How To Outline A Book: Writing a Book on a Busy Schedule

About this video

Dale explains how busy would-be authors can outline a book to keep the project on track, arguing that writing by the seat of your pants risks a manuscript that drags on for years. His outlining method has five steps: brain dump every idea for the book as rough notes or bullet points; prioritize what belongs in the book and what does not; organize the material into a logical order that effectively becomes the table of contents; interrogate each bullet point by writing questions under it, sometimes questions on the questions, so the blanks are easy to fill in later; and double-check the finished outline. He then gives three ways to produce the content from that outline: write it yourself, dictate it and let a good editor and proofreader tidy the result, or hire a ghostwriter. Demonstrating the third route through sponsor Fiverr, he narrows a nonfiction search to top-rated or level-two sellers with many completed gigs and strong ratings, sends the freelancer his outline and project needs, and watches the delivery countdown, noting his order promised delivery in 11 days and arrived early. He finishes with a plagiarism safeguard: run the draft through Grammarly’s plagiarism checker, and as an extra check, copy the text into a new plain-text file and look for weird symbols that can signal a doctored, plagiarized document.

Key takeaways

• Dale’s five outlining steps are brain dump, prioritize, organize, interrogate each point with questions, and double-check the result.
• He presents the outline as a working table of contents that keeps a busy writer from derailing a book project.
• Content can be produced three ways: writing it yourself, dictating it for an editor to clean up, or hiring a ghostwriter.
• When hiring on Fiverr, he favors top-rated or level-two sellers with many gigs and strong ratings, and shares his outline and requirements up front.
• He recommends plagiarism-checking any ghostwritten draft with Grammarly and by pasting it into a plain-text file to expose suspicious symbols.

Episode details: published March 31, 2020 · 8:31 long. Summary written by Self Growth Videos from the episode itself. Business results and any income figures mentioned are Dale L. Roberts’s own claims, shared for education — they are not typical or guaranteed.

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