Dreading the Writing Assignment? Outlines to the Rescue

Writing technical articles is a challenge. There you sit, encircled by reams of research, notes and interviews. Wherever do you start?

Remember 5th grade English? You start with an outline.

Outlining has fallen on hard times lately. Mind mapping and group action are more much fashionable. These techniques are great once generating ideas, but once you’ve got your ideas germinating you’ve got to outline them. Without an outline, your article will: Be an unstructured mess. Take three times as long to write.

Don’t let this happen to you – outline. If it’s been a piece since 5th grade – or if your “progressive” school didn’t stoop to teach you actual English skills – let me prompt you why it’s important and how to do it.

Outlining keeps you from writing an unstructured mess. Readers, especially American readers, prefer distinct sections in their media. For example, look at American screenplays. Movies invariably have three acts, and thing that doesn’t have them is considered an art film. Effective speeches often contain three parts, and readers like three points because the structure does easier to retain information.

Outlining shrinks your writing time by a third to a half. How do you pare down that pile of research notes and interviews into an article or white paper? You guess it – outline it. By assignment sections to your notes before you start writing, you’ll categorize, change and clarify. Not bad before you’ve even as written an introduction. For example, let’s say you’re writing an article just about mirroring. You can divide such an article into several some sections depending on what your client wants to get across. Here are several examples of several outlines: 1) Explanation of mirroring 2) Differences between local and remote mirroring, 3) Contrastive mirroring with another forms of replication, or 1) Define mirroring 2) List environments that require mirroring 3) Decision matrix for assignment several mirroring levels.

Once you’ve done your research it’s simple to assign pieces to several sections. Believe me, it’ll light a fire under your writing time.

Christine Taylor is president of Keyword Copywriting, which helps marketing and PR pros leverage their relationships with technology clients. E-mail her at chris@keywordcopy.com, call her at 760-249-6071, or check out Keyword’s Website at www.keywordcopy.com

About The Author

Christine writes technical marketing communications for data storage, networking and pharmaceutical clients, including: EMC Commvault Quantum Stone fly Networks Sybase Maranti Networks ClariStor Fujitsu AES Obagi Medical Products

She specializes in trade journal articles, white papers, press kits and online content. She serves as a conducive editor to Computer Technology Review and acts as editor-in-chief for Storage Inc. and Storage Management Solutions.

Before moving into technical journalism and marketing she served 20 years in the IT trenches, including systems administration at Avery Dennison's Research and Development division.
chris@keywordcopy.com

This article was announce on Gregorian calendar month 28, 2004