You don’t have to spend a lot of time outlining your book, but if you don’t, then writing it is likely to take longer than it should and the whole process will become more uncomfortable. But how do you go about outlining effectively? One technique I use a lot is to think in terms of asking questions and basing my outline around answering as many of these as possible.
And to help speed up this process, I’ve created a master list of hundreds of questions. As not all will be applicable for any one book, when starting a new writing project, I just go through the list and pick out those most relevant to the subject to create a highly detailed outline.
I’ve also created multiple master lists to cover the topics I tend to work on like technology, finance and the future of work.
This means I have a set of core transferable questions to which I add subject-specific ones as needed.
I’m always looking for new questions to add to my lists. Sometimes these come from reading about a topic where a question is actually or asked, or from ‘reverse engineering’ by asking myself what was the question that this piece of copy was aiming to answer?
If you need help with the book outlining process or need a push to get your book over the finishing line? Then get in touch. I can work with you as your ghostwriter, editor or book coach.