Story Outlining with Milanote

How do you outline your story structure? I just finished writing a review on Veracity’s site about a collaboration tool called Milanote. I’ve been playing with it for a couple of weeks on the business side, but then had an idea that this would help me outline the structure of a couple of stories I’ve been mulling about in my mind. Getting it out of your mind and on to paper is half the battle, right?! Let’s review some of the more traditional outlining techniques. Then, I’ll share with you some screenshots of how I’m using Milanote on one of my story projects.

Typical Outlining Techniques

Traditional Outline

There is the traditional outline that you probably learned in school when you wrote your first term paper. In its simplest form, there is a beginning, middle, and end.

1. Beginning
   1. Chapter
      1. Scene
      2. Scene
   2. Chapter
2. Middle
3. End

This is a high-level approach but it suffers from not being flexible. Reminds me too much of school in all honesty. I’ve often seen writers approach the traditional outline with a character-based concept.

Notecards

There is the notecard approach. You organize your thoughts, character descriptions, and the like on index cards. This allows you the flexibility of moving things around. I don’t like to carry a stack of cards around with me, so I almost always rule out this process.

Mindmapping

According to Wikipedia, a mind map is a diagram used to visually organize information. It can be hierarchical and relational. It’s typically created around a central topic or concept. The illustration below is a mindmap I made in MindMeister that takes a character-based approach to outlining the story.

Milanote for Story Outlining

What I’ve discovered with Milanote is that it enables to be create a visual view of my story outline. By combining notes, checklists, images, and links, I feel like I’ve become better at character profiling and story mapping. Milanote provides a set of templates to start off your writing project. Plus, there are other templates for just about anything you can imagine!