K. Rowling's handwritten plot grid for Order of the Phoenix is the well-known example. You don't need every cell filled; the empty stretches are the point, because they show where a thread disappears.
Treat it as a working document. When the draft takes a better turn than the plan, change the row, then read down the Plants and Payoffs columns to make sure the earlier chapters still set up what the new turn depends on. Keep the Status column current and the outline doubles as your progress chart.
Fill the template in four steps
Fill the story skeleton
Write one or two sentences for each key moment: hook, inciting incident, first plot point, midpoint, second plot point, climax, resolution. Add the pinch points if Act Two feels thin.
Work out your chapters
Enter your target length and average chapter length. The skeleton tells you how many chapters you have and which chapter each key moment lands in.
Place the key moments
Copy each key moment into its chapter row in the chapter outline, so the big turns are fixed before you plan anything else.
Fill the chapters between
For each chapter, write what happens, what changes, who is there, and what it plants or pays off, in full for the next few chapters you'll draft.
Better together
Work it straight into your story
This template maps to these LitMemo features — fill it in online and everything auto-links:
Want to write it better? Start with these
Frequently asked questions
How do I outline a novel chapter by chapter?
How many chapters should a novel outline have?
How detailed does the outline need to be before I start writing?
I've drifted from the outline. Do I change the outline or the draft?
Is there a version for Google Docs or Google Sheets?
What's the difference between a novel outline and a story bible?
Is this a three-act outline template?
Or fill it in online — start a book with this structure
Start writing without signing up, then link the characters and foreshadowing in your chapters