Nib #34 — Sean Connery and The Iron Law of Outlining

There are as many ways to outline a planned piece of writing as there are writers. There’s the traditional Harvard format. Visual techniques like mind maps and flow charts. Loosey-goosey free-writing brain dumps. Even plain old lists. They all work. 

 So however you’re most comfortable mapping out your arguments and analyses, that’s how you should. There’s just one absolute and inexorable caveat, the Iron Law of Outlining: Write it down.

Most writers learn the Iron Law the hard way. Late at night, hours into a draft, they realize they forgot to include a key point they meant to make. And now there’s no easy place to air-drop it in. So they face the nightmare dilemma: whether to scrap a bad draft and start over or risk disfiguring Frankenstein-style surgery that may only make it worse.

To avoid this literary Sophie’s Choice, don’t just make a plan. Write it down. In outlining, as in most things, listen to Sean Connery:

If you’re a belts-and-suspenders type, you can even paste your plan into the bottom of the document you’re composing. Then cross out each point as you go, like a writing to-do list — which is after all what an outline is.

Until next week… keep writing!