Honestly, I love it when characters relapse. When someone who’s gotten over their anger issues falls into a situation so out of their depth they fall back on their old habits. When someone who’s learned to open up becomes a recluse again in order to cope with something outside their control.
There’s just something so horrible, so toxic, about watching a character grow and then slip back into their old selves in order to cope, bc you know they still care, that they’re the same inside, but watching them hurt so hard they don’t know what else to do brings a sense of catharsis.
🧩 How to Outline Without Feeling Like You’re Dying
(a non-suffering writer’s guide to structure, sanity, and staying mildly hydrated)
Hey besties. Let’s talk outlines. Specifically: how to do them without crawling into the floorboards and screaming like a Victorian ghost.
If just hearing the word “outline” sends your brain into chaos-mode, welcome. You’re not broken, you’re just a writer whose process has been hijacked by Very Serious Advice™ that doesn’t fit you. You don’t need to build a military-grade beat sheet. You don’t need a sixteen-tab spreadsheet. You don’t need to suffer to be legitimate. You just need a structure that feels like it’s helping you, not haunting you.
So. Here’s how to outline your book without losing your soul (or all your serotonin).
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🍓 1. Stop thinking of it as “outlining.”
That word is cursed. Try “story sketch.” “Narrative roadmap.” “Planning soup.” Whatever gets your brain to chill out. The goal here is to understand your story, not architect it to death.
Outlining isn’t predicting everything. It’s just building a scaffold so your plot doesn't fall over mid-draft.
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🧠 2. Find your plot skeleton.
There are lots of plot structures floating around: 3-Act. Save the Cat. Hero’s Journey. Take what helps, ignore the rest.
If all else fails, try this dirt-simple one I use when my brain is mush:
Act I: What’s the problem?
Act II: Why can’t we fix it?
Act III: What finally makes us change?
Ending: What does that change cost?
You don’t need to fill in every detail. You just need to know what’s driving your character, what’s blocking them, and what choices will change them.
—
🛒 3. Make a “scene bucket list.”
Before you start plotting in order, write down a list of scenes you know you want: key vibes, emotional beats, dramatic reveals, whatever.
These are your anchors. Even if you don’t know where they go yet, they’re proof your story already exists, it just needs connecting tissue.
Bonus: when you inevitably get stuck later, one of these might be the scene that pulls you back in.
—
🧩 4. Start with 5 key scenes. That’s it.
Here’s a minimalist approach that won’t kill your momentum:
Opening (what sucks about their world?)
Catalyst (what throws them off course?)
Midpoint (what makes them confront themselves?)
Climax (what breaks or remakes them?)
Ending (what’s changed?)
Plot the spaces between those after you’ve nailed these. Think of it like nailing down corners of a poster before smoothing the rest.
You’re not “doing it wrong” if you start messy. A messy start is a start.
—
🔧 5. Use the outline to ask questions, not just answer them.
Every section of your outline should provoke a question that the scene must answer.
Instead of:
— “Chapter 5: Sarah finds a journal.”
Try:
— “Chapter 5: What truth does Sarah find that complicates her next move?”
This makes your story active, not just a list of stuff that happens. Outlines aren’t just there to record, they’re tools for curiosity.
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🪤 6. Beware of the Perfectionist Trap™.
You will not get the entire plot perfect before you write. Don’t stall your momentum waiting for a divine lightning bolt of Clarity. You get clarity by writing.
Think of your outline as a map drawn in pencil, not ink. It’s allowed to evolve. It should evolve.
You’re not building a museum exhibit. You’re making a prototype.
—
🧼 7. Clean up after you start drafting.
Here’s the secret: the first draft will teach you what the story’s actually about. You can go back and revise the outline to fit that. It’s not wasted work, it’s evolving scaffolding.
You don’t have to build the house before you live in it. You can live in the mess while you figure out where the kitchen goes.
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🛟 8. If you’re a discovery writer, hybrid it.
A lot of “pantsers” aren’t anti-outline, they’re just anti-stiff-outline. That’s fair.
Try using “signposts,” not full scenes:
Here’s a secret someone’s hiding.
Here’s the emotional breakdown scene.
Here’s a betrayal. Maybe not sure by who yet.
Let the plot breathe. Let the characters argue with your outline. That tension is where the fun happens.
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🪴 TL;DR but emotionally:
You don’t need a flawless outline to write a good book. You just need a loose net of ideas, a couple of emotional anchors, and the willingness to pivot when your story teaches you something new.
Outlines should support you, not suffocate you.
Let yourself try. Let it be imperfect. That’s where the good stuff lives.
Go forth and outline like a gently chaotic legend 🧃
—
written with snacks in hand by
Rin T. @ thewriteadviceforwriters 🍓🧠✍️
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I love the reveal of traumatic pasts more than the traumatic past itself. Their past slowly getting revealed or discovered by accompanying characters even though the traumatized character is actively trying to keep their past a secret. The subtle signs that the accompanying characters pick up on, the soft questions at first, the inevitable confrontation. Paired with dramatic irony? 9 times out of 10 I’m eating that shit up
What's the worst thing that could happen to your main character? What piece of themselves would be the hardest to lose? What belief or hope are they clinging that could be stripped away? What is it that they fear the most? What would shatter their heart? What can strip your character of the lies they tell themselves and force them to face a harsh truth?
What irreversible event could break your character so that they can never be who they once were?
Nobody talks about Murray's arc but after losing Alexei, he is significantly gentler with Joyce in season 4 about Hopper. He's still silly and fun, but when it comes up, there aren't callouts like before. He gets physically on her level and softens his tone when he talks to her about it in 4x02.
El/Jane is a super complex character so I’m gonna dissect her real quick for fun
She’s been conditioned to believe that performance and violence = success and love and happiness because in the lab, kids were rewarded for performing. This is shown by the multiple instances in which she persists to be of any help despite the harm that comes to her. She’s been taught that the pain will amount to something and that something is approval and praise. Both of these, she gets in and out of the lab. This is also why when she loses her powers she’s incredibly distraught and angry all the time. Her one way of solving problems is gone. She’s not that great at communicating with words so she does things she regrets and for the first time, she sees the damage she can do without her powers and suddenly she doesn’t get approval for it. Everyone is scared of her. Her worldview is shattered. Now she feels like a monster and she’s miserable because she has no way of expressing herself because if not violence or her powers, then how does she make people understand how she’s feeling? Obviously, everyone around her is used to normal communication (the Byers are pretty good at this) so there’s no one to help her figure this out. Not only is she now isolated and overwhelmed because of her emotions and dealing with a ton of shit at once, the one thing she thought was stable for the last eight months or so, has turned out to be an illusion. Mike doesn’t understand her at all. (This is not hate on Mike) He gaslights her which only makes her more confused because now she doesn’t understand what exactly she should be angry about. She feels a ton of emotions and there’s no outlet. Everything is crumbling. She tries to cling to normalcy but her emotions keep getting in the way of that.
She really just wants to live. I feel like a lot of El/Jane’s emotions stem from jealousy and fear because fear is a survival instinct and jealousy is something she’s developed because in the lab, there was always competition for Brenner’s love and attention. She is by nature, unfortunately, a jealous person which leads to her holding grudges. She simply solves the problem the way one of the kids at the lab would’ve: elimination (not killing, just in general).
She doesn’t just choose fight or flight—it depends on the situation. In most emotionally taxing fights with people, she runs. Season 1 is a great example of this. She has a huge fight with Mike and Lucas and runs away. However, in the face of adversity, she never runs. She stays put and fights because that’s all she’s ever been trained to do. Again, the whole approval thing factors in here and I’m not gonna elaborate because it would go in circles.
She hangs onto fantasy versions of romance because she hasn’t seen real world examples of true love. Familial love she learns, platonic love, she also figures out herself and with the help of friends but romantic love… she’s provided with a rose-tinted vision of what love and intimacy looks like and she imitates. El is like a sponge which most kids are earlier in development. Because of her age though and how late she’s learning all of this, it sticks. She doesn’t want to change her view of romantic love anymore. It’s ingrained in her mind as the kind of stuff in films and movies. Therefore, she uses this very narrow scope of the topic to view her real love life in: as something big and dramatic. While she slowly waters down those views in following years, she clings onto one thing and that is approval. However, even after she has reduced her standards, she still never gets what she wants to hear and I think that’s tragic and for me, why I dislike Mileven as a ship so much. They’re incompatible because El needs something more and Mike needs a lot less. This isn’t slander on either character, it’s just the truth.
Not gonna focus much on this one but she loves learning about social things. How to dress cool, how to act around boys, what boyfriends/friends should act like, etc. She actually does care what people think of her which is a fatal flaw that only keeps hurting herself (approval again).
She hates being stripped of her autonomy and people deciding for her because for the first time in 12 years, she’s gotten a taste of freedom and now she never wants to go back. Whenever someone makes a decision for her (which is why I hate the way her and Hopper’s relationship and Mileven were) she feels personally attacked and everything she’s worked for feels threatened. So she hates that and I love that Max picks up on the fact in S3 and advocates for her.
She’s stubborn as hell. S1 is enough proof of this and I love her for that.
Thank you for coming to my Ted Talk <3
*This is specifically for writers who are in need of any kind of character analysis or character study because I’ve noticed that El is really hard to characterize due to the lack of personality in her speech (because it’s very broken and broken speech doesn’t reflect nearly as much personality) also because her speaking tends to be plot or relationship centered (also her actions). I also partially made this as a reference for myself as I really wanna write a fic from her perspective at some point! Hope this helped!
This isn’t a pro-mileven post. It’s strictly about El and El only.
