Ever since elementary school, we’ve been told by teachers to create an outline before we write. Yet most of us never do. We think of an outline as more of a chore than a useful exercise. We prefer to “just start writing.”
The problem with “just writing” is twofold.
First, it’s a tall order to expect fully-articulated ideas to spring directly from your brain onto the blank page: like the birth of Athena, goddess of wisdom, who sprang fully-grown and fully-clad from the brow of her father Zeus. Unless you’re feeling particularly clever and creative, you may find yourself staring at the blank screen, painfully trying to give birth to wisdom in the form of complete sentences.
Second, the sentences you manage to squeeze out may constitute a jumbled, rambling mess, because they were laid out wily-nily. You then either have to surgically edit and overhaul a fully-written article (which is a lot harder than editing an outline) or subject your audience to a malformed monstrosity of a reading experience.
Yet, we are allergic to outlines, partly because we often find that creating them is just as painfully difficult as composing a first draft directly. That’s because, as David Allen explains in this talk, schools often fail to teach us a key practice to do before outlining.
Outlining is a matter of organizing ideas: of selecting, connecting, and sequencing. But you can’t organize ideas you don’t have yet.
So, you can make outlining and writing a whole lot easier if you first collect raw material for your piece. There are two main ways to do this.
Research: Search the internet and books for relevant ideas, quotes, and resources. Gather anything that might be useful into a Google Doc, an Evernote, a file folder, or some other repository.
Brainstorm: Write down whatever comes to mind about your subject matter: relevant theories, opinions, experiences, stories, etc. Those first thoughts will trigger further thoughts. Write those down too to prompt still more. For more on brainstorming, see this great quote by David Allen.
These two types of raw material collection can feed into each other. Your research will give you ideas to develop and your brainstorming will conjure research leads to pursue.
As your raw material collection grows, you’ll automatically start to see connections and groupings among the ideas. You’ll start to see possible structures for your piece of writing take shape in your mind. When that happens, that means you’re ready to outline.
When you do, you’ll actually have material to organize: to select, connect, and sequence. So instead of a painful chore, outlining will be an exercise that’s useful, logical, maybe even fun!
Next time you start a writing project, instead of “just writing,” try to “just start” googling and brainstorming. It’s a natural way to ease into the creative process.