The Big Picture: Plan Your Book by Zooming Out (2025)

By Allison K Williams

We often write memoir by starting with an experience, a revelation, or the realization “someone else needs to know about what happened to me.” And we often get bogged down in the middle. We know the ending: we’re here, we’re healthy, we’re thriving (we hope!). We sometimes know the beginning, the moment we were furthest from the goal.

And then there’s the messy middle.

What scenes belong?

My book feels slow, but I don’t know why.

My writing group loves this chapter, but my beta readers asked why it’s there.

As we write and revise, we’re of necessity zoomed in. Sentence, paragraph, scene. Making our writing as smooth and clean as possible. Lingering on details to make scenes more powerful, as Ethan Gilsdorf wrote yesterday. This is valuable and important work. But if you’re bogged down with a slow book, or you’re stuck writing the middle, or you don’t feel like the end is a solid payoff, you may be missing the forest for the trees.

For whole-book shaping, finding the twists and set-ups and pay-offs that make readers turn pages, zoom back out.

Imagine your published book, in the future. After you topped the bestseller list, your book was optioned. A fabulous actor (you already loved their work!) plays you in the movie version, and now you’re watching the trailer for the first time. Most movie trailers have a similar structure, and they hit the same five points. Let’s grossly oversimplify:

1) Here’s the main character, something likeable about them, and what’s wrong with the situation they’re in, or what’s not working about who they are now.

2) The main character faces a big choice, and the stakes. This is the obstacle between them and a better life, and what will happen if they can’t change.

3) Watch them trying, and gosh what a failure they are! They can’t overcome their personal flaw that led to the wrong choice or the bad situation. Comedies have a series of hilarious mishaps that are deeply tragic to the person having them. Dramas have scenes of serious errors that are tragic to the character and disappointing to the audience. How could you make that mistake? we think in both cases.

4) Oh look—someone/something new came into their life! Here’s the potential for real change—and it’s going to be even harder. Will they rise to the challenge?

5) The point of no return. The biggest challenge yet. Now the main character must assemble their tools, their friends and everything they’ve learned, AND sacrifice something they previously held dear or didn’t want to change.

Because it’s a trailer, we don’t see the ending. But for the purpose of your memoir, imagine the trailer guy got happy (the producers are going to fire him) and cut in the closing scene of the movie of your memoir.

6) The closing image shows who the main character is now, in their new surroundings and acting as their new self. Note “acting.” They’re doing something, not just sitting around looking meaningful.

Back to the present. To see if your book’s structure is working, and make your own map to finish writing or revising, boil your beautiful creation-in-progress down to the six “trailer scenes.” Write 2-5 sentences summarizing each of those scenes, in your own story. If a scene isn’t written yet, summarize what it might be. For each scene, include the setting, the action you’re taking, and what failure or success you experience. Failures raise the stakes; successes build momentum.

Then, take what you’ve written and spread it out. Maybe write each scene on a card or post-it, or in your notebook with lots of space in between. Summarize the scenes that fill the spaces. For each one, what’s the action you’re taking? If you succeed, how does that propel you into the next scene? If you fail, how does that make the problem bigger and the stakes higher?

This list of scenes becomes your map. It can be boiled down into your synopsis, if you’re near the end of revisions. It can be expanded into a detailed outline, if you’re beginning to write. If you’re in the middle, plan out the scenes you already have: are they stakes-raisers or propellers?

Check out the trailer for The Outrun, based on the memoir by Amy Liptrot. Note how we’re introduced to a protagonist making bad choices, but given reasons to want her to succeed. Note how most scenes are actions; even when watching the actor thinking, narration steps in. Many of those thoughts are expressed in action, too—dipping a finger into a glass of wine; taking off her headphones to hear the world.

It’s fun to think of our life as a story that flows like a movie, with twists, shocks, and surprises—and the more you can imagine your journey as a well-told story, the easier it becomes to write one.

________

Allison K Williams is the author of Seven Drafts: Self-Edit Like a Pro from Blank Page to Book. Join her tomorrow for a two-hour CRAFT TALKS workshop: Flash Draft Your Book: Using Dramatic Structure to Know Where You’re Going and How to Get There ($35). Work on your own key scenes and how a scene’s structural place guides revision. Includes teaching, writing time and live-editing of volunteer participant work. Find out more/register now.

Tagged: dramatic structure, flash draft your book, key scenes

§ 13 Responses to The Big Picture: Plan Your Book by Zooming Out

• janpriddyoregon says:

  March 18, 2025 at 7:32 am

  So smart! A person could use this outline of situation-[failures and complication]-and-solution not only to plan a book but to plan a life! Brava!

  I have to tell you how much I appreciate your ability to step back and see the essential structure. It’s helped me to look for and identify what needs to happen on the page.

  Reply

  • Allison K Williams says:

    March 18, 2025 at 2:17 pm

    Thank you – I’m heading to Santa Fe to work with writers and half of them are under orders to bring post-its to organize their structures!

    Reply

• sarahprospero says:

  March 18, 2025 at 7:53 am

  The film The Outrun proves this point. Despite a fascinating character and compelling story, not to mention the extraordinary circumstance of setting, the whole thing is just too long to sustain interest. A firmer grip by the editor would have made it sparkle.

  As a writer often guilty of being unable/ unwilling to take the scissors to my work, the result of being determined not to lose all that I deem necessary for the reader’s understanding of my tale… well, you get the gist.

  My writing group meets this afternoon… I’d better get down to it.

  Reply

  • Allison K Williams says:

    March 18, 2025 at 2:18 pm

    I found the book a lot tighter – I think yeah, they got a little lost in the scenery in the movie! But the trailer is great 🙂

    Reply

• Judith van Praag says:

  March 18, 2025 at 11:47 am

  You’re on a roll Allison. I envision a book in essays, your life, a stroll through exotic markets, exploring cities, a Q&A convo of sorts benefitting your readership. Thinking of Nancy Mitford, don’t tell Albert, but do tell your husband 🙂

  Reply

  • Allison K Williams says:

    March 18, 2025 at 2:18 pm

    That would be so much fun to write!

    Reply

• Kathryn M. McCullough says:

  March 18, 2025 at 2:15 pm

  Wow, what a perfect companion to Ethan’s piece yesterday! Thanks so much, Allison!

  Reply

  • Allison K Williams says:

    March 18, 2025 at 2:19 pm

    So glad you found it useful!

    Reply

• Any Element says:

  March 18, 2025 at 7:20 pm

  Memoir is like describing a memory that you found interesting

  Reply

  • Allison K Williams says:

    March 19, 2025 at 3:14 am

    If it’s poorly written, yes.

    Reply

• beverleystevens says:

  March 18, 2025 at 8:50 pm

  So useful, thank you.

  Reply

  • Allison K Williams says:

    March 19, 2025 at 3:13 am

    You’re welcome!

    Reply

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