Outline Writing: the Secret to Writing Faster (and Better)

Want to learn a skill which will make all your writing a breeze? Outline writing can unlock your writing talent and confidence.

Whatever you want to write, from an advertisement to a book, discovering how to write outlines will improve the speed at which you write, and will also improve the results.

If you’ve been telling yourself that you “can’t write outlines” or “I hate outlines”, read this article to discover how professional writers outline before they write. You’ll love the process.

Outline writing starts with the bull’s eye: a single sentence

Writing outlines is fun. (OK, you can stop laughing now.) It really is fun, because it’s very simple, and it’s nothing like your English teacher taught you – no Roman numerals at all.

The professional writer’s way, your writing project starts with a sentence. A simple sentence, that covers your entire project, however long or short it is. Think of your sentence as the bull’s eye on a target: everything you write has to directly relate to that bull’s eye.

For an article, your single sentence might be: “Five ways a reader can get out of credit card debt.”

For a mystery novel, your single sentence might be “A woman’s husband steals her inheritance, and vanishes: she learns that he’s started a new life, with a new family.”

Generating an outline from the bull’s eye outward

With your single sentence as the bull’s eye of your writing project, start writing down ideas of what your project might include. Don’t over-think this – just jot down any idea which comes to you, even if you’re not sure how or where it will fit into your project.

You can capture the ideas you generate in any number of ways. I use index cards or an artist’s sketchpad.

If I’m using index cards, I write the bull’s eye sentence on a card, and then one idea per card as ideas come to me. To create an outline, I spread the cards on my desk, and move them around until they form an outline for the project. Since the index cards are so portable, I can take my stack of cards with me everywhere, and can add to the stack with fresh ideas.

On the sketchpad, I write the sentence in the center, then write ideas onto the sheet. I don’t set out to create a mind map, but amazingly, as I write ideas on the sheet, the page will often turn into a mind map outline.

I pin my large sheet onto the wall, so I can see it. As I get fresh ideas, I write them on a sticky note and stick them on the sheet.

So there you have it. A simple, fun way to outline any and every writing project – from bull’s eye outward.

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