If you’re about to write a nonfiction book—or you’ve generated a messy first draft by writing you way into the project—creating an outline is your smartest next move.
What it is: An outline is a list of points you will cover in your book, written in a linear order, so each point deepens your on-page conversation and supports or develops your book’s premise/argument.
The main points will serve as section headings or chapters, and the sub-topics under each main point will be shared as your ideas woven with anecdotes, case studies, personal experiences/illustrations, research, and statistics.
How it is important: You may think that pausing to write the outline is a waste of time (you heard Nike; just do it!)
But in fact, taking the time to consider the overall purpose of your book and how you will design it so it takes the reader from one state to another (confusion to clarity or problem to solution) in a clear point-form outline is an investment with massive payoff:
⇒ It gives you a built-in focus for each writing day
⇒ It ensures you don’t accidentally deviate from your topic
⇒ It prevents potentially disastrous emotional flare-ups like writer’s block and impostor syndrome, both of which could cause you to pause or even stop writing altogether.
In 5 easy steps, you can have an outline that serves as a practical and emotional support document, one that will enable you to write your book much more quickly, efficiently, and with far less drama, making it an essential step for every nonfiction book writer.
While your nonfiction book will obviously be far more detailed, nuanced, and specific than the 5-paragraph essays you wrote in elementary school about what you did over the summer, in fun news, the outline for both is pretty much the same!
Each contains a thesis statement, three main ideas, sub-sections that support the main ideas, and a conclusion.
For your nonfiction book, the outline is still 5 easy steps and will:
♦ hook your reader’s interest and illustrate for them their essential problem—and how you’re positioned to enlighten them or help fix it
♦ give them important background info on the subject so they understand the broader issue and their role in it
♦ walk them through your points in a logical and linear order so each idea builds on the next
♦ wrap it up with insights and actionable steps your reader can use going forward.
As a business owner or thought leader, you delight in sharing your expertise with your community and helping people.
Yet it’s critical your ideas are presented in a way an outsider can understand. You know your field inside and out, but your reader is new to it, and their only exposure is through your book as a portal.
An outline forces you to slow your roll and break down your subject into easy-to-digest parts.
It forces you to consider the path you need your ideas to take in order to build on themselves and provide the greatest impact.
You may feel enthusiastic about plunging into writing your book right away. After all, you’ve probably written innumerable blogs, delivered talks, even written a dissertation or other books on the subject.
What often happens to enthusiastic if unplanned writing is after a while, without a foothold, prompt, or map to follow, the writing stalls out, and the writer gets overwhelmed.
Left unchecked, you may become emotional, develop writer’s block or impostor syndrome, or start finding reasons to set the book aside, all of which don’t just harm a project but can cause you to stop writing it altogether.
Instead, an outline focuses your attention and shows you exactly what you’re to do now, tomorrow, and all the next days clear through to the end.
Having topics, sub-topics, and specific points to cover in each section prevents you from not knowing what to say or why you’re saying it. It’s a concrete way of keeping your nose down, and your attention specific, so you remain on the path striding forward.
To create your outline, you’ll need to have your “big idea”—the overarching idea, or guiding principle of your book—firmly in place.
In Part 3b: “Refining the Perfect Subject,” I discuss how to first find and then refine your book’s subject so it is specific to your target reader.
Note: The more specific your “big idea” or premise and purpose for writing the book, the easier a time you will have writing about it.
This may seem counter to logic (you’d think that when your topic is broader, there’s more you can say about it). Yet like going to a mega grocery store and trying to find a cereal, sometimes too much choice overwhelms the consumer, stresses them out, and they leave confused, holding a bag of plain oats.
Plus, by trying to be all things to all people, you’re watering down the good you can provide to a select audience who would gravitate to your book, share it with others, and become clients and supporters, feeling uniquely identified and understood by your work.
To confirm you’ve refined your subject down to the shiny bone, check out some books on the shelf to see how they’ve done it.
Some of our own One Lit Place authors’ books:
Some mainstream highly popular titles:
These authors have caught onto a particular audience pain point and are addressing it headlong with their knowledge and skill set.
What works about these nonfiction books is their premise (big idea) is engaging and strong from the get-go.
They are also appealing because they present a pain point or an intriguing issue they may not have even known they had (until they saw the book, that is).
(As an example, you might not have known you were walking around caring too much until you saw Manson’s book and thought, ‘you know what? I do give too many f*cks!’ and spontaneously picked it up.)
That big idea fronting your book will lead you to an exploration of how you will speak to the big idea, and that exploration will become articulated in the topics of the book.
The introduction is where you sell the entire project. Here you explain and explore why it’s going to be a worthwhile experience for the reader to spend their valuable time with this book.
The journalist’s opening paragraph 5 WH questions are going to all come into play here as you first hook the reader, then provide the why, who, what, when, and how.
To lay out your body topics (which will become your chapters), you will want to—without thinking extensively or sweating much—dash off a list of things all associated with your big idea:
A healthy list will probably have about 8-12 topics.
Remember to go easy on yourself; your first pass at an outline is your “working outline”; over time, as you get into the thick of writing, you may shuffle things around or even change the outline entirely. That’s all simply part of the organic process of writing a book.
Your goal is to have a clear, clean, concise book that gives your reader a feeling of empowerment and agency from the warm arm you’ve put around their shoulders. For now, you’re road-testing the flow of ideas, their relevance in support of the big idea, and seeing how overall everything is developing toward clarity and results.
Once your information finds a more permanent order in the line-up, you should be aiming for approximately 8-12 chapters.
Under each of those sub-topics, write what you might say to support and illustrate those ideas. Consider the structure and layout of each chapter as mini introductions (with a what, why, and how).
Much of the information you share will benefit from later research, anecdotes, facts and quotes from others in the field, and statistics, which you can attend to after you have an outline and most of a first draft of the book.
For now, what do you know already that you would be in a position to say under each of these areas? Start with that. You can fill in the rest later.
Wait, what?
That’s right; for now, a little placeholder will be fine: Thanks for coming and try the veal! Tip your driver!
Because the conclusion will be the sum of your experience writing this book, you’ll come to it most easily and naturally when you get to that point. So you can let it lie for now.
In good news, writing a nonfiction book outline in 5 easy steps is something every nonfiction writer does. Meaning, there are loads of supports in circulation to help you write yours.
Download my free comprehensive “Anatomy of a Nonfiction Book Outline: 5 Easy Parts” with outline layout, chapter breakdowns, and resources, or sign up to a writing software that includes an outlining feature such as Scrivener (considered by most writers to be the gold standard of writing softwares), Plottr, or any other useful writing app.
If you find during your writing process that connecting with a writing coach or editor would benefit you, please reach out!
We are happy to offer you a FREE, no-obligation consultation any time to help you get the book you want!
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