by Youngbear Roth

Created on: March 14, 2010   Last Updated: November 12, 2010

If a story is "what" happens, a plot is "how" it happens; to plot is a verb.  The American plot in litearary publishing and in film production is traditionally action driven, and the life-blood of any plot is "forward momentum."   Without momentum our story dies.   Plot momentum is sustained by using an action only narrative to develop tension.  The event outline is the narrative tool for developing an action only plot.

Our outline will be bare bones.  After the event outline is completed we will fill in supportive story elements: transitional and linking exposition, dialogue, characters, environmental details, conflict, character arc, etc.  

The event outline works because it indicates direction while preserving freedom within structure.  I'm going to shout out a sample sequence of scenes.  They are written quickly and without detail.  They are event driven.  Each scene is a bare sketch of an action:

"One!  A man running down county courthouse steps quickly looks behind himself every few feet."

"Two!  The running man spins around once glancing at bustling, crowded sidewalks and disappears in the darkness down the subway stairs."

"Three!  The running man finds his way into a passenger car and is smashed and jostled in the crowd.  The car takes off."

"Four!  The car stops.  The crowd exits.  The running man lies motionless, dead on the car's floor."

Using this method, we are free to create environment, dialogue, draw characters, and add more action and events while the event outline guides us through our actual first draft.  With outline in hand, we create fearlessly, knowing we'll never lose our way.

Each of three acts is framed with scenes.  The entire outline will total sixty scenes, more or less, and each scene will be assigned a consecutive number.  We won't require any secondary lettering because we will not include any details. 

How many novel manuscript or film script pages does the outline represent?  If we're writing a script, the outline represents one hundred and twenty pages:

Act one = thirty pages

Act two = sixty pages

Act three = thirty pages

If we're writing a manuscript, no page limitations apply.  Assessing our outline one scene at a time, cover no less than five pages per scene.  The outline for a manuscript represents a minimum of three hundred actual pages. 

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