Mastering Story Structure: The Complete Outlining Guide for Fiction Writers
$27A comprehensive guide that walks you through everything you need to outline a structurally sound novel — without killing the magic.
This guide is the property of Lauren Kay Writes and is for personal use only. It should not be resold or redistributed.
What's included?
The complete 7-Point Plot Structure, broken down beat by beat
A practical, step-by-step outlining process
How to diagnose a draft that isn't working — and pinpoint exactly what's broken
Seven genre companion documents, showing each beat of the 7-Point structure from a bestselling novel
An auto-calculating beat sheet spreadsheet to map the seven beats to your specific story and word count
And more tools to help you write a novel that holds together, from a 6-figure debut author who received 8 agent offers
Most outlining advice is either too rigid — dozens of beats locked in before you write a word — or too vague to actually use.
This guide teaches you the 7-Point Plot Structure: seven landmark beats that give you enough structure to stop getting lost in the middle, but enough flexibility that your story still feels alive. It's the framework that quietly underpins almost every novel you've ever loved, and once you can see it, you can use it — to test an idea, to outline from scratch, or to diagnose a draft that feels close but kind of off.
You'll learn how to use structure as both a planning tool and a revision tool, how to weave character arc and subplots through your beats, and how to adapt the framework for your specific genre.
The guide includes seven genre companion documents — each walking through the 7-Point structure using a bestselling novel in that genre, plus an auto-calculating beat sheet spreadsheet so you can map the structure to your own novel and word count.
Whether you're a planner, a pantser, or somewhere in between — if you've ever stalled at 30K words, abandoned a draft, or finished a manuscript that feels close but not quite right, this is the guide that will tell you why and what to do about it.