How to Write a Step Outline for Your Script

A step outline is a detailed telling of a story intended to be turned into a screenplay for a motion picture. The step outline details every scene and beat of a screenplay's story and often has indications for dialog and character interactions. The scenes are often numbered for convenience. It is similar to a scriptment and more detailed and specific than either a treatment or an outline. It can also be an extremely useful tool for a writer working on a spec script.

Instructions

Difficulty: Moderate

Things You’ll Need:

• A project of your own and tools to write with.

1. Start by selecting a movie or an episode of one you favorite TV shows. Begin with the opening shot and write down the major steps that carry the story from start to end. This is a step outline, at least in abbreviated form.
2. Take you own project. On paper, begin by building a list of your major scenes in one or two sentences for each. Start with broad strokes: your story’s beginning, middle and end.
3. Now expand this list each to include the in-between steps that will carry you from the first scene to the last. This bare-bones step outline is essentially a list of the scenes in your story in linear fashion.
4. Now expand each step, using no more of two sentences for all of your steps. Each of the steps should clearly describe what happens in that scene. At this point, you're not really concerned about the details: no dialogue, no set dressing, no minor characters unrelated to the central action of the scene.
5. Now that you written you step outline, go back and reread it. This is where your step outline can tell you what works and more importantly what doesn’t. If, as you read your story moves forward only by fits and starts, you have a problem. But it is much easier to make corrections here rather than after you’ve written your screenplay.

Tips & Warnings

• A step-outline is your road map where you find the direction of your story. As you search for what works and what doesn’t, technically you’re flushing out and gutting your story to prevent yourself from writing a story that has no real direction. You may only use twenty percent of your first step-outline and may write the same scene over fifteen times. Once your step outline is created, the dialogue will pour onto the pages and into your characters more truthfully because you know exactly what they’re doing and where they are going.
• Quite often after you sell a TV show on your premise, you will be asked to write a step outline of the episode. Then, after suggested changes, you can the story, an in-depth synopsis of your story and then the script. A well-written step outline can move to forward to the next stage, while a badly written one may abort the project.