How do I reverse outline my draft?
Read the draft and write one row per chapter: what happens, what changes, whose it is, and what is wrong. Then read the rows, not the book, looking for chapters where nothing changes.
An outline of what you wrote
A reverse outline is made after the draft, from the draft. You read each chapter and write down what is actually in it, which is rarely what the plan said would be.
Write it fast and plainly. The point is to see the whole book on two or three pages, where a sagging middle or a subplot that vanishes in chapter twelve is visible at a glance.
Reverse outline
| Chapter | Number and title, or the scene’s first line. |
|---|---|
| What happens | One sentence. If it takes two, note that too. |
| What changes | What is different at the end. Nothing is an answer. |
| Whose scene | The point-of-view character. |
| When and where | Story time and place, for the timeline. |
| Words | Its length, so the long and the thin stand out. |
| Problem | What is wrong with it, in a few words, or blank. |
Copy the header row for a spreadsheet
Chapter What happens What changes Whose scene When and where Words Problem
Reading it
- What changes is blank or says nothing: that chapter is a candidate to cut or merge.
- Two rows in a row with the same What happens: the book repeats itself.
- A character missing from Whose scene for a long run: readers will forget them.
- Words climbing through the middle: the pace is slowing where it should tighten.
A spreadsheet suits it, one row per chapter, because you will want to sort and move rows before you move a word of the draft.
In Tabularia
The Outline already lists every chapter and scene of the draft as it stands. What it will not write for you is the sentence about what each one does; that is still the reading, and the reading is the point.
Tabularia in brief
- What it is
- Tabularia is book-writing software for drafting, navigating, and revising a complete manuscript, on every device you write on.
- Price
- The Free plan includes the whole writing application, with no limit on how much you write. The Cloud plan adds backup, sync, sharing for review, and publishing for $18 a month, or $172.80 a year.
- Runs in
- A browser: Chrome 125+, Edge 125+, Firefox 140+, or Safari 18+. It installs as an app and keeps working on projects you have already opened while you are offline.
- Opens
- TXT, Markdown, RTF, HTML, DOCX, PDF, EPUB, Fountain, plus Scrivener, Obsidian, and novelWriter projects and Notion exports.
- Saves as
- HTML, DOCX, EPUB, PDF, Markdown, plain text, Fountain, or straight to a printer. The Cloud plan adds a Project archive of the whole project.
- Status
- Public Beta. This page was last checked on September 25, 2026.
Try it on your own manuscript
Nothing is metered: as many projects as you like at any length, the outline and minimap to move through them, drafts and markup mode for revising, snapshots to return to, sheets and timelines beside the page, and export to DOCX, PDF, EPUB, HTML, Markdown, plain text and Fountain. Bring in what you have already written and read it back as a book.
The Cloud plan is $18 a month, or $172.80 a year, and adds backup, sync across your devices, sharing a manuscript for review, and publishing your work as a web page — the readers and collaborators you invite do not need a paid account of their own. Tabularia is in Public Beta and shipping steadily; the release notes record what has landed.