[bonestamp2]

Agreed. I've written thousands of articles and won a couple of writing awards. Productivity and quality really clicked for me when I started doing my outlines as lists.

I would do them in a text editor, one thought per line. The beauty of using a text editor is the shortcut keys that make it easy to move items up/down in the list. This is really nice as the outline develops and you build the plot and connecting tissue that ties the ideas together -- it's easy to play with different narratives in a text editor.

I showed this method to a friend who is a NYT best selling author. He doesn't know a lick of code, but uses a text editor in his process now too.

I actually do all of my writing in a text editor that doesn't have any spelling or grammar checking. This helps me stay focused on the ideas and think about editing later. My very last step of editing is moving the text into a word processor to catch spelling and grammatical errors that I may have missed.

Anyway, I share this in case anyone else finds it useful. If someone has a process that works really well for them, I'd love to hear about it too!

[justinlloyd]

Not thousands published for me, but hundreds published definitely. There isn't a modern software development trade or software industry magazine I haven't gotten a published article in to, in some form. And my article always starts as an outline of the subject I wish to talk about. One brief thought per line. Typed up in OneNote with any kind of spell check switched off, or a basic text editor like yourself, with no formatting or styling or care for grammar or punctuation or spelling. No annoying squiggly red lines to distract me from my train of thought. Short cut keys to move things around.

[evanmoran]

This sounds really helpful! Can you share an example or two with both the outline and then the final writing? I’d love to see how the ideas become the final manuscript.

[darkteflon]

That’s really interesting. I’ve recently been thrown into a role that requires lots of structured writing.

Could you elaborate on your process for outlining? What level of detail do you go into? Do you nest bullets or stick to one top-level list? Do you try to lay out the substance of your argument?

I’d be interested in reading anything you’d recommend on the subject, too. Always appreciate hearing from people who do this on the daily.

[bonestamp2]

> Could you elaborate on your process for outlining? What level of detail do you go into?

It depends on how developed the idea is. When I have give a lot of thought to something, especially the very moving and important points, I often know exactly how I want to phrase something poignant. In that case, I may write a full sentence, and if a great idea strikes me at this moment I might continue writing a full paragraph, but I ONLY do this if the inspiration is flowing and I don't want to lose it. Whenever possible, I will channel that flow into additional bullet points and work on the phrasing later.

> Do you nest bullets or stick to one top-level list?

I don't usually nest with formatting, unless the order of the sub points are really important; I usually list related ideas below each other. I do this because when I'm playing with the plot, sometimes I'll move those related points to come earlier in the story, even though they happened later in chronological time -- especially if I'm trying to pull in the reader during the first or second paragraph with something that is interesting, but is not an important event in the story.

> Do you try to lay out the substance of your argument?

The main points are usually the first items in the list and then I insert the connecting ideas and points in between. In terms of how substantive those list items are, I try to keep them short and stay high level in the brainstorming/outlining mode.

Other suggestions on process:

I delete a lot at the end. I scrub every word and phrase that isn't absolutely necessary.

The last paragraph I write is the first paragraph of the article/essay -- it's so much more natural to create a map of where you're going after you've already been there. This also takes the pressure off of getting started because you can start anywhere, and it makes writing the introductory paragraph so easy it feels like cheating.

The last thing I write is the title.