How I use John Truby’s The Anatomy of Story to Outline Fiction, Part Three

Or: Chapters 1–5 (The third of five posts)

Photo by Green Chameleon on Unsplash

(This is the third of five posts that first appeared on the Bittersweet Book Launch blog — a project with my marketing manager at the time, Dan Blank, where we documented our marketing efforts for my novel Bittersweet for the year around publication. The series of Truby posts went up in 2014, talking about how I’ve adapted Truby’s screenwriting bible, The Anatomy of Story, for writing fiction — and I’m reposting it here on Medium because I often get asked about how to outline, and I love the idea of these musings from the past helping a new group of writers — and probably me too.)

I’ll begin by saying that were I starting Truby for the first time, I’d go through the book right off the back and type up each worksheet (which he calls “Writing Exercises,” but I like to call worksheets since I’m a nerd). Then I’d “Save As” and rename each worksheet for the book I happen to be working on, since there’s a good chance I’d want to use this method in the future! I keep mine in a favorite notebook so I can reference them once I start writing in earnest (See? There it…