Welcome to Episode 58 of Published. Today, I’ll speak with Greenleaf’s Executive Editor, Erin Brown, about outlines and why they’re an important part in the book creation process.

Erin will give us an inside look into how authors can create effective book outlines that lead them to their first draft. In this episode, we’ll discuss how a well-developed outline can guide you through your writing journey, and why this is a step that you don’t want to skip.

• An outline is a great tool to get you started on your book, because if done correctly, it’ll leave you with a detailed roadmap to your entire first draft. By organizing your thoughts and fine-tuning your message up front, you’re setting yourself up for success later on.
• Although creating an outline may sound simple, like writing a bulleted list of your general ideas, it’s much more than that. A truly effective book outline identifies your key message, breaks it down into subtopics, and highlights supporting thoughts and evidence for each one. It can feel like a lot of work on the front end, but you’re saving yourself from getting lost along the way and having to start the writing process all over again.
• And this doesn’t have to be a journey you venture down alone. From editors to writing coaches, and even turning to writers groups for advice and feedback, there are many ways to find support as you outline your book.
• In this episode, Erin discusses the outlining process from an editor’s prospective, and advises authors on how they can get started on their own outline. Let’s get into the interview!

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1:48 - Erin, welcome back to Published! It's great to see you again. For listeners who haven't heard your previous episode, tell us a bit about who you are and the work that you do with us at Greenleaf.

• A little bit about me, I started in publishing over 20 years ago in New York. I was working at traditional publishing houses—Harper Collins, St. Martin’s Press. I edited just about every genre there is: business, political books, true crime, thrillers, memoir, historical romance.
• I spent about a decade freelance editing and then was lucky enough to find my way to Greenleaf and dive into the world of hybrid publishing, which is such a wonderful option for authors. We didn't have that when I started in the business so it's just fantastic and very exciting.
• As Executive Editor here at Greenleaf, I oversee our extraordinary group of editors in-house. We shepherd every book from the manuscript stage to final publication. We handle all things editorial from high-level developmental editing to writing cover copy, and we proof author bios. Basically, if it involves words on the page, the editors are involved here. So yeah, that's me and the editorial staff at Greenleaf.

3:30 - Why don't we start by helping our listeners who may be new to the process understand the purpose of an outline. Why may an outline be beneficial to them as they begin their publishing process?

• Personally, I feel that every author can benefit from an outline because it's a way to organize your thoughts, your material, and to keep your detail vision focused.
• There’s a bit of a difference between outlining when it comes to fiction and nonfiction. When you're writing fiction, depending on your style and personality, you can either outline your plot in detail or kind of fly by the seat of your pants, beginning with basic character sketches and story ideas. Then you can see where your writing takes you from chapter to chapter as your characters grow.
• However, for nonfiction, especially business books, self-help, health, and personal development, it's always a very good idea to begin with an outline. With fiction, where my advice is kind of whatever fits your style, for nonfiction it's really important even if it's just a basic outline. The reason for this is because it helps you get and stay organized which is super important when you're dealing with all this material that you're collecting.
• You also want to prearrange your material so that it has the biggest impact for the reader. You don't want to forget to include any content and it is going to help you stay focused on that vision, so you don't go off down different avenues. Also, it helps you with writer’s block so if you don't know how to get started and you're just staring at that blank page, starting with an outline will get you going. Overall, for nonfiction especially, outlines are incredibly helpful for writing an effective book.

5:37 - Let's help people understand the general steps of creating an outline. Perhaps you can give us a high-level overview of the main elements that should be included.

• Again, it's different between fiction and nonfiction. For fiction, an author should decide on their story structure to create the outline. You have your opener, inciting incident that changes everything, a series of crises that build tension, the climax, and the ending. Of course, there's also great story structures for fiction. You have the hero’s journey, the seven-point story structure, the three-act structure. All these things you can decide upon in advance and then map those out in your outline.
• You also want to create your character journeys, their arcs, and their backstories in the outline. Sometimes you can create an entire backstory, knowing the reader won’t be given all the details, but it helps you as the author come to know your characters. You can really grow these character personalities.
• You then want to map out your blocking outline. You can write synopses for each chapter in present tense. How detailed you want to get is up to you. When you’ve completed this outline for the novel, you can follow it and stay focused, but feel free to adjust. Sometimes your characters are going to lead you in a different direction and your plot might change. Just remember it's fluid.
• Now, when we get to nonfiction, it's even more important to follow an outline and it's always a good idea. I recommend that my authors just start by writing a short summary of the book. Pretend that you're writing cover copy or giving an elevator pitch to someone. You want to include your theme, your unique hook, what makes it different from what else is out there, the problem you're trying to solve for the reader, the main points, and reader takeaways. This can all be in a short paragraph.
• Next, you want to write summaries of your chapters—brief paragraphs of the topics you want to cover. This is when you're deciding on your key points and arguments. These don't need to be in order at this point, you're just writing down everything you want to include. Then you can play around with the order.
• A lot of people like to use post-it’s so you can easily move them around on a board. This is when you're creating the table of contents and you're figuring out where the material will be strongest. You can list each chapter by number once you get to the table of contents and write a brief one-line summary next to each. So, that's how you create that outline. Even for nonfiction this outline can change as you move along and see what material is strongest. Don’t be afraid to write the outline and know it can change if you need it to.

8:45 - I will add that it can also help you understand where you're a little thin on material and then send you back to do some research in areas where you've got to strengthen that content for your reader. Now, is there an ideal or even typical length for an outline?

• It really all depends on how detailed you want it to be. I don't think there's really a set answer. Some authors just need a one-page table of contents with a brief summary sentence for each chapter to keep them on track. Some authors outline chapters in great detail where they even want to include what's going to be in their opening paragraph, and the supporting ones, and that could be end up being 20 pages or more. It really does vary.
• One thing an author can remember when creating the table of contents is that most books have between 5 and 15 chapters, with 5 on the very low end. So that's just a general idea for putting together this outline and table of contents. Anything more or less than that would be kind of out of the ordinary.

10:00 - A lot of nonfiction authors have pre-existing content, whether that's articles or content from presentations that they've delivered. How can they best take advantage of that pre-existing content when considering their outline? Should they just try to cram all of that in for the sake of knocking out big chunks of word count on the front end, or is there more discretion needed?

• You can draw from your content especially in the outline stage when you're creating synopses of the chapters when you're figuring out the kind of material to present. You always want to create as much new content for the reader as you can. We try to discourage just taking material that's been published someplace else or on websites, but you can definitely use it as a content guide.
• When you're mapping out the specifics of chapters, and you're looking through that already published material to find your hook or anecdotes you can use, you can take bits and pieces from that material. You can also find key points, evidence, facts, research, and studies from material you already have and order these in a logical way. If you do want to include these then you're going to find a spot for some of that information. You're going to be able to take this existing material and figure out if and where it works.
• I would usually use the material itself to craft the content versus just cutting and pasting it in as a new book because you want to offer the reader something new that they can't find anyplace else. Use that existing content as your ideas and your theme, and you can pull in some of the stories. We like to recommend that you use it to supplement your content, especially in this outline stage. But you don't want to take all of it and just make that your book.

12:30 - Going back to the specificity of the outline, how down in the weeds should an author get? Should they keep it sort of loose and, like you said, have a road map for what they're going to write, or is it beneficial to take the time to get down into a more microlevel in terms of the direction of the content?

• There are a lot of factors involved, not only fiction or nonfiction, but also your subject. If you're getting very technical it can be helpful to include a lot of detail because you want to make sure you've included everything, and you don't want to leave anything out.
• Writing fiction, you have more leeway to change this outline as you move along, as plot lines are fluid and characters can grow. With nonfiction, you can make changes if certain material isn't working or if you decide to reorganize. There are also some pros to keeping it a little looser because you want to be able to change it if you don't have enough material for certain sections. if it's not working in the order you have it in, you want to be able to modify that and go into it with that mindset.
• A lot of this also depends on your personality as a writer. If you’re Type A, you're probably going to want to have all the details and everything you need written down from the start. But again, if you're more like “let's see what happens” and include just the basics, then you can get away with a loose outline. It’s more about the mindset.
• Go into it knowing that the outline can change, and a lot of times it should change, depending on the order of chapters and how you can strengthen the experience for the reader.

14:10 - We were talking a bit about extra content and whether to smush all of that into your outline just for the sake of having it and I want to revisit that. Let's assume that things don't fit into the outline or as you're writing you decide something isn't quite working. You've got to cut that out, and that's heartbreaking for an author. Can you give any advice to somebody who finds themselves in that situation?

• This is when it's always helpful to have an editor make these decisions for you. There's a difference between what an author thinks is great content and what might be great content for the book you're writing. You really want to take the time to consider whether it's truly relevant content or if it's simply material you're very partial to.
• If it's truly great content for the current book, you should be able to find a place to fit it in if your outline is strong. Perhaps an outline adjustment is in order to get that to fit in, but maybe that great material belongs in another book, and you need to set it aside for that one. You can always use it as extra content, like as a valuable nugget on your website that you can offer the reader later.
• Sometimes as authors we get really attached to the wording of something or a story and a lot of times you must step back and let that go if it's not going to strengthen your book or add value for the reader. You can use in the next book or put it online somewhere.

15:45 - You've worked with countless authors going through this process. What are the biggest mistakes and challenges that you see authors encounter, specific to outlines, and how can our listeners avoid those?

• A lot of authors are really intimidated by the word outline, and they don't know where to start. Automatically we kind of go back to high school and panic and we think about Roman numerals and how to format them and indent them properly. Instead, I would just say just dive right in. Just sketch it out. Don't worry about formatting, don't worry about, “should this be a number or a lowercase ‘a’?” Don't worry about that.
• Begin writing a paragraph as if you're summarizing your book for the back cover. As an author, find what type of outlining works for you. There's no right or wrong answer. I've said this several times, but a lot of it depends on the author’s personality. If you want to create a brief overview just to keep you focused and you know it's going to work for you, do it that way. No one is going to come in and say you did that right or you did that wrong.
• It's the same advice I give when an author is beginning a rough draft: give yourself the freedom to write badly at this point. Just start the outline. You can always change things, you can adjust, you can format later and do those indentations, making it look all pretty. The hardest part is just starting it, getting the words on the page and just kind of that intimidation factor. Just get in there and get going.

17:22 - If they're struggling with getting going, is it too early at that point to engage the help of an editor or a book coach? At what point should they be seeking that feedback?

• Outlining stages are a fantastic time to get an editor or book coach involved. Here at Greenleaf specifically, I work with so many authors during the manuscript development stage. A lot of the time, authors come to us with great ideas and a little bit of material, and we help them shape it into a rough draft, and that almost always starts with an outline.
• This is the best time at the ground level to really map out what makes your book unique, what your theme is, what your structure is, what is going to make it the strongest for the reader. If you've written the whole thing, it's a little hard to come back and go, “Oh, that's right, I should have thought about what makes this unique. I should have thought about the best way to lay this out.”
• This first stage is the best time to get a fresh set of eyes to take a look at it, and to help suss out your distinctive angle. Someone who has experience in the genre and has worked on many of these books will know what works and what doesn’t. Getting someone in right at the beginning can be extremely helpful. It’s the right time.
• So many authors have that fear where they don’t want to show anybody. But editors are not judgmental. They’re there to help, to collaborate. When they get someone in there that really can give them that expertise and that help, I think authors realize, “Oh why didn’t I do this earlier?” And you can, you can do it at the beginning.

19:20 - You've been great as always, Erin. Any parting advice for our listeners who may be about to start the outlining process themselves?

• I just want to reiterate, start with the basics. Get in there, start writing. Remember that an outline is adjustable, so don't be intimidated. Remember that you're in control. You’re in control of your outline, so don't be afraid. At the beginning this is when you want to establish and remain focused on your unique theme, your hook, and your general structure. If you do that, you're golden, even if some of the details change along the way.

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ABOUT ERIN

After graduating with a BS in Communications from the University of Texas at Austin, Erin moved to New York City where she worked for almost a decade at two major publishing houses: William Morrow, a division of HarperCollins, and Thomas Dunne Books, an imprint of St. Martin’s Press. There, she edited mysteries, women’s fiction, literary fiction, romance, thrillers, nonfiction (business, self-help, political, and memoirs)—almost every genre under the sun. After returning to Austin, she worked as a freelance editor for many years, helping authors hone their work. When she’s not buried (happily) in manuscripts, Erin can be found mastering a new yoga pose or walking her bearded dragon around the neighborhood.