Nonfiction Ink

Kenji Crosland is a creative writing major who, scared of becoming a starving artist, became a corporate headhunter in Tokyo. Since then he’s regained his sanity, quit his job, and now blogs about creating an ideal career at unreadyandwilling.com. He is also developing a web application that just might change the Internet. Follow him on Twitter: @KenjiCrosland.

Knowing how to write an outline effectively can dramatically improve the focus of your writing. An outline done well can enhance the readability of your writing, reduce editing time, and help add strength to your ideas. In order to use outlines to their fullest potential, it’s important to understand how to brainstorm before writing an outline, how to write an outline that organizes what you’ve brainstormed, and finally, how to use an outline when writing your rough draft.

BEFORE WRITING AN OUTLINE
An important part of knowing how to write an outline is knowing what to do before writing the outline.

Writing an outline before you give any thought to your topic will have a tendency to limit your ideas. What you must first do is brainstorm to get all your ideas out on paper and organize them later.

One of the best brainstorming tools that I’ve ever come across is the mind map. A mind map is a visual representation of your ideas. The good thing about creating mind maps is that not only do they help you brainstorm, but they also help to organize your ideas at the same time.

You can create a mind map on paper or use bubbl.us. Bubbl.us is a free online resource that allows you to create mind maps on any topic, share them with friends, print them, and manipulate them as you like. Below, I’ve provided an example of a mind map that I spent a few minutes creating on bubbl.us.

(Click image to enlarge)

Creating a mind map is easy. First, write the topic of your article at the center of the mind map. In this case the topic is: “How to make a popular blog.” Next, brainstorm the main points you can use to explore the topic. For this mind map I came up with the following four points: choose a good niche, increase traffic, create valuable content, and have a good web design.

After you’ve brainstormed a list of main points to explore, you can then come up with a list of “sub-points” to support each main point and provide details to support each sub-point. If you don’t have details to support your sub-points that’s fine. In the place of details you can create a blank bubble, or simply write “detail,” indicating a place where you might need to do more brainstorming or more research.

In the course of brainstorming you may find that the topic you have at the center of your mind map is too broad to cover for your intended article length. What you might do then is narrow your focus. Choose one of the points branching out from your topic (increasing web traffic, for example) and choose that instead as the topic of your article. You can save the other points that you mind mapped for other articles you might write later.

HOW TO WRITE AN OUTLINE USING YOUR MIND MAP
After you’re happy with your mind map, the next step in knowing how to write an outline is knowing how organize what you’ve brainstormed. The reason why it’s a good idea to do this is because a mind map is not organized in a linear fashion, and can be very difficult to refer to when writing your rough draft. In order to provide structure to your writing you must know how to write an outline that can arrange what you’ve brainstormed in a logical order so that you can keep from getting off track. Here’s an example outline created for the mind map above.

I. Introduction
A. The Hook: List the benefits of creating a popular blog.
1. Example of benefit
2. Example of benefit
B. Lead into thesis statement: In order to create a popular blog you must learn how to choose a good niche, create valuable content, increase web traffic and have a good web design.

II. Choose a Good Niche
A. Determine your interests and skills
1. What niches are not well covered?

III. Create Valuable Content
A: Improve your Blogging skills
1. Writing (how to write an outline, improve editing skills, etc.)
2. Researching
3. Read other good blogs
4. One More Example?

IV. Increase Web Traffic
A. Market and Promote your Website
1. Through other websites
2. Detail
B. Marketing and Promoting your website
1. Other Blogs
i. Detail
C. Example 3

V. Good Web Design
A. Layout
1. Detail
B. Readability
1. Detail
C. Hiring a web designer
2. My personal Experience

VI. Conclusion
A. Restate thesis: Give personal example of how having a popular blog can be beneficial. Briefly go over how the four points listed can be of help.

The format of an outline is simple. For main points use Roman numerals. For sub-points use capital letters. For any details and examples use numbers, and for any “sub-details” you can use lowercase Roman numerals.

The first part that you should outline is the introduction or “hook” which grabs a reader’s interest. The hook for this chapter is a list of the benefits of creating a popular blog. As I haven’t thought of any examples of benefits yet, I’ve left two numbered spaces labeled “Example of benefit” so I can come back and fill them in later. After the hook, be sure to make a smooth transition to your thesis statement. The thesis statement should incorporate all the main points that you want to cover for the article either implicitly or explicitly. Notice that in the thesis statement provided in the outline above all the points the chapter will explore are explicitly mentioned.

After outlining your introduction, assign a Roman numeral to each main point (each bubble connecting to the central bubble on your mind map). You don’t have to use every point you’ve brainstormed if you don’t want to. Just use the ones you think are important.

Finally, be sure to arrange the points in the most logical order possible. In the above example, “choosing a niche” is listed as the first point because I believe that would be the first thing you should do when you set about making a popular blog.

HOW TO WRITE AN OUTLINE THAT HELPS YOU RESEARCH
Knowing how to write an outline effectively means knowing how to use your outline to leverage your research. You might notice there are several places under the sub-points in the outline that are labeled “Detail” or “Example.” These areas indicate gaps in knowledge, areas where the writing needs extra support. Because your outline tells you where your gaps in knowledge are, you’ll find that when you start researching you’ll already have a much more concrete idea of what you’re looking for. This will tend to make your research faster and more productive than doing extensive research before brainstorming.

USING YOUR OUTLINE FOR YOUR ROUGH DRAFT
There’s no point in knowing how to write an outline if you don’t use it. Some, however, faced with a blank screen, might have a tendency to spew all their thoughts on the page first and use their outline as a tool to organize it all later. This method is inefficient at best and may even negate the benefits of writing the outline in the first place. What you must do is learn to reference your outline as you write your rough draft, not after.

Before you write each section of your outline, pause to think about each sub-point before you start writing about it. Once you have a good feel for the sub-point, write and keep writing until you feel you have enough material on the page to do that sub-point justice. When you feel you’ve written enough, make a new paragraph and take a look at the next part of your outline. Do what you can to avoid the backspace key.

Basically, using your outline is like driving at 100 mph using a road map. Whenever you reach an intersection, stop and check the map to see where you’re going. Once you know where you’re headed, make your turn and accelerate back to 100 mph. One word of caution: although the road map can be handy to help you to get where you want to go, never look at the road map while you’re driving or you know what’s going to happen.

You’ll find that when you’re writing your rough draft you’ll often go “off-road” and explore tangents which, although they might be interesting, have no relevance to your topic. Consult your outline and make sure that all your writing, no matter how beautiful the prose might be, effectively supports each point and sub-point and nothing else. Your outline can be a handy tool to help you cut the fat from your writing.

Knowing how to write an outline effectively can be very useful for streamlining the creative process. Although it might take some time to write the outline, it can help save a lot of pain and frustration when you go through the writing and revision process. The end result will probably be better as well.

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This post is part of the Guest Post Giveaway at the blog Unready and Willing. If you think articles about writing or personal development (or personal development for writers) sounds like a good fit for your blog, please take a look at the Guest Post Giveaway page and see if any of the articles spark your interest.

Struggling to get your book topics in order and create a chapter outline for your manuscript?  The easiest and quickest way to organize the structure of your book is… drum roll, please… CLUSTERING.

Clustering is a form of word-association or brainstorming.  You may know it as “mind-mapping”.  It is a technique that allows you to get information inside your head out onto a piece of paper so you can visualize your thoughts.  It is a powerful tool to in preparing to write and organize your book.

When clustering, you quickly write all the words and phrases you associate with a specific keyword or key-phrase.

Here is my NO-NONSENSE, SIMPLE METHOD FOR CLUSTERING:

1. Get a large, blank piece of paper (oversized construction paper works best).
2. In the center of the paper, print your book topic   Draw a circle around the keyword or phrase. (For example, if you are writing a book on the topic of marketing your business using the Internet, you might use the key-phrase: “Internet Marketing”).
3. Moving quickly, draw a dash-line from your key word and scribble down the first word or phrase that pops into your mind (for example, “social networking”). Circle the word or phrase.
4. Now draw a dash-line from that word and jot down the next word that comes to mind (for example, “Twitter”).
5. Repeat this process until you’ve run out of word associations.
6. Now, return to your keyword or key-phrase and repeat the exercise.
7. Continue clustering until have created 10 to 15 sub-topics, each with several sub-sub-topics.

They key is to move quickly through the process, without censoring yourself or thinking about what you are doing – just let the creativity flow.

When you’ve finished, put your cloud-cluster diagram aside.  Review it later and extrapolate the topics, sub-topics, and sub-sub-topics that will make up the content of your book.

Congratulations!  You have just created your CHAPTER OUTLINE.