Outlines?

I've been suggested multiple times to write an outline of my novel to help with revising it. My problem, I don't exactly know what an outline /is/. I thought I had it down, but apparently what I thought was an outline was a synopsis.
Would someone be so kind as to explain what an outline is, how to go about writing one, and perhaps share a portion of their own for reference?
many thanks
Mitsu

Outlines are generally something you do before writing a story. It's the main idea and different points you're going to touch on. I imagine a sort of after-outline would be writing something a bit like a detailed synopsis. What are the major points? What are all the important subpoints to those major points?

Not sure I'm much help there though. I've never been an outliner.

I sometimes find that making an outline after does help with editing; this can resemble a synopsis, in some ways, except it's generally more detailed than that.

Try going through your story, and making a list scene-by-scene of what is happening; a mini-synopsis, if you will. It doesn't need to be very long, just a couple of notes so you know what happened there. For example:

Scene 1 -- Rose tells Bobby that Alex is missing.
Scene 2 -- Mark interviews Bobby, learns that Bobby is burning out
Scene 3 -- Bobby faces off against Katrina, manages to outsmart her

And so forth and so on. Some people go into way more detail than that, but that's the bare bones from the outline I pulled together from my own NaNo. This gives you a high-level view of what's happening in your novel. The main thing I keep in mind when doing this is what the important things happening in the scene are (this isn't the greatest example, as these are shorthand notes for myself, and that's enough for what I need.) You can always go back and add in more detail. For example, if something else important happened in the scene, add that as a sub-point, like this:

Scene 3 -- Bobby faces off against Katrina, manages to outsmart her
-- the sub sunk buoy comes off the submarine during the fight, making Admiral Dalton think Bobby and his boat were sunk
-- Bobby is unaware of the fact that the buoy came off

I like to build my outlines in Excel, because it allows me to also use it as a timeline (with a column for date/time) and other things like location, characters in the scene, word count length of the scene, etc. I'm also extremely comfortable with using Excel, and some people aren't. You can always just find a way that works for you to indicate what information you'll think you need later at a quick glance. Another example:

Scene 1 (Bobby and Rose, on board Cero) -- Rose tells Bobby that Alex is missing

I also like using Excel, because it's easy to move things around and reorder them if you decide you want something happening earlier or later in your story, but putting it in any computer program should allow you to copy/paste at will, as well.

But knowing what happens in each scene is a good place to start, especially when you're trying to find out where the plot holes are, and which scenes need to be cut. You can look at them and say "Well, nothing really happens here; can I make something happen here, or should I cut this scene?"

You want your outline to contain enough information so you can remember what's going on in your story. I can look at a scene description such as "Bombing of Portsmouth" and know that it's the scene where Cero ends up damaged and Admiral Snow gets killed, which is how Admiral Dalton ends up in command of the squadron. You might feel the need to list all of those resulting events in your outline.

At the end of the day, you need to find out what works for you. Some people swear by the Phase Outline, and others adore the Snowflake Method, both of which can be adapted to use after the fact despite being planning tools. And your traditional academic outline will differ from what might work in fiction writing, as well.

My outlines are point by point what happens.

I usually arrange them by chapter, because that just helps me organize things. My chapters usually have one scene, but sometimes I'll break it up into smaller scenes.

Here is an outline for an as yet unwritten project:
1. Jousting. Julian participates in a jousting tournament and unhorses Ashur.
2. The Knighting Ceremony. Julian is knighted, but to his dismay Ashur, the incompetent clerk's son, is knighted as well. He feels this lessens his accomplishments.
3. The Mission. King Brendan sends Julian on a mission, acting as Ashur's guard, as he acts a secret ambassador to the lowland kingdom of Simora, offering an alliance.
4. Pinnacle. King Garret of Pinnacle does not want the alliance between his enemies. He finds out about Ashur from his spies and sends an assassin to stop the messenger.

My outlines also include some different possibilities. For example, I haven't figured out, in the story mentioned above, how Garret will find out about Ashur, but I know he'll have someone trying to kill him. I haven't figured out all the character motives yet. I figure out a lot of details while I'm writing.

Thank you for the suggestions and advice :D
I think I'll combine both golfgal and larelmian's ideas

There is, of course, no official "you must outline your novel like this" - there are nearly as many ways of outlining novels as there are novelists and many novelists dont "outline" at all.

As a tool that may help your organize your story, an outline would be a method to track the order of events in your novel that helps you place the events into a logical order and determine if you are missing any logical steps that would connect those events.

you can google the Snowflake method of noveling and phase outlining as methods. you can get software that guides in outlining or placing your ideas on stickynotes that you can order and reorder by placing them on the wall.