Many authors bristle at the thought of having to write an outline before they write. They fear it will make their writing stiff and stifle creativity and flow.

I know, we all like to feel blissfully free. An outline can make you feel restricted. You want to write with spontaneity, just capturing the words as they flit across your brain. After all, you want your words to be authentic, congruent with who you are, a genuine expression of yourself.

Using an outline does not cramp your style. It does just the opposite – it releases it and empowers it. That’s because it provides the necessary structure to hold what you want to say effectively in a focused and organized why. The reason you can enjoy a hot drink is that there’s a solid structure in place – your cup – to hold the liquid. With nothing to hold the hot coffee, all you have is a mess, a hazardous flowing mess.

Susan Harrow, author of Sell Yourself without Selling Your Soul offers a terrific template for developing stellar stories. I think you’ll love it as much as I do:

1. Explain the situation.

2. Develop the action.

3. State the result.

4. Close with an epiphany.

5. It’s concise as it is brilliant.

Here’s another template. This one I learned years ago, when I first started writing. My first writing mentor gifted me with these excellent guidelines. Though more than ten years have passed, I still remember it. To share it with you, I did a quick google search and discovered that her advice actually came from William E. Blundell, author of The Art and Craft of Feature Writing: Based on The Wall Street Journal Guide. [Read more…]