When you’re creating a fictional world, it can be tough to decide how much time you should spend describing the world versus how much time you should spend describing your characters. Science fiction and fantasy author William F. Wu believes the personal details of characters best help the story come alive. Knowing what someone looks like and acts like can make the character more real. Being in that character’s viewpoint and seeing how he or she views the world is an effective way of building your world while avoiding an overload of information and description. To achieve this balance, Wu suggests not only reading the work of successful authors, but studying the work and breaking it down to see why it was so successful.
:Is all of my research work the outline? Good advice. I wrote the resources down in my notebook.
An outline is typically the overall structure of your book or story. For nonfiction, it can include a table of contents or chapter by chapter summaries. For fiction, it should include at least the 5 key elements of your plot, but can be even more detailed using an outline structure like Save the Cat. Here are some resources you might find helpful:
https://www.authorlearningcenter.com/search?q=outlining#serpsort=&serpsearchTerm=&serptopic=&serpgroup=1046
https://www.authorlearningcenter.com/b/ask-keith/posts/what-is-save-the-cat-and-how-can-i-use-it-to-outline-my-story