5 reasons that authors should write a fat outline for every chapter

5 reasons that authors should write a fat outline for every chapter

You know it’s smart to plan book chapters before writing. So don’t start by writing. Start by crafting a fat outline — you’ll save yourself anguish and improve your work with editors and other collaborators, too. What’s a fat outline? It’s a skeletal layout of what’s going to be in the chapter, laid out in…

No bad sentences

No bad sentences

E. B. White wrote some terrible sentences. So did Malcolm Gladwell. But you never got to read them. They didn’t publish bad sentences (or least, not very many.) Want better sentences? Prepare, then write, then edit. Prepare Don’t start writing by writing. Writing without preparation is like trying to pave a road without smoothing out…

Contributed op-ed case study (3): Planning and writing
|

Contributed op-ed case study (3): Planning and writing

Writing can be easy, provided you prepare properly. I’ll show how that applied to the op-ed I placed in the Boston Globe last Sunday. Let’s start by talking about two types of writers, planners and pantsers, a concept I borrow from fiction writers. Planners are the people who map everything out ahead of time, in…

Fat outlines help you write without anxiety (Ask Dr. Wobs)
|

Fat outlines help you write without anxiety (Ask Dr. Wobs)

When you’ve completed most of the research for a writing project, but before writing, you should create a “zeroth draft” — a fat outline. Fat outlines are both easy and helpful, functioning as an onramp to your writing process. But as today’s Ask Dr. Wobs question shows, fat outlines are unfamiliar to people. Dear Dr. Wobs: What…