Don’t Outline Until You Know These 3 Things About Your Story

Discover the 3 core elements your story needs before outlining—so your plot has purpose, emotion, and real reader impact.

Before You Outline: The 3 Foundational Elements Your Story Needs

If you start outlining your novel with plot beats but skip these 3 core pieces, your story’s going to feel like it’s just going through the motions—disconnected, or just… meh.

Readers won’t care. And worse? Neither will you halfway through writing it.

Even with a beat sheet in front of you, plotting might feel like pulling teeth. You have no idea what to put in those boxes. What goes where? What’s actually supposed to happen to move your particular story forward?

In this article, I’m going to show you the 3 foundational things your story needs before you start outlining—so you can build an outline that actually works.

These are the same first steps I give my clients when they’re planning a new novel—or when they’ve hit a wall in the middle of one.

Because these 3 elements aren’t just “nice to know.” They’re what give your outline structure, emotional impact, and the kind of depth that keeps readers turning pages.

So if you’ve ever tried to outline and still ended up stuck—or avoided outlining altogether because you didn’t know how to start—this is where your story begins to take real shape.

Then, once you have these three pieces in place, you can plug them into a solid structural framework for your story, such as my Spellbook Outline template.

It walks you through the major turning points every story needs to keep readers engaged and deliver meaningful momentum. You can find the link HERE so you can apply everything we’re covering today inside the same high-level structure I use with clients to help them outline more effectively and finish stronger stories.

Foundational Element #1 – Your Ley Line

The first thing your story needs before you start outlining is what I call your ley line.

This is the deep, underlying *why* behind your novel—the message, value, or truth that’s driving you to tell this story in the first place.

It’s essentially your theme, but I don’t really want you to think of it that way because there’s so much more to it. Your ley line is the current of meaning that runs beneath everything.

Just like how we imagine a line of magic running underground can power spells, your ley line powers everything in your story—and it’s what makes readers care.

It shapes your character’s arc, your plot progression, even your worldbuilding. And if it’s not there, your outline might look fine on paper but have none of the spark that makes it come alive. For your reader or for you.

Why It Helps You Outline

Because your brain needs purpose to create with direction and resilience.

When your story’s ley line is tied to your personal values, lived experiences, or something you deeply care about, it becomes an identity-based motivation.

You don’t just want to write this story—you see yourself as the kind of person who needs to tell it.

And that shift activates parts of the brain tied to self-referential thinking and intrinsic reward, making the process feel more meaningful and helping you come back to it, even when things get hard.

This is especially important for writers who struggle with routine or consistency. When you connect to your story’s core truth, you’re not just relying on habit. It bases the work on your story in your self-concept and provides sustained motivation.

Why This Matters to Your Readers

Finding your ley line isn’t just for you. It’s what makes your story resonate with readers long after they finish it.

Neuroscience shows that stories act as simulation spaces for emotional problem-solving. Readers learn by watching characters struggle, change, and overcome—because it gives them hope that they can too.

Even subconsciously, this is something they want from stories.

It’s why the ley line is the foundation of the second key in my 3 Keys to Reader Enchantment framework: Enlightenment—the key of making readers care.

Powering your story from your ley line helps ensure your story has a lasting emotional impact. And just as impactful storytelling synchronizes the storyteller’s and listener’s brains through “neural coupling,” readers’ brains mirror character emotion, creating deeper immersion, understanding, and empathy.

Without a ley line, your story might be entertaining… but forgettable.

And that’s just not something we’re about here.

Your Ley Line = Your Story Compass

Your ley line also gives your outline cohesion and proven progression that will give readers that satisfying payoff by the end.

It tells you what belongs in the story and what doesn’t.

It becomes the truth your character must learn by the end—and your outline becomes a tool for testing whether the scenes and arcs are truly building toward that transformation.

When you start here, you're not just throwing together a plot. You’re making sure that plot means something. You make it matter.

Creativity Loves Constraints

It might sound counterintuitive, but defining your story’s message early—your ley line—actually enhances creativity.

That’s because your brain’s executive control network (which plans and organizes) and your default mode network (which imagines and daydreams) work best when their primary types of tasks are separated.

When your outline is powered by a clear ley line, your executive brain has something meaningful to shape—and that frees your creative brain to make connections, visualize scenes, and enter flow more easily.

How to Find Your Ley Line

So how can you find your story’s ley line? You can start by taking a look at your premise. Or think of what inspired you to want to start this story in the first place.

Why is it that you were drawn to these ideas? Any one more than the others?

Then take that reflection further:

• Why this story?
• Why now?
• What’s it coming out of for you?
• Something you’ve experienced? Or are dealing with? Want to explore?

If readers could take one thing from your story, what would you want it to be? And why?

Once you’ve spent time digging into those questions, try writing your ley line as a one-sentence universal truth. Not just a subject, but an opinion about that subject stated as a fact. A true theme, in that sense.

So not just “love and loss” but “It’s better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all.”

Here are some other examples around deep, core motivations that tend to come up in science fiction and fantasy:

• Real power means being responsible for those who don’t have any.
• Power isn’t something you take—it’s something you build.
• True power comes from knowing your own limits.
• True strength means choosing others even when it costs you something.
• Selflessness doesn’t mean losing yourself.
• You don’t have to earn your worth through usefulness—you already have it.
• Sometimes the most selfless thing you can do is ask for help.
• Having real control is knowing when to let it go.

Don’t worry if it sounds cheesy or preachy. This part is just for you.

But once you have it, it becomes the foundation you can build the rest of your outline on—with sound direction and a richness and depth that will absolutely make its way to your readers.

Foundational Element #2 – Your Character’s Truth

Once you’ve found your ley line—the truth your story is exploring—the next step is to make it character-personal.

So if you got hung up on finding your ley line, perhaps this step will help:

Ask yourself, “What truth do I want my character—and my reader—to understand by the end?”

You’re now translating that universal ley line message into a truth that your protagonist specifically needs to learn.

And whether or not they actually learn it—depending on whether your story has a positive or tragic arc—this becomes the internal arc your story is really about.

It’s the point of their journey—not just what happens to them, but what they come to understand.

Turn Your Ley Line into a Character-Specific Truth

Start by rephrasing your ley line in a way that applies directly to your protagonist.

Ask yourself, “What does my protagonist need to learn by the end of this story for that truth to be fully realized?”

Try this simple model to get started:

“[Character] needs to learn that…[your ley line].”

Then refine it from there if needed.

That sentence will become the powerful throughline for your outline—and helps your plot actually mean something.

Example:

So if I use my earlier example, and the ley line is:

“It’s better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all.”

The character-specific truth might become:

"It's better for ROSE to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all."

In this case, with a simple tweak, it goes from a general truth to something personal for the character. Now you’re in territory your scenes can show—through action, conflict, and change.

Once you've got it, you now have the truth your protagonist needs to learn by the end of your story. This is the transformation my hypothetical character Rose needs to make.

This truth becomes the story’s goal, the internal destination—and your outline should build a path that takes the character there.

Why It Helps You Outline

Outlining isn’t just about what happens next—it’s about why your protagonist is responding to each challenge the way they do.

When you know the truth they’re meant to learn, you can shape the plot around that transformation. You know where you’re going so that plot isn’t happening for its own sake. It’s all building together for your story to pack a punch.

Every obstacle becomes a test. Every turning point becomes a push. And every scene becomes progress toward that internal shift.

This is true even though it might not look like much internal progress because your character fights it until the final transformation.

Foundational Element #3 – Your Character’s Corrupted Truth

Now that you know the truth your character needs to learn… how do they make that transformation?

By first believing a corrupted version of that truth.

Because if they already believed the truth at the start? There’d be no story. No growth. No change.

So now you’re going to figure out your character’s corrupted truth—the unhealthy belief about themselves or skewed view of the world that your character holds at the beginning of the story.

But it’s not just any tragic flaw or some superficial failing. It needs to trace any external or more superficial-level shortcomings down to the core reason they have those faults in the first place.

In other words, it’s a distorted version of your story’s ley line. And it’s essential for building a plot that feels emotionally charged and worth following.

Your character’s corrupted truth is what drives their decisions, shapes their internal resistance to change, and fuels the conflict that keeps your story moving.

• Without it?
• The internal arc has no tension.
• The transformation has no contrast. It’s not earned.
• And your outline? It becomes a checklist of events instead of a story with emotional bite.

How to Find Your Character’s Corrupted Truth

So corrupt that truth! To find your protagonist’s corrupted truth, start with the truth you identified in the last step—the truth your character needs to learn by the end.

Then brainstorm what an opposite version of that truth might be. Sometimes it’s easier to go back to your universal version and twist it from there.

So in continuing from the earlier ley line example, the opposite of:

“It’s better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all.”

Might be corrupted as:

"It's better not to have loved at all than to have to live with the loss."

And then make it character-specific again.

Or, going from the character-specific truth, ask yourself:

“What twisted version of that truth do they already believe that feels right to them—until the story proves otherwise?”

So let’s map the Rose example:

• Ley line: “It’s better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all.”
• Truth: “Rose needs to learn that it’s better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all.”
• Corrupted truth: "Rose believes it's better to love no one so she never has to lose them."

So more universally, the story is wrestling with all the tragic outcomes of believing (and being motivated by) the corrupted truth:

“If you love someone, you’ll lose them. So it’s safer not to love at all.”

That’s a belief your reader can feel. And it gives your plot teeth. Kind of literally.

In my book coaching program, Enchant Your Readers, we call the instigator of this corrupted truth the character’s inner demon of fear. And its fangs are sunk deep into your character.

It’s like an evil, insidious whisper constantly pulling your character back from every good inch of progress toward the truth because their motivation is so rooted in this corrupted version of it—

• Often due to some past trauma
• Or something they’ve always been told or led to expect
• Or because of how they’ve needed to cope or survive in a pinch, and then that idea stuck around

Because now this story is about more than just what happens to Rose.

It’s about watching her struggle, protect herself, sabotage connection—and eventually, face the cost of continuing to believe and be motivated by this strong inner demon of fear.

Just like we all are in our own ways. And that’s why we need these stories.

Why It Helps You Outline

This is where things really start to click.

When you know your protagonist’s corrupted truth, you can reverse engineer the entire story arc to challenge it.

Your outline becomes a pressure cooker for your character’s corrupted truth.

• Every obstacle? Exposes a crack in that corrupted truth.
• Every turning point? Raises the stakes to try to force a change to the truth.
• Every failure or setback? Reveals how the corrupted truth is backfiring and even causing these disasters.

And by the climax, your character is either forced to let go of that inner demon of fear and its corrupted truth—or cling to it harder, depending on the arc you’re writing.

The war between the truth and corrupted truth, what your character wants because of the corrupted truth and what they actually need, and the inner demon of fear conflicting with true desire is the engine of tension that keeps your story moving.

This is the stuff a compelling character arc is made of. And the ley line gives it its power.

When you build your outline on this foundation, you’re not just stringing scenes together—you’re crafting a meaningful journey that makes readers care. Deeply. And yes, all while still being thoroughly entertained.

You can have the best of both.

That’s why we start the novel outline here. From your ley line. So we can have all the epic action and use it to bring our readers to tears, or snort-laugh out loud. And think about it long, long after they turn the final page.

But if...

• Outlining to ultimately achieve this with your novel still feels out of reach…
• You consider yourself a pantser and outlining always kills your motivation and never seems to work for you…
• Or you’re afraid outlining is going to make your story bland and formulaic…

Don’t worry. You can still use everything we’ve done here to outline in a way that supports your process, preserves your excitement, and powers your story with impact all the way through.

The field of cognitive psychology is quite theoretical. I'm extrapolating for authors what I can based on the findings we do have (and I'm certainly not a neuroscientist!). To explore a fuller background, you can see this article about a breadth of brain science sources (and their abstracts/descriptions) in my site's private resource library. Note: You'll need to register a free student account to access it: https://www.inkybookwyrm.com/blog/sources-on-the-science-of-story-craft-and-creativity

Categories: : creativity, novel drafting, novel planning, story structure