Outline a novel chapter-by-chapter from my premise. I want a working skeleton I can actually write from — not a 30-page plot bible.
PREMISE (1-3 sentences): {paste}
GENRE: {literary / thriller / scifi / fantasy / romance / mystery}
TARGET LENGTH: {short_novel_60k / standard_80k / long_100k+}
NUMBER OF POV CHARACTERS: {1 / 2-3 / multiple}
WHAT YOU'RE GOOD AT as a writer: {dialogue / interiority / pacing / world / sentences}
WHAT YOU STRUGGLE WITH: {middle_sag / endings / character_voice / plot_logic}
COMPS (3 published novels that share DNA): {titles_and_authors}
WHAT YOU DEFINITELY DON'T WANT: {tropes_to_avoid}
FORMAT:
- Total chapter count target ({30 / 40 / 50} depending on length).
- Group chapters into 3 acts (or 5, your call based on genre).
- For each chapter, give me 2-3 lines:
1. What HAPPENS (one event)
2. Why it matters to the larger arc (one line)
3. The 'turn' in the chapter (one line — what's different at the end)
- Mark 3 'cliffhanger chapters' that close on a hook.
- Mark 2 'breather chapters' that exist to deepen character, not advance plot.
- One scene that the entire book is built around — the scene you must nail.
- Two 'kill darlings' candidates — chapters or subplots I should be willing to cut in revision.
Don't be precious. This is a skeleton I'll mostly rewrite. I need it useful, not perfect.0 copies·0 saves·1 views
232 words·1,344 chars
Sample output
Premise: A 31-year-old translator inherits her estranged grandmother's apartment in Lisbon and discovers a manuscript that may or may not be the lost final novel of a writer presumed dead for fifty years — and her grandmother's name keeps appearing in the margins. Genre: literary suspense. Length: 80k. POV: single (close third). Strengths: interiority + sentences. Weaknesses: middle sag. Comps: Bewilderment (Powers), The Vegetarian (Han Kang), The Idiot (Batuman). Avoid: any 'long-lost dad' subplot, magical realism.
Total: 32 chapters in 3 acts.
Act 1 — Inheritance (Chapters 1-9)
Chapter 1. Mira arrives in Lisbon for her grandmother's funeral. She has not seen Lila in 14 years. Matters: establishes the distance between them. Turn: Mira is told she's the sole inheritor of the apartment.
Chapter 2. Mira enters the apartment for the first time. Inventory: books, a kitchen that smells like cardamom, a closed door. Matters: the apartment is the second main character. Turn: the closed door is locked.
Chapter 3. Mira's mother calls from Boston. Quiet phone call, lots of what's not said. Mira realizes her mother does not want her in this apartment. the mother-daughter thread becomes a second drumline. her mother says 'don't open anything you find. Promise me.' Mira doesn't promise.
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FAQ
Outline by HAND, then re-outline a week later from memory. The things you forget the second time aren't important. The things you remember without the document are the book's spine. The prompt targets Claude Opus and lives in the Writing & Content category on mycopyprompt.
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Chapter 4. Mira translates a short text for her freelance day job, sets up her work at her grandmother's writing desk. The chair makes a familiar sound she can't place. Matters: establishes that the apartment knows her. Turn: she finds a key in the desk that fits the closed door from Chapter 2.
Chapter 5. The closed room. Inside: a bedroom with a typewriter, a single chair, and 800 pages of a manuscript in Portuguese. Matters: the inciting object enters. Turn: Mira recognizes the handwriting in the margins. It's her grandmother's. CLIFFHANGER.
Chapter 6. Mira starts reading. The manuscript appears to be a novel about a Portuguese mathematician in 1940 who hides a Jewish refugee in her attic. Matters: tells the reader what the manuscript is, so the rest of the book isn't 'what's in it.' Turn: Mira recognizes the voice. It might be Henrique Pessoa, the Portuguese novelist who disappeared at sea in 1973 and was presumed dead.
Chapter 7. Mira researches Pessoa at the Biblioteca Nacional. Quiet chapter. Matters: sets the literary stakes (this would be a major literary discovery). Turn: she finds a 1971 photograph that includes both Pessoa and her grandmother, together, in the same room.
Chapter 8. Mira calls her mother. The phone call goes badly. Her mother refuses to talk about Lila's life before 1975. Mira hangs up first. Matters: the family secret thickens. Turn: she opens the next chapter of the manuscript and finds her grandmother's NAME used as a character name.
Chapter 9 (Act 1 closing). Mira makes a decision: she's going to translate the manuscript whether it's authentic or not. Matters: commitment moment. Turn: she calls her mother back to say she's staying in Lisbon another month. The mother goes silent for 9 seconds before answering. Mira counts.
Act 2 — Translation (Chapters 10-22)
Chapter 10. Mira starts translating, slowly, paragraph by paragraph. Turn: the prose is uncannily her grandmother's spoken cadence. (BREATHER — character deepening.)
Chapter 11. Mira meets the downstairs neighbor, an 80-year-old retired publisher named Rafael who knew Lila for 40 years. Turn: Rafael recognizes the manuscript before Mira describes it. He says: 'She told me she'd burned that.'
Chapter 12. Rafael tells Mira that Lila and Pessoa were lovers in the early 1970s. Turn: he gives her a letter Lila left for him to give to her, sealed.
Chapter 13. Mira does NOT open the letter. (BREATHER — character deepening, this is the chapter Mira's relationship to her own avoidance becomes the real engine.) Turn: she puts the letter in a drawer and keeps translating.
Chapter 14. Two pages in the manuscript are missing — torn out. Mira asks Rafael. Turn: Rafael says: 'Yes, I tore them out.' He doesn't say why.
Chapter 15. Mira translates a particularly beautiful passage in which the mathematician describes hiding the refugee in her attic. The mathematician's name is 'Lila.' Matters: the manuscript is partially autobiographical OR partially fabricated. Turn: Mira realizes she doesn't know which.
Chapter 16. Mira flies to Boston for a single day to confront her mother. Turn: her mother breaks down and tells her something specific about Lila's life in 1940 that Mira finds in the manuscript the next day.
Chapter 17. Mira returns to Lisbon. CLIFFHANGER: she finds someone has been in the apartment. The manuscript is exactly where she left it, but someone has read further in it than she has. There's a coffee ring on page 412.
Chapter 18. Mira changes the locks. The first scene in which she is afraid. Turn: Rafael admits it was him.
Chapter 19. Mira and Rafael argue. He admits he had hoped to publish the manuscript himself decades ago and Lila stopped him. He shows her a contract Lila signed and then withdrew. Turn: the manuscript was a co-creation. Pessoa wrote much of it. Lila wrote the rest.
Chapter 20. Mira translates the final 80 pages with new context. Turn: the last section is in Lila's voice entirely. The mathematician in the manuscript dies. The author note in the margin reads: 'Henrique died here. The rest is me.'
Chapter 21. Mira opens Lila's letter. (THIS IS THE SCENE THE BOOK IS BUILT AROUND.) The letter is short. It says: 'You are the only person I trust to know which parts I made up. Publish what's true. Burn what isn't. I love you. I'm sorry I couldn't tell you while I was alive. — L.'
Chapter 22 (Act 2 closing). CLIFFHANGER. Mira's mother arrives in Lisbon unannounced.
Act 3 — Decision (Chapters 23-32)
Chapter 23. Mira and her mother in the apartment. Long, quiet, painful conversation. Mira learns about her mother's relationship with Lila — why they were estranged.
Chapter 24. They go to Lila's grave together. First scene of repair.
Chapter 25. Mira's mother tells her she will not stop Mira from publishing — but she will not read the manuscript.
Chapter 26. Mira begins making editorial decisions about which parts of the manuscript she believes are true and which are fabricated.
Chapter 27. Rafael disagrees with one of her decisions. They argue.
Chapter 28. Mira makes the final cut: she will publish the manuscript with the section that names her grandmother as the author of the final third. Turn: this means the literary 'discovery' will be smaller — Pessoa wrote half, not all. But it will be honest.
Chapter 29. Mira meets with a Lisbon publisher.
Chapter 30. The publisher offers a major deal. Mira accepts.
Chapter 31. Mira's mother comes to the apartment one more time. Turn: she asks to read the manuscript.
Chapter 32 (final). Six months later. The book has been published as 'co-authored by Henrique Pessoa and Lila Vasconcellos, translated and edited by Mira Vasconcellos.' Mira is at the writing desk in the apartment, working on her own first novel. The chair makes the familiar sound. She knows what it is now.
Kill-darlings candidates:
Decide in revision, not now.