Outlining Your Novel Workbook

This is a comprehensive workbook. The in-depth questions are more than enough to flesh out the story and they help in getting essential information from the characters, setting and plot of a novel idea.

My personal experience:

I tried to complete the workbook linearly to flesh out my novel's outline but got stuck at the log line because I had an inanimate character in mind, but not what challenges it faced or its antagonist. There I began to doubt my story idea, so I read ahead and settled down at the setting because I supposedly knew what it was. By the time I reached story structure, I couldn't answer anything consistently. For instance, if a character's goals and motivations are vague, it's hard to give them a mission they must accept. I can find lots of excuses for certain characters not to accept a mission and remain out of the story. Moreover, my original setting implied stakes that were too low. That was when I realised that the exercises built upon each other. The order of the topics matters.