How to outline a novelAn outline made before the cast is decided is an outline that gets rewritten. Decide the ground first — who the story happens to, the world's rules, the canon that must not change — and the outline stands on it.
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How to outline a novel is usually answered as a question about structure: beats, acts, chapter counts. The honest answer comes one step earlier. An outline is a set of promises about what characters will do, and characters you have not decided yet cannot keep promises — which is why an outline written before the cast tends to be rewritten the moment a character becomes specific. Decide the ground first, and the outline is a route across ground that holds.

What to decide before you outline

Four things, in order: the premise in one line; the cast and how deep each profile needs to go; the world's rules with their costs and limits; and the facts that must not change — the protected canon. A novel chapter outline is those decisions plus a route: what each chapter changes, and what it costs.

Is a novel outline template the answer?

A template organises the route; it cannot decide the ground. This tool is deliberately not an outlining app — it is where the ground is decided and kept, and the outline is drawn over it afterwards, in whatever structural template you prefer. What the tool adds is the part templates skip: the story guide compiles your cast, rules and canon into one document, so every outline decision can be checked against it.

How many chapters should a novel have?

As many as the story's changes need. Chapters are units of change — each one should move a character, a relationship or the reader's understanding, and stop. Counting chapters before counting changes is how a book ends up padded; the plot step in the tool records the chapters, scenes and threads you have decided on, so the count follows the story rather than leading it.

Outline before or after characters?

After the cast, always. Outline-first is how a plot arrives that no specific character would choose: the outline says the protagonist investigates, and the character you actually wrote would flee. Decide who they are — the want, the fear, the misbelief — and the outline writes itself as what that person would do next. The pre-writing questions in the tool are generated from your own answers, which is where those decisions surface.

A free novel planning template that holds the ground

The tool is free, needs no account and uploads nothing. Decide the cast, the world and the canon in it, then export the compiled story guide and plan the chapters against it — and when a scene idea arrives that bends a rule, the document, not the deadline, settles it.

FAQ

Why does the story guide come before the invitation?
A collaborator can only contribute well when they know the characters, the relationships, the world's rules and the continuity you want protected. That context is the thing this tool makes, and it is the thing you can hand over without handing over the book.
Why is the story guide safe to share?
The story guide is the safe artifact. It says who these people are and what must not change, and it says nothing about how the story ends, so sharing it does not mean showing anyone your draft.
How do I invite the role I actually need?
A co-writer needs the cast and the rules. An editor needs the arc and the open questions. A beta reader needs the one-page brief. Because the story guide separates those, each of them can be given the right half.
Why review a response against the same ground?
When two people work from the same protected canon, a disagreement is about the story rather than about which version of the character they each remember.
What do I get on Nexet that this tool cannot do?
The tool builds the context; Nexet is where a story is written against it. A Nexet project holds your scenes and your story guide together: draft in the Manuscript Studio, keep the characters, world, plots and outline in the same project, and let the cast and the do-not-change canon stay visible while you write. It also keeps a revision of every scene, and it tracks the plot threads and the outline. The finished work exports as Word, PDF, EPUB, Markdown, Final Draft and more.
Can I invite a co-writer or an editor to work from my story guide?
Yes, and that is what the story guide is for. On Nexet you invite someone as a role, whether co-writer, editor or beta reader, and they work from the same approved context rather than from a copy that drifts. Each role is given the part of the context its job needs, and a private thread keeps the conversation with the work instead of in an email.
What is the Writers' Audition Arena?
It is where you find someone to write with. You publish a frozen seed: a passage from your own work, held at that exact version. Other writers answer it with continuations, and you read them and choose. Your manuscript is never handed over by publishing a seed: what they see is the seed, and the writer you pick works on from there.
How do I get this story guide into a Nexet project?
Export the JSON file, which is the round-trip format and the one that imports back without loss, then start the project on Nexet and bring it with you. Importing the file directly is coming; until it ships, the JSON export and the one-page brief are what travel, and the brief is what a collaborator reads first.
Does Nexet cost anything?
Nexet needs an account, and it starts free: you can create projects and write in them without paying, with more project slots available if you want them. Nothing on this page is affected either way: the free tool, its exports and its brief stay free, and they never ask for an account.
How do I start writing a book with no experience?
Start before page one. Decide who the story happens to, what they want, and the two or three rules the world cannot break, then write the opening scene against those decisions rather than guessing at them. Experience shows up in the drafting; it is not a prerequisite for deciding what the book is.
What should I decide before I start writing a novel?
Four things: the premise in a line, the cast and how deep each profile needs to go, the world's rules with their costs and limits, and the questions your answers still leave open. Outlining comes after these, because an outline made before the cast is decided tends to be rewritten the moment a character becomes specific.
What should be included in a series guide?
A series guide holds what every book in the series must agree with: the cast and their relationships, the world and its rules, a timeline that covers the gaps between books, a glossary for invented words and their spellings, and the protected canon a later book must not quietly change. The free story guide template compiles all of it into one document and adds a continuity check over what you entered.
How do I keep a character's details consistent across a series?
Put the details somewhere a later book can be checked against, and mark the ones that must not change as protected canon. This tool keeps each character's profile at one depth across the series, fixes spellings in the glossary, and reports the contradictions it can see in the answers you gave it, so remembering is the document's job rather than yours.
Is a story guide the same as an outline?
No. The story guide holds what is already true about the story: who these people are, how they relate, what the world allows. An outline holds what happens next, in order. They are read together, but one is the ground and the other is the route, and mixing them is how a rule gets bent to fit a scene.
Do I need a story guide for one book, or only for a series?
One book needs it too, and needs it earlier than most writers expect: the moment a detail is worth not contradicting, it is worth writing down. A series makes the story guide mandatory, because a reader will remember across years what the writer forgot across months. The tool builds the same document either way.
What does a co-writer need to know before they start?
The cast, the relationships, the world's rules, the protected canon and what is still open. That is the one-page brief this tool produces: enough context to write correctly, and nothing about how the story ends, so sharing it is not sharing the manuscript.
How do I co-write a book without the story drifting?
Agree the ground before the prose, and keep one document of it. The co-written books that drift are the ones where each writer remembers the facts differently, so the fix is a shared story guide: the cast, the world's rules and the protected canon both writers check against, plus a one-page brief at every handoff so the context travels without the manuscript.
Should I outline a novel before or after deciding the characters?
After the cast. An outline is a set of promises about what characters will do, and characters you have not decided yet cannot keep promises, which is why an outline written before the cast tends to be rewritten the moment a character becomes specific. Decide who they are, then outline what that person would do next.

“You shouldn’t have to send your entire book to get useful feedback.”

  • The draft and the story guide in one project. Draft a scene in the Manuscript Studio with the cast, the world and the canon beside it, so the reference sits where the writing happens instead of in another file.
  • Invite the role you actually need. Bring in a co-writer, an editor or a beta reader as a role. Each works from the same approved context, with a private thread for the conversation.
  • Never lose a version of a scene. Revisions keep a copy whenever a scene changes, so an edit is not a one-way door and a collaborator's answer can be read against what it answered.
  • Find a collaborator in the Arena. Publish a frozen seed of your own writing, read the continuations other writers send back, then work with the one that fits. Your manuscript stays private.
  • Take everything with you. Export the project or the finished document as Word, PDF, EPUB, Markdown, Final Draft, Rich Text, OpenDocument, plain text, HTML or JSON. Nothing is locked in.
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