Week 7: Outlining

home title Posted by Aaron McMahon on Feb 19th, 2009 | 2 comments home title

One of the best tools you’ll have as you write your book is an outline.  This will act as your road map, helping you navigate a complex city and ensuring you never get lost.  By creating your route ahead of time, you can plan for specific stops along the way and hit all the sights you want to see.  Your outline will function the same way.  You’ll know exactly what topics and sub-topics will be covered, what stories or anecdotes you will tell and in which chapter, and each of the main points you will make in your book.

How to Write an Outline


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Download a 60-minute MP3 of this class to listen on your iPod, MP3 Player, or computer media player.

Writing an outline involves a pretty basic, step-by-step process.

  1. Write down all of your ideas and main points on a sheet of paper labelled IDEAS.
  2. Identify the boundaries of your book
  3. Write down about ten to twelve chapter ideas.
  4. Begin plugging in ideas from your “ideas” sheet under the proper chapter to create sub-headings.
  5. If some chapters don’t have enough sub-headings, spend some time thinking about that chapter and what information needs to be presented there.
  6. Try to have at least eight sub-headings per chapter.
  7. The first draft of our outline is complete when you feel you have enough chapters and sub-headings to fully describe the main points your book will make.
  8. Look it over from beginning to end and follow the flow to make sure the reader doesn’t need to jump too far between points.  If so, add another chapter or sub-heading to give them a stopping point.
  9. Ensure that the chapters and sub-headings are arranged in a logical way so the reader can follow your train of thought.  Don’t jump around too much or you may lose the reader!
  10. If you’re writing a teaching book, the best place to start in chapter one is the same place the reader currently is, but give them a vision for who they will become or what they’ll know how to do when they’ve read the book.  The best place to end in the final chapter is where you currently are as the “expert author.”  They may not know as much or be as experienced as you, but the reader should be able to do most of the things you’ve taught by the end of your book.

If you still need help diving into the outlining process, try this outline brainstorming method to pull ideas out of you and get them in order.

  1. Write down as many ideas or main points you can think of.
  2. Look them over and identify groupings.
  3. Name each grouping with a topic name.  Put all relevant ideas under that name.  These topic names are your chapter groupings.
  4. Create a topic named “Miscellaneous”.  Keep this until the book is complete.  During the entire writing process, put any ideas here that don’t seem to have a topic in your outline yet.
  5. Keep referring to your Miscellaneous topic to look for groups of ideas that deserve their own topic outside of the Miscellaneous topic.
  6. Try to arrange your outline in a sequence that will lead the viewer from having little to no experience/knowledge at the beginning to being well-versed by the end.
home title 2 Responses home title
  1. Sandra Victor says:
    February 19, 2009 at 9:50 am

    Hi Aaron,
    I have been truly blessed by the book publishing class that you’ve been teaching. What a gift the Lord has given you for teaching. It’s so exciting to receive such clear cut ways to build a solid foundation for writing a book. I cannot thank you enough for allowing the Holy Spirit to use you in a way to inspire, encourage, teach and move writers on to bless others with their writing.
    Thank you again. God bless you and may everyone who is writing in your class be lead by the Holy Spirit and bring the glory to God. I am so excited by this class. It’s the best ever

    Sandy Victor

    Reply
    • Aaron says:
      February 20, 2009 at 4:17 am

      Thanks, Sandra. I really appreciate your support and encouragement. I can’t wait to see your finished book!

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