Crafting Stories Using Structured Outlines

Write, Edit, & Publish Podcast

Episode 07

Let’s explore the transformative power of book outlines. Think of outlines as your creative blueprint, akin to an architect's plans or a doctor's procedure. They provide a flexible roadmap that not only streamlines the writing process but also reduces the need for major revisions, enhancing both organization and creativity.

Join me as I share my personal experiences with outlines, including a ghostwriting project that highlighted their value in collaborative efforts. I’ll explore a variety of outlining techniques, tailored to different writing styles and preferences. From the traditional linear approach and the classic three-act structure to the innovative snowflake and my favorite, mind mapping, each method offers unique benefits for both fiction and non-fiction writers.

I’ll discuss why outlines are essential for a cohesive narrative, aiding in time management, preventing plot holes, and facilitating collaboration. In the second segment, we'll explore the various outlining methods, offering practical tips to find the best fit for your writing journey.

Whether you're a seasoned author or just starting out, these insights will help you unlock your storytelling potential. Don't miss the next episode where we’ll dive into choosing your outline method and avoiding common mistakes. Subscribe for more insights, and if you're ready to transform your book idea into reality, book a discovery call with me. Let's turn your story into gold!

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00:00 - lynn (Host)

Hey future authors, this is Lynn Eliquity Smarges here with another episode of Write, edit and Publish. Today's topic is going to be understanding book outlines, because this is one of the things. When I talk to people in their original discovery call and they said, okay, I've started to write my book. And I say, okay, what kind of outline outlining have you done for your book? And half the people say I have no outline. What kind of outlining have you done for your book? And half the people say I have no outline probably more than half the people.

00:33

Well, I'm here to tell you that you can write your book without an outline, but, however, I would definitely not recommend writing your book without an outline for a couple different reasons. You might think it's unnecessary, but a book outline is very much necessary, and it's necessary for a few different reasons. One is you want your book to sound good and you want it to flow really well, right? Because if it doesn't flow really well, it's going to be hard for your readers to read. And secondly, you want for yourself. You want your content organized, right? Because if your content's not organized, it's really hard to figure out where you want to move your content later on in your book. So you want to have this basic outline for your book, right? So we're going to have a series on, you know, book outlining and in this episode we're going to talk about what the outlines are, why they matter and discover the top ways to create them.

01:24

All right, so what is an outline? So imagine you're building your dream house, right, like? So you have your house, you know how many square feet you want and everything. Would you build a house without a blueprint? Would a seamstress create a new dress without a pattern? Would a architect create a skyscraper without plans? Right? No, of course not. Would a doctor go into surgery without knowing, like, the steps to the surgery and what he's going to do and diagnostic material to look at? No, hopefully they wouldn't. I definitely wouldn't want a doctor that would come into surgery without my x-rays or MRIs or whatever. So that's why you want an outline for your book, right? Because it creates that structure for your book.

02:12

Now can you change the outline? Yes, you can change your outline. So if you are one of those people who are like a perfectionist or you're like, oh man, but if I create an outline, what if I want to change it later? Don't worry about it. You can change your outline at any point in the process. I've had my clients change your outline multiple times, but you need somewhere to start. You need a basis to start at, and that is your outline, all right. So, since you wouldn't start without a blueprint for any of these other jobs, if you are becoming an author, you definitely want to start with your book's blueprint.

02:46

So your key elements of your outline are going to be a framework for your ideas, chapter by chapter roadmap, which sounds really difficult, but it's actually super simple. It's going to be an outline, is going to give you a content organization system, a story structure and a flexible planning tool, like we said. Like I said earlier, you can change your outline at any time. So it is flexible. Think of it as your book skeleton. Okay, it gives your book structure, but it also still allows you for creative freedom in how you flesh it out, how you write it and what you want to do to move it around.

03:18

All right, why do outlines matter? Let's talk about why outlines are game changers for authors. Okay. So, first of all, there's time management okay. So if you don't have an outline, it's going to be really hard for you to write your book because you don't have a structure to go by. Okay, so if you're writing your book and you're like, oh, I'll just write this content, I'll write this content, and then you don't know how you're going to organize it and it's kind of all willy-nilly in your Google Drive or on your Word document. Okay, you don't have something to go back to reference. So it actually eats up more of your time if you don't front load your time with taking some time to do an outline. All right, it prevents major story revisions, because if you don't have a guide, how are you going to know where your story is going? Okay, even if it's a nonfiction book, all right. It streamlines the writing process because it gives you a guide to write by.

04:07

So when I'm in a recent ghostwriting consultation session I did with one of my clients who is writing a book. We looked at all of the chapters and she had to write certain chapters because they are those chapters that she's writing is about her process, and that's not something I'm an expert on, but she is. So she we decided when we looked at her book outline what chapter she was going to write and then what chapters I was going to write for her because these are chapters that I can write about. Okay. So that saves us a lot of time and makes it very efficient for the ghostwriting process when we have this really nice, clear outline, okay. And then once we did her book and we got her drafts done mostly done we figured out, oh, we needed another chapter in here because as we were writing the book we were like, oh, we didn't think about X, y, z. So then I suggested that to her. She said, yeah, let's do it, and she added that chapter. And then she added another chapter after following her outline that says oh, this just lends itself naturally to my book.

05:03

So we added two more chapters after doing the original outline and then we moved three chapters around because they made sense in a different place. But the outline was super helpful because we had it clearly laid out in front of us in a sheet on Google. So we knew exactly how many words were in each chapter, what the topic was for each chapter and then who was going to write what chapter, based on the chapter content. So it makes your writing process very streamlined. It helps set realistic deadlines, right? So if you have a book that has seven chapters and you know it's going to be a short book, then you know it's not going to take as long to write. If you outline your book and it has 14 or 15 chapters, you know it's definitely going to take longer than that seven chapter book, right? So you're going to have to give yourself more time to write. Your book Makes daily writing goals clearer.

05:50

So if you have a 10 chapter book and you want to write a 40,000 word book, then that means that if you take 10 chapters and you divide the math out, then that means that each chapter is going to be around 4,000 words. Now, you don't have to make your chapters exactly the same wording, right? Like one could be 3,000 and one could be five, that's fine, but you want an average, right? So you don't want one chapter to be 1,000 words and another chapter to be 8,000 words, because that's going to really confuse the reader and be whoa, this is crazy. So you want them to be about, like you know, within, like I say, like my rule of 20, about the same amount of words, so that you have consistent length chapter. So it's so the your reader knows predictably. Okay, this is about a 3 000 word chapter book, and so they know about how many pages till the next chapter, but it doesn't have to be exact, okay. So if you know that you want to till the next chapter, but it doesn't have to be exact, okay.

06:50

07:58

All right quality enhancement ensures consistent pacing. Like I said before, if you want to get into good writing habits and schedule out time, you can consistently pace yourself to write your book. It also helps with maintaining a logical flow, because that's one of the big things that book outlines do with. That structure is it shows you what the flow is from chapter to chapter. So when you're reading these chapters, the next chapter is a natural extension of the last one. All right prevents plot holes. So if you're writing a fiction book right, you want to make sure you don't have any plot holes. So your outline is going to help you to show you if you do have any plot holes. It can strengthen your character arcs and it also balances content distribution. Like I said earlier, right, you don't want to have a 10,000 word chapter and a 1,000 word chapter in the same book. It doesn't have to be exact, but it has to be balanced. All right, professional development. It improves your project organization. It helps with publisher pitches. So if you decide you want to go with a traditional publisher, right, you have this outline to go by to help you with publisher pitches. It makes editor collaboration easier.

09:02

So I have another book that I collaborated with two other professionals on and it's called Nine Stumbling Blocks that Prevent Creatives from Tapping into grant money, and that link is in the show notes below. So if you're listening to this on audio or you are watching it on YouTube, look for that link, because you can get that ebook for $4.95. Now, I collaborated with two people on that. Could we have gotten done that book in a really quick amount of time, which we did if we didn't have an outline? And the answer is no, because we knew, based on the outline, who was writing what chapter, and then we all worked on our own chapter and then we all read through the entire book. If we didn't have that outline, we would not be able to assign chapters to each other and it would have taken us longer and it would have been less efficient and we would have been wasting our time. So an outline is really important for that as well.

09:51

Project, especially if you're doing a collaboration and you need to have project organization. All right, okay, supporting marketing planning. So one of the things I do on my Caring for your Aging Parents podcast is I market my Sensible Senior Solutions book, and so what I've been doing is taking a chapter and each episode I summarize a chapter in my book and say if you want to learn more, check out my book Sensible Senior Solutions right, so I'm using my chapters as my podcast show episodes to market my book in that podcast, caring for your Aging Parents, because my Sensible Senior Solutions is a book that I'm selling that covers all the same topics or covers not the same exact episodes, right, but it covers the same topic senior care. So I actually use the chapters as podcast episodes. Okay, you can use it in other ways too. Like, I've taken chapters and I've written marketing content based on those chapters and then posted that in LinkedIn as well.

10:46

Facilitates series development. So in my collaboration I was talking about just a few minutes earlier. We are doing a book series on helping creatives write grants, and so we actually we got that from our outline. We're like, oh my gosh, this is so great. Like what if we did this? And we thought this is a great idea. So we're actually making a mini book series off of that outline, because we were able to do that based on the outline, because we could see that organization. All right, my friends, we're gonna take a break right here. When we come back, we're going to talk about some top outlining methods you can use to outline your book. Hey, friends, and welcome back to our show we have.

11:45

This week's show is how to not how to, sorry understanding book outlines. Okay, so we, the first half, we talked about what is an outline and why outlines matter, and this half we're going to talk about the top outlining methods. Okay, so, some effective outlining approaches. Now, when I grew up in the seventies and I was in grade school, I learned about the Roman numeral outlining. Right, like, you put Roman numeral one and that's. You know, you have your title and the Roman numeral one, what's your first overall arching subject? And then you wrote capital letter A and that's the supporting thing under Roman numeral one, and then under that you write a number one right and each one is indented, and then you write supporting things under that and then under that you write letter A, b, c, whatever you want to do.

12:39

Now, that is a traditional outline and you can use that to outline your book. I haven't seen anybody use that in a really long time. It isn't, I feel, like the most effective way because it's very linear and I don't think in a linear fashion. But you can use a traditional outline for your book. Another thing you can use for your outline method is the classic three-act structure. So your setup is your world introduction, your character establishment and your conflict introduction and this is of course for fiction and then your confrontation right, your rising action, complications, character development, and then your next part would be your resolution, your climax, your falling action and your conclusion. And that's a very basic classic three-act structure for writing a fiction book.

13:16

Another way, another type of outline you can use for writing your book is called the snowflake method. You start with a one-sentence summary Maybe that summary is, maybe that summary is the best ways to wash and care for your pet right and then, underneath that you're going to expand that to one paragraph, right? So take the best ways to wash and care for your pet, write that subject in a paragraph, and then you're going to take that and create more paragraphs underneath that. Okay, if you're doing a fiction book, you can develop character summaries and then create scene lists and scene descriptions with that as well. But the snowflake method is basically you take one piece of content and you expand it, and then you take that piece of content and you expand it more, and you take that piece of content and you expand it more. So it's kind of like snowballing you have that first piece of information and you're snowballing it into more and more and more information until it becomes really big and it ends up being your book.

14:15

The next method, which is my favorite, I absolutely love, is the mind mapping method. So what you do with mind mapping and mind mapping is not new. A lot of people I see a lot of people in publishing going, oh, the new way to map it is mind mapping. I used to be a middle school teacher over a decade ago and two decades ago I was using this in my classroom to teach how to outline things right, and that was even with just general projects. But I love mind mapping for several different reasons. One is because I'm not a linear thinker. If you're creative, you probably are not also a linear thinker, right? And so if you're not a linear thinker, mind mapping is fabulous. Because with mind mapping you take what I tell people is and you can just Google up a picture of a mind map. It's really easy to see what it looks like.

15:03

So you take the middle circle, you make a big circle in the middle of your paper, and I like to use big pieces of paper like the old calendar paper from, like if you go to Staples or Office Shop and they have these big paper desk calendars that are like two foot by two foot or whatever two and a half feet, and then you use those calendars on the back where it's a big blank page, right, those are great for mind mapping. You can also use sticky notes to do this. I've used magnets where I've put ideas on magnets and put it on a whiteboard and then have written on the whiteboard to like expand my ideas. But whatever way you do it oh, also you could do there's a lot of mind mapping programs out there If you just want to mind map in your notebook. You can do that too. So there's lots of different ways you can mind map. I like to hand draw my mind maps because hand drawing it actually helps your brain come up with more ideas, so that's super helpful. Actually helps your brain come up with more ideas, so that's super helpful, all right. So whatever way you do your book, that's fine. But there's many different ways to mind map it.

15:58

So, in the center again, you're going to have your main or theme topic and then you're going to the center is going to be a circle and you're going to make it look like spokes on a wagon wheel. Okay, you're going to make these little lines from your center circle out to the paper and then each of those lines you're going to make a circle on right and any of those subtopics are going to be chapters. So, say, you're talking about houseplant care, okay, so maybe your topic of your book is houseplant care and one of your you put a line out and you put a circle and one of those circles might say how to water your houseplant. Another one of the circles is when to repot your house plants. Another one of those circles, extending from your topic, is going to be when to fertilize your house plants. Another one of those topics might be, like you know how to set up your shelving, you know to set up your plants in your house, okay. And then so say, we're going to take the topic of when to water, or how to water your houseplants. You're going to make another line off of that. Okay, that's your chapter how to water your houseplants and you're going to make two or three lines and then you're going to build some subtopics. Okay, what are you going to talk about in that chapter of how to water your houseplants? Maybe you're going to talk about measuring the water of your, all of these things. How often do you water your houseplants? Okay, and so you keep building that content out by making little spokes and circles.

17:18

Now, you don't have to build your entire book out that way, but that's a really great way to. I mean, you don't have to put, like, every little thought in that mind map, but that's a really great way to outline your book. That gives you a good, solid structure to start with, and then you can always add on later. You can edit your mind map just like any other outline, right? You might like erase one circle or maybe like oh, this chapter is really not a chapter, but it's a subchapter under this other chapter. Okay, so you can add and modify your mind map at any time you want. So you have your center circle, which is your main theme or topic, then your primary branches, which are your first circles out from your main theme, and these are your chapters, and then your lines off of your chapters are your subtopics, and then your lines off of your subtopics are your related ideas. So it gives you a really great visual organization system to map with.

18:02

Another way you can outline is called the epoch system, and someone has developed this which basically is if you're doing a timeline, this is a really great way to develop a timeline. So you set up your basic timeline where it's like okay, this is one part of my life, this is another part of my life, this is another part of my life. Once you have that done, you say, okay, in this part of my life, these things happened. In this part of my life, these things happened. And in this part of my life, these things happened. Okay, under those things that happened, what is the story? Okay, then you build your story under that. Okay, in any detail. So that's a really great way, especially if you're writing something like a memoir that needs a timeline to outline your book. All right, my friends, I hope this was a really valuable insight into understanding book outlines, and that wraps up this episode of our outlining series on write, edit and publish.

18:49

Next week, we're going to dive into choosing your outline method, avoiding common mistakes and implementing practical tips for success. So make sure you hit the follow button so that you automatically get that dropped into your thing. If you're on YouTube, make sure you hit the subscribe button and like this video so you can automatically get every one of my videos dropped into your feed. And remember, future authors, if you want to see your book dreams sparkle into reality, then click the Discovery Call button and let's weave your story into gold as your ghostwriting unicorn. I'll fast track your journey from idea to published author in as little as 90 days. So if that sounds appealing to you and you're ready for your magical transformation, to begin with just one click, book your Discovery Call now. All right, future authors, I'm excited for your book journey and I'm excited for you to get your first published book or your next book published. And this is Lynn of Liquidity Smart, just signing off for this week and join me here next week for another great episode of Write, edit and Publish.