Bestselling author and book coach Stacy Ennis joins the podcast to share her sensory-driven method for helping authors create the outline they need to write their book right the first time. By taking your time, figuring out who your "one reader" is to keep your audience and market demand top of mind, and clearing out the noise of conflicting ideas, you will build a defined road map that takes the uncertainty out of writing and allows your creativity to blossom as you draft your book.

In this conversation, Stacy breaks down exactly how to approach outlining with clarity and confidence, shares common pitfalls to avoid, and gives practical advice you can start using today.

Automatically generated transcript:

Welcome to Published, a podcast by Greenleaf Book Group, where we'll discuss the ins and outs of the publishing industry, from writing a book and finding the right publisher, to gearing up for a book launch. And now, here's your host, Greenleaf Book Group CEO, Tanya Hall.

Welcome back to Published. Today, we're diving into one of the most important and sometimes daunting parts of writing a book, outlining. Taking the time to build a great roadmap before you start writing your manuscript will keep you focused and could save you hours of revision down the road. Today, we're joined by Stacy Ennis, a best-selling author and book coach who helps authors turn big ideas into powerful books. If you've ever stared at a blank page, wondering where to start or found yourself stuck halfway through a draft without a clear direction, this episode is for you. In this conversation, Stacy breaks down exactly how to approach outlining with clarity and confidence, shares common pitfalls to avoid, and gives practical advice you can start using today. Please take a moment to rate and review us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you're listening now. It means a lot to have your feedback, and it helps us to make sure we're answering your publishing questions. Now let's dive into the interview.

Tanya: All right, Stacy, welcome back to Published.

Stacy: Thanks, Tanya. I'm excited to get to have this conversation with you.

Tanya: Me too, it's great to see you again. So for those who aren't familiar, perhaps start by telling us who you are and what you do.

Stacy: Sure. I am a location independent entrepreneur. I live in Portugal currently. This is our fourth country that we've lived in outside of the United States. And what that means is that I can be anywhere in the world. And it's also enabled me to grow a remote team under me, which has been really exciting. We're in the US, Portugal, and in South Africa. We're a small team. And we support authors in their book writing process. So while a lot of people out in the publishing world will offer end-to-end solutions for people that have a book idea and take it to market, we really niche in the book writing process and specifically on the author journey. I'm also a book strategist, so I help people align this book that's within them with their big vision, help them uncover what the right book for right now is. I call it their catalyst book. And then provide the coaching and accountability to help them get their first draft done.

And speaking of that first draft, that's our focus today. So we are digging deep into the world of outlines and that might not sound like enough to support an episode, but listeners, you're about to find out that it is. So Stacy, I have my own story about outlines, which I'll get to later in this episode, but I'd love to hear from you why you think an outline is important for an author.

Well, I cannot wait to hear that story. Outlines, I think, are way more important than people think. And in fact, when I work with authors, we spend between one and two months on the outlining stage, which at first when people hear that, they're like, what am I going to do for all that time? Really consistently working through that. And I take people through an iterative process, which we can talk about a little bit more later. But there's a couple things to think about when you're thinking about your book outline. One is, it is your road map. So in the publishing industry, there's this really well-known abandonment point around 20,000 words. Tanya, I'm sure you guys talk about this a lot at Greenleaf. And it may be for you, it's a little earlier, you as the listener, maybe it's a little later. But at some point, your energy is going to start to wane, your self-talk is going to get really loud, and you're going to find lots of excuses to not sit down and write. And that's when having a map for yourself that you can literally check off and come to and say, okay, where do I need to go next? Where do I need to go next? Is so, so important. The other thing is that putting in the time and energy to fully vet your core message, deeply understand your one reader, clarify your book high-level structure, build out a detailed plan for each chapter. Now, mind you, that changes sometimes because a book is a discovery process, but at least to give you a map. It is so critically important and it also allows you to be more creative. A lot of people think that an outline will stifle their creativity. It's the other way around. Creativity flourishes within containers and within boundaries. So when you give yourself at least some container to work within and some boundaries around your play, it enables you to focus and actually have creative productivity and get this book done.

You said so many interesting things there, I'm making mental notes to come back to a few things. I'll quickly tell you my outlining stories. It plays into exactly what you just said. So I probably like a lot of authors thought, well, I'm a subject matter expert and God bless the editor from Greenleaf who was assigned to work with me. But I was just like, I don't need your help. Respectfully, I speak on this all the time and I'll just do it. He was like, okay, Tanya. And so I went off to try to do exactly that. And I found that what my problem was, was that it wasn't a question of what to put in, it was what to leave out. And I kept going down these rabbit holes that were maybe interesting to me, but not serving, you use the phrase one reader, which I love, and not serving that core reader, but they were really tangents of things like the supply chain. Only I will dork out on them. So I got stuck for that reason. I knew that I was putting in things that weren't important, and I would get frustrated and lose energy to your point. So then I had to put my tail between my legs and go back to this editor and say, okay, I think we need to do an outline. And then we did this incredibly detailed micro outline, which is what I needed, and to your point, then I could pop in whenever I had the time or the motivation, or the discipline to write certain sections and finally get the book done. So it's probably something that you experience a lot.

Yeah, I love that story. And I'm sure there's a bunch of people feeling really seen right now because probably they've gotten into their book writing process. And what unfortunately often happens is that people think they're the problem. They think that like they just can't do this when really they didn't probably put the time on the front end to really deeply understand this book, and their reader, and their vision, and get the book planned. And so they kind of are figuring it out as they go and having that scope creep issue, which is what you just talked about where this book starts to balloon and balloon and balloon. Part of the job of The Outline actually is to identify scope creep issues where you're trying to write like eight books in one and you end up with these really shallow chapters rather than going really deep. And creating a meaningful book. What's cool about that process too is that a lot of the authors I work with will end up with a big bucket of their future books. So they get their book outline, but they've also built out high level ideation for three other books that now they realize that there was enough content that didn't fit in this one that they're looking at, okay, maybe my next book will be this. But that's also part of this whole journey is getting that clarity before you get into it and lose steam running down these like side trails rather than staying on the highway to get the book done.

So let's dig into that a little bit because you talked about knowing your One Reader. So I'd love for you to talk about that concept. And then you also said the right book right now, which I'm hearing people often have, yes, lots of potential books. How do you help them hone in on those two things?

The concept of the One Reader is widely used within this industry. I specifically pulled this from Stephen King, his book On Writing. I don't know if you've read that, Tanya. Now he writes fiction, obviously, but in his book, he talks about writing for his wife. So his wife was his one reader. This is the person that when he wrote his book, he thought about this woman, his wife, and he made decisions around his storytelling for her. Nonfiction is a little different, of course, because we're not writing a story in that sense. But when you think about your one reader, you should be writing to one reader that is representative of a larger reader group. And I like to help people drill down with specificity of exactly who that is. So we create essentially a marketing persona for this one reader. I guide them through this reader persona worksheet, which we then take and craft into a short narrative about this one reader. And this one reader should also align with their vision. That's actually just backing way up. We start with vision, so all these things kind of cascade from that. But when we're thinking about that one reader, that one reader is also likely the person you'll solve problems for as a consultant. It may be the reader you inspire through your social impact work, or you sell to in your wellness company. Those things should align. And then to your point on the right book for right now, if we were to look at our current state and our vision on a trajectory, and maybe we have three books or four books or two books that we know we want to write, a common example that I get is, I want to write a book about my subject matter, and I want to write a book about my life. Which one do I do first? So we're often asking the question of sequencing. So if I were to put, you know, point A here and point B my vision, what is the book that will help me get closer to that vision now and how can I sequence my ideas in a way so I know, okay, I'm going to write this book first. Oftentimes, that is the business growth book. That usually makes the most sense for people if they have business growth, brand growth, or social impact goals. That's often what they end up writing first. But it feels good also, I think, to people who really want to write that personal book to at least have a plan for it. So maybe the right book for right now is the one that will grow my business, brand, or impact. But I also, I can sequence this out and my next right book for right now will be my personal story, my memoir, for example. Sometimes you can integrate them, but you know, of course, there's specificity depending on the individual author.

We're kind of talking backwards right now. What is the sequential order of getting through the outline, I suppose, if it's starting with vision, then what?

The way that I like to think about the outlining process is, as I said, first, we start with vision. So I take authors through a visioning exercise. I ask them to go somewhere away from their normal every day. I have some prompts that I ask them to journal about and really invite them to think deeply about their future. So it's their one year, their five year, and their ten years out. And I like them to, if they can, spend at least an hour doing this, which sometimes means they may sit in silence for a little bit of that time. But actually that space and sometimes boredom is really important to the creative process and to finding clarity. Some of my clients will go out in the woods or they'll go to the beach or they'll go sit at a cafe. From there, then I walk authors through questions to help them begin to define their potential book topics. Then we move into a sticky note process where I have them put everything up on the wall. Our goal is to just get as much as we can. We go through these stages of sorting. This is where we often will come up with different books. So oftentimes people will end up with two, sometimes three, sometimes more different kind of book topics. And then I will walk them through a process to start to refine. Sometimes we end up building out two into a high level outline on the wall, but oftentimes it's really clear what that one book is and we build from there. And then from there, I ask them to spend two weeks, generally, thinking, reworking, adding to, moving this outline around. And we're working to get a high level chapter, not structure yet, but just the idea of what those chapters will be. We go into our book concept, we start to define their high level book core message, their book overview, their reader. Then we learn about book structure. So I teach them the different structures that they could use to create their book, to outline their book, and to write it. And then we go into that detailed outline, I call it an expanded outline, which is what you mentioned, Tanya, where we go really deep and build a highly detailed outline. Now, this can vary based on the person's brains. So everybody has a different level that they need to plan to. And I offer some different ways that they can do that based on what their needs are, also the type of book they're writing. So for example, if you're writing a business fable or a memoir, your outlining process will look a little different than if you're writing a technical, manual, or really prescriptive how-to book. The end result of that is typically an outline that's somewhere between 15 to 30 plus pages, which maybe sounds kind of crazy to listeners, but truly is what people, 99% of people need to be able to get that clarity and get their books done. The sticky notes are so fun because as the authors I work with go through the process, they will send pictures of their sticky notes and there's almost some ceremony around removing them from the wall when you're done. It's like this really meaningful moment to get to finally remove them from the wall once you've gone through this process. Now, of course, all of this has a lot of depth to this. We could talk about every single stage of this for a whole episode. So Tanya, anything you want to dig into, I'm happy to talk through more detail.

Well, I'm curious as you're going through this process, just because I get this question a lot, is there a moment where there's a discussion of, is this book marketable? Because people are often very humble, and they've done the work of figuring out the concept, they've got the vision, but there's this inner voice going, but do people want to read it? Is there a market for it? So is that a part of your process?

Absolutely. We definitely want to make sure that the book is marketable, that it's going to attract readers and also do the job that it's meant to do in the world. This is a question that we're often talking about. This is, some listeners may be familiar with the jobs to be done framework. This is asking the question of what is the job to be done by this book out in the world? And what is the journey the reader will take from point A to point B? And so when we're asking that question and we're getting really clear on what this book's job is, what it's going to do out in the world, then we can start to say, okay, what have readers already gone through before they get to the book? What have they read? What have they done? What have they tried? And then that lets you select potentially some individuals you already know or to do a survey, or ChatGPT is a great first market analysis to give you a starting point to begin to dig more into data if you really need to do a deeper analysis. And I would say that the level of this matters more depending on the type of book and your goals for the book, right? So if you're writing a legacy book or writing a memoir that you don't have huge aspirations for that to take you to the keynote stage, I call this keynote memoir or marketable memoir. If you're not in that camp, this is less important for you than somebody who has, let's say they have a wellness company, they're launching a product and this book is going to be a critical part of bringing in new customers. This all looks very different depending on the type of book you're working on. And it can look like some targeted conversations or it could look like deeper data analysis on the need in the market. Listeners may often think that if there is no book out there like theirs, then there's this gap in the market that they need to fill. But actually you want to see that there are some comparable titles out there that people are looking for books kind of like this and then your job is really to define your unique factor and the thing that makes your book stand out. And your one reader is part of that. Your personal story and unique perspective is part of that. Your expertise and background is part of that. There's a lot of factors that make that up, but you and your reader actually have a ton to do with what makes your book stand out in the marketplace.

I love the way you said that. In the past, I've told people you can go to a bookstore and observe how much space is given to a given subject on the shelves.

Oh, I love that.

I'm going to give you a little bit of market intel, right, in terms of they're going to give more space to the things that move more copies. So, and this also changes as trends in our society change. So like real estate, for instance, when the market is booming, there's a lot more space for real estate books, and when it contracts, so does that space. That being said, there's, I think, riches and niches is the phrase. So, we have some really standout titles on our list that you probably wouldn't find in a bookstore, but they have a very clear audience. I like to use the example of we have one author who is an OBGYN and a male who had breast cancer. And when this book came across, I don't know why it never occurred to me that a male could have breast cancer, but it hadn't. And we did the research, and I think it was something like one to two percent of men in the United States deal with this. And you might be like one to two percent, but then you run the numbers. That's a lot of men. So it's not necessarily a book that you would expect to be in Barnes and Noble, but it is a book that there is demand for, probably online, where men who are unfortunately impacted by this are seeking help. So I think for me, at least, that comes into play later as you're thinking about distribution options, but somebody shouldn't be discouraged that, you know, okay, I followed Tanya's advice, walked into the bookstore, didn't see any books for men with breast cancer.

I love that point, Tanya, and that niche, a lot of people are like, okay, how do I even figure out what my niche is? But all the things that we've been talking about are how you uncover your niche. So it's your unique perspective to your unique audience with your unique message and getting really crystal clear. And to your point, this is such a great example of that outlier. Generally, you want to see comparable titles, but this is an example where there was a really underserved niche. Like he was able to serve them well. So it's like anything, right? You have your standard rules and how things go, but there's always those outliers that come in and disrupt.

I love the outliers, by the way.

Yes.

Okay, so let's get back to process because you talked about these sticky notes, and in my head, I can see sticky notes all over the wall. Are there people for whom that doesn't work? And perhaps there's a different approach. Is there a certain piece of technology that you recommend people use to get this process moving?

A tactile process works for nearly everyone. Where it can get a little trickier for people sometimes is when they get into more detail and they maybe need a tool that will let them kind of move things around a little more and get a little bit more visual and play with it more easily. That is more of a need when people have already started and got lost than when they're in the beginning of their process. So there's a visual tool called Plotter that I think is really useful for people who are more visual and really like to kind of see their whole visual outline rather than having more of a written detailed outline. I've done some demos, so I met with the founder of the company a long time back, and they showed me their back end, and we kind of walked through how it worked. I also had them on my podcast, Beyond Better. The people that love Excel, I feel like could love something like this. They can color-code it, they can track it. For most, I would say nearly everybody that I work with, the process of the sticky notes works whether you are neurotypical, neurodivergent, working on a business fable or memoir or a technical book. It's actually about idea organization is actually what we're doing. It's not like everybody's book comes in and everybody goes through this exact same process and basically out comes the same kind of book on different topics. It's actually, let me get all my ideas organized, learn the skill of book writing, understand the structure that best fits my book, deeply understand my message, my reader, my story, and how to integrate that, and then craft this book. But certainly, there's always outliers in every situation. I try to be really responsive and coach to needs when those come up because we all have different brains and different ways of working. If somebody tries a process and it's not working, and you really have tried and your intuition is taking you in a different direction, you're wise. Your brain is telling you, I need to do it this way. Most of the time, there's an adjustment that you can make that really will work well with your brain. And a lot of the time, you should follow that intuition, but then take the advice of the experts and use what you can from their systems.

I love that. So when is somebody ready to start outlining? Can they just show up with a sparkle in their eye? Do they have to have something drafted? Is there a requirement?

I love a sparkle in the eye. I think that's a great place to start. Um, you know, I actually don't think you need anything at all. I've run workshops for audiences ranging from, you know, 10 people to 200 people, where they walk in the door and they saw at this conference that somebody is running a book ideation workshop and they had no notes, they had nothing walking in the door. And I remember this one workshop I ran, this was several years back for QuickBooks Connect, which is such a fun conference they do for people in the accounting profession. And there were, I think, there were about 200 people at that one. And I was looking around from the stage, and actually I walked around the whole room and just saw what people are doing. There were just sticky notes everywhere, people were on the floor, people were on the wall, spread out all over the tables. Nobody in that room brought notes with them. Maybe they'd been thinking about it. But I think that in our everyday life, we are so closed off from our own thinking. We're not making space for deep introspection. We're not being quiet enough to hear our own thoughts. So if you can check into this process and engage, give yourself the space to focus, go through a guided process to unlock your ideas first and be really messy. Be okay with the muck and the mud, and be okay with that for a little bit until you can find your way to clarity. That's actually where the magic is, is just quieting down and being intentional. I think no matter where you are, you can find your book idea, whether you've been thinking about it for 10 years and have a bunch of notes in writing, or somebody mentioned it to you a couple months ago, and it's been in the back of your mind. I think any stage is actually a great place to start.

That's very encouraging. Now, you've worked with so many authors. Is there a point during this outline process where you see them get tripped up most often? And if so, how can one avoid that?

I find that it's actually inner talk that is the biggest hurdle for people. And that comes through with phrases like, you know, they don't say this out loud, but thinking, who would ever want to read this? Who am I to write this book? What's the point of this? Am I just wasting my time? And all the things that inspired them to come into the process, once they really start to create this book, there's something about starting something that makes it risky. Because when you're just talking about something, you haven't failed at it. It's just a dream. When you begin, now there's a chance that you could fail. And so I think some of that self-talk starts to come up, and it really shuts down creative thinking. It shuts down their unique voice. They start to have a normal human reaction to the idea of putting themselves out there, being seen. We are hardwired as humans to stay safe, which means not being exposed, not being in front of people in a vulnerable way. So it really makes total sense that this comes up. How can they overcome that? I think the main way is through an expert or somebody you trust to come alongside you and help validate your idea. It doesn't mean that they're saying, it's great if you have some things to adjust, but they're helping you polish, they're helping you identify any gaps, pushing back or saying, wow, this is incredible from a place of expertise and honesty and care. That is hugely helpful and that doesn't have to look like a book coach. So people have a wide variety of budgets when they come into this. This could be a really trusted peer or a mentor or somebody like that. If you can work with a coach or a publisher or whoever it is on your author journey, having an expert to review at key stages is hugely helpful. A great place for that is when you get your outline either nearly complete or complete so that that expert can come in and review it and help you both validate things that are working, push back and challenge things that maybe need to be polished further.

Excellent. I'm hearing that our inner saboteurs can be very driven by fear of failure.

Yes. Isn't that true in everything though, right? And writing a book is such a huge, huge goal for so many people. Some people dream of it their whole lives, and it's a big, long process. So to me, it makes complete sense that that happens. It's just finding ways to overcome that so that you can make this dream happen. Yeah.

And knowing that it's going to happen and pushing through it regardless, I love that you brought that up. So let's go back to the nitty gritties. So assuming we've got some shape for our outline, I imagine the next step is figuring out, you mentioned chapter structure earlier and how you don't initially focus on that. At what point are you starting to pay attention to chapter structure and are there any best practices around how a writer approaches that?

So in the sticky note process, eventually we do start thinking about sequencing with your chapters. And so that's one of the key rules that we often consider when we're working on chapter structure is the sequence of the chapters. So in what order does my reader need to receive this information or learn this thing to go on the journey I want them to go on in this book? We're also looking at simplicity. A lot of people try to overcomplicate their books. I really understand this. When I wrote my very first book back in 2013, I kind of did the same thing. I mean, it turned out, I'm proud of that book as my very first book, but I included charts and interviews and like extra, like there was just so much stuff like stuffed into every chapter. And sometimes that makes sense depending on the type of book you're writing. Now, mine was a how-to practical guide. So it made sense that we had some of these extra things. But looking back, I should have simplified it. I could have taken some things out to make it a much cleaner experience for the reader. So we're often saying, okay, is this book as simple as it needs to be, especially for first-time authors, don't overcomplicate your book structure. Just keep it simple. It's going to be way easier for you to write if you keep your book structure simple. We're also considering your core message, which you can think about as your through line. A through line in a play or a movie is connective tissue. So if you take, let's say like a Broadway play like Hamilton, and you've got this core story of Hamilton, but then alongside Hamilton, you have all these kind of other little stories happening, right? So Hamilton is our connective tissue, but we also have all these other things going on around this story. Your core message is your connective tissue. And so as you are organizing this book, you're asking that question, does this connect directly to my core message? And then you're also asking yourself what your reader needs in this chapter and in this book, because a lot of people will forget the kind of level of knowledge their reader already has, or they make assumptions that their reader knows things that actually they don't necessarily know coming in. So we're asking a lot of those questions. We're also considering flow in writing. So there's the through line of your book as a whole and how that core message is your connective tissue. But there's also this cyclical structure to flow that you deploy in basically the whole book, the individual sections and chapters. And so we're looking at like, along with pulling this core message through, how are we creating strong flow in every section and every chapter, and that cyclical component of it is that a really strong chapter typically pulls through that core idea all the way through, and then it also connects back to the very beginning of the chapter. That often gives you this feeling of cohesion. Everything I'm talking about has so many layers to it, but I think I'll stop there, Tanya.

I love it. You're obviously so good at what you do and have so much to share. I'm wondering as someone's going through this process and it can sound complicated and like you said, having a guide will certainly help in that process and help you get it done right the first time. How are you advising people on length? Because I think that's another thing I see authors get tripped up on. They think like it's not long enough or very often a book comes to us and we're thinking about considerations in merchandising. And I think sometimes why does it have to be a certain length that's so outdated and why it's archaic how you book people think. But the fact is it has to have a spine. So how are you guiding people as they're thinking about length and how does that play into the outline?

It's definitely something that we're talking about as they're writing their drafts. I typically tell people to aim for about four to six thousand words per chapter. And that for most people is a good goal that will get them to around that, you know, 50,000-ish word mark for their book. However, in the first draft phase, I tell them not to worry too much, because there's two types of first drafters. There are the ones that write really light, and they end up with like 20 or 30,000 words for their first draft. And then there are the ones who write a lot. They write like 120,000 words for their first draft. And I find that either one is just fine as long as you have good editorial guidance on the other side. What I always tell authors is that nothing else can happen without the first draft. It is the absolute minimum that has to get done for this book to get out to market and for you to have the impact that you want to have through this book, whatever that big dream is, that this book will help make happen for you out in the world. And so I'm trying to remove as many mental hurdles. So it's nice to have guidelines. But if you go into something and you get really hung up on like, I only wrote 3,700 words for this chapter, and I think my draft is only going to be 30,000 words at the end, that can be a real barrier to even being able to get that first draft done. So if a listener tends to be on the light side for the first draft, I would really encourage you to have a good editorial partner that can come in and point out, give you good, strong, specific suggestions of places you can flesh out. Some easy ways to do that are integrating storytelling, integrating data, but not just data points, actually telling the story of that data. So interpreting a case study and really putting it through your lens in a way you want your reader to understand it. One data point can become a really compelling narrative. It could be adding more details. So if your book has heavy storytelling, it's maybe more of a narrative nonfiction book. Integrating sensory details, scene setting, some of these things that maybe you're just a fast writer or a light writer in the first round, your second draft will have a heavier lift in the sense of really putting meat on the bones. So I'm gentle with this, Tanya, because I am so mindful of the fact that there's so much internal hurdles that people have to overcome. I want to give good guidance, but I also don't want people to feel restrained. This is where the editors are magical heroes on the other side because they can help bring this draft from good to great and marketable. Those are the people that work the magic and can really help you with either expanding or trimming, or if it maybe has less need to really refine it and get it ready to publish.

I love the way you set that up. There's an expectation then that you will have multiple drafts. And I think that's reassuring, right? Because you don't have to get hung up on creating the one perfect draft. Right out of the gate, I'm hearing that it's perfectly okay that you start out with something that's probably pretty bare bones and then go back and add in your stories and your research or case studies and so forth afterwards. Because I see people, to your point, get hung up on sort of accumulating all of that stuff on the front end before they even have an idea of if it will fit in the book.

Yeah. Or they'll sit down to write and then they'll spend their whole session, you know, going down rabbit trails of research. If it's not natural and easy for you to pull in specific data, or maybe you have a couple of holes and you know that there are things that you want to fill in in the draft, leave comments to yourself in the draft. When I'm writing a book, I will set aside one day for hole filling for each chapter. So I'll write the draft and then I'll give myself one writing session to fill holes to the best that I can. And then I will leave comments for myself for the second draft and I'll keep moving. Because it's like, Dory the Fish, just keep swimming, just keep writing. You just got to keep moving, keep that momentum flowing.

Yeah, great advice. You mentioned earlier a type of writer perhaps who's been doing what they call pantsing. For people who aren't familiar with the term, it comes from the phrase, flying by the seat of your pants and not really having a clear outline in mind. And you mentioned like that person may come to you completely stuck and understandably not knowing where to go from the pantsing that they've done. How do you work with that type of a scenario?

First of all, if people can pants well, I am, they're my heroes. I think they're amazing. It's just such incredible to me to be able to just like do that. For most people, that does not work very well. And what I find is most pantsers get stuck, you know, first chapter, second chapter, third chapter maybe, they get stuck at some point. I often get people that have made it halfway through. They get to that middle point and they're like, oh, I don't have any clue what to do from here. I do two things with them. One is I will often ask them to start with me from the beginning and just go through the outlining process with me. Then after we get through those initial stages of sticky notes and the high level version on the wall, then we'll go to their writing. We will reverse outline their book, and then we will integrate that into this outlining process that we've done. This allows them, oftentimes they need to make major changes to the book. It's usually there's some structural issues, not always, but often. And it lets them see patterns, which is, we haven't talked about that much, but actually a lot of what this process is about is uncovering patterns. And so when they can both go through this beginner's mind, process, and reverse outline and integrate those two together, they can start to see patterns that give them a clear pathway to finish their book. I had an author come through my program years back. She had been in the shower, I think, and got this idea, which is such a magical, romantic way to come up with a book idea. Got this idea, just so passionate. She went and she wrote half her book really fast. And then she got stuck, I think, at about 20,000 words. I think it's so great that rather than going, what's the point? I don't know what to do. She went and sought help. And so we were able to work together. We did exactly what I just explained. And she finished her book and got it out. And it's now doing its amazing workout in the world. And that's a really hopeful message, I think, for any listener. Just to know that whether you're hearing a story from Tanya and me that sounds similar to you, or you have a different situation, if you're stuck, or maybe you pantsed for a bit and now you're really like, oh, I don't know what to do. There's always a way forward. And a lot of times, actually, it's around a system or process that seems very methodical or kind of like, there's like a system to it. But that can help you immensely uncover patterns and create this book that's meant to be created.

I love that. Well, you've given us so much amazing advice and insights, Stacy. Anything else you'd like the listeners to know about the outlining process before we wrap up?

I think just be open to trying things, maybe a different way than you've done it in the past. We haven't really talked about today the varied ways the outlines can look. And some people might be listening to me talk about a detailed outline, and are you with your outlining experience in really creating this really nuanced, detailed map, and they may be really bristling at that idea. It just doesn't feel resonant for them. Consider when you go into your outlining process that you need to plan to the level that your brain needs to be able to write. If in the past you've done little to no outlining and you haven't been able to write your book, that means that you need to take a different approach. But maybe it doesn't mean that you need to plan to the level that I'm suggesting. Maybe with your particular book, you write like mini chapter summaries to guide your writing process. Maybe you create a visual outline for your book. So there's a lot of different ways that you can approach this, but I would also encourage you to make the decision to the depth that you outline based on what you actually need, what your book needs, and not based on not wanting to do the work on the front end, because it really does pay off. It can be a book saver.

I love that. And Stacy, where can people find you and learn more about your program, your books, all the wonderful things you do?

I'm at stacyennis.com. I have a podcast called Beyond Better. I'm on Instagram and LinkedIn. And I have a six month program called Idea to Draft, where I take people through this whole journey. And yeah, you can Google me. I'm all over the place.

And by the way, Stacy has an astonishing success rate for that program, for getting people across the finish line with that first draft. So well done, Stacy. You obviously are a pro at what you do. Thank you so much for joining us and sharing all of this insight with our listeners.

Thank you, Tanya. This was so fun. I don't get to nerd out to this level very often. So I really, really enjoyed it.

Likewise. That's it for today's episode. We hope you enjoyed learning about how to outline your book. You can also find advice for writing, publishing, and promoting your work in my book, Ideas, Influence, and Income, which you can learn more about at ideasinfluenceandincome.com.

A big thank you to Madison Johnson, who produces the published podcast, and to our five star reviewers. Thank you for your support and we will be back with another episode on the last Tuesday of next month.