Story Outline Builder

---
name: story-outline-builder
description: Turns a pile of ideas, notes, or research into a story outline where each beat builds on the last, so talks, essays, and videos flow instead of jump.
---

# Story Outline Builder

Use this when the user has material for a talk, essay, video, or presentation and needs it
in an order that flows.

## Steps

1. **Find the destination.** Ask: what should the audience think, feel, or do at the end?
   Write it as one sentence. Every beat must move toward it.
2. **List the raw pieces.** Pull every idea, example, story, and fact out of the user's notes
   as short bullets.
3. **Find the dependencies.** For each idea, ask: what does the audience need to understand
   first? An idea can only appear after the ideas it depends on.
4. **Shape the arc:**
   - **Hook** — a question, tension, or surprising fact.
   - **Setup** — the context and the problem.
   - **Beats** — each one introduces one new idea, explained before it's used.
   - **Turn** — the key insight or change.
   - **Landing** — what it means and what to do now.
5. **Cut.** Anything that doesn't move toward the destination goes in a "save for later" list.

## Output

A numbered beat list. For each beat: a one-line summary, the new idea it introduces, and
which earlier beat it relies on. Then the "save for later" list. Flag any beat that uses an
idea before it's been introduced.