I actually start with a four-step outline of main pillars, which I write down to describe the key story points in one sentence each. You can also add a fifth item at the start, the "inciting incident". When you are finished with this, you have a list of five sentences that give an overview of your story. I believe they will work just as well for shorter stories and novellas as they do for novels.
Here are the main pillars of your story:
0. What is the event that sets everything in motion?
1. What happens at the end of Act I? (This is where the MC makes the commitment to the situation, or the situation is now unavoidable.) [Step 1 below]
2. What happens at the Mid-Point? (This is the end of the first half of Act II, the mid-point of the story, the point where a key decision by the MC moves him/her toward a path that will lead to the final confrontation/climax.) [Step 6 below]
3. What happens at the end of Act II? (This is the big disaster or circumstance that now requires the road to turn into the final approach to the final, big conflict that provides the climax in Act III.) [Step 9 below]
4. What happens in the final conflict at the end of Act III? (What is the final outcome?) [Steps 11/12 below]
You can then take these five sentences and use them to form a paragraph, which you edit as needed, and which forms the basis of your back-cover blurb!
Using those pillars, I then take the same outline and flesh it out to twelve steps, a beginning, middle and end toward each of these key points, themselves also significant plot events. They can be looked at this way:
ACT I
Step 1: The Call To Action (something upsets the order of things)
Step 2: Refusal of the Call
Step 3: Turning Point 1 (the "Quest" or adventure is now unavoidable)
ACT II Part A
Step 4: Strategy 1 (first attempt to solve problem, or gathering friends/resources)
Step 5: Pinch-Point #1 (a crisis that reminds us of the main conflict, a complication to the first strategy)
Step 6: Mid-Point (another conflict with a decision that turns path toward the climax -- this will be like a pinch point, reminding us of the main conflict)
ACT II Part B
Step 7: Strategy 2 (another major attempt to solve the problem)
Step 8: Pinch-Point #2 (another crisis that reminds us of the main conflict)
Step 9: Turning Point #2 (another conflict that now turns us toward the final conflict -- this is usually a massive failure for the MC, the worst now seems to have happend, yet somehow we know it will get worse still)
Act III
Step 10: Low Point (the MC is reeling from the disaster in the last step, finding inner strength to go on, devising a strategy to fight back, suffering from a terrible loss in some way)
Step 11: Final Confrontation / Climax
Step 12: Resolution, Denoument (order restored)
When writing, keep your outline handy. You can write from this, or you can take this and do more with it, developing a list of scenes, separating those and grouping them into chapters. You can add as much support in the form of notes, tables, lists, etc., as you need, or use very little, but no matter how much formal planning you do, you really should THINK about your story before you start to write it, and the basic structure above calls upon you to ask yourself the important questions.
If you don't know this stuff, you can't write your story. This stuff IS your story: your story is the stuff that happens in your story, right? What happens in your story? You decide. But if you don't know the beginning, middle and end of your story, you don't have a complete story, do you? THINK your way through. Use this template to help you do that.
It's your story. Write whatever you want. But you must know what you are going to write at some point in the process. If you start with a plan, you can always meander and change it as you go. If you don't have a plan, you may get lost and have no clue where you are headed, or where you are, or how you got there.
"Look before you leap" or you may find yourself getting stuck in the mud, and that ain't no fun!
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