In my newsletter this week, I explained why I almost never start any sort of writing project with an outline. It’s simply because I’m much more of an explorer-writer than an architect-writer: I usually need to move through the material before I can see the structure.
Architect-writers begin with the blueprint, the chapter map, and the planned sequence of ideas. Explorer-writers need to write fragments, follow associations, talk through examples, or spend time with one part of the project before the larger argument becomes visible.
You can read more about the distinctions I’m making here:
If you’re an explorer-writer too, common academic writing advice can make you feel like you’re doing everything wrong, especially when that advice begins and ends with “make an outline.” But struggling to outline at the beginning doesn’t necessarily mean you’re avoiding the work, lacking structure, or failing as a writer. It may mean that writing is how you discover the argument before you can organize it.
In this episode, I discuss a method for still producing structured academic prose without beginning with an outline.
Academic writing still needs to become generous to the reader. Your reader needs a path through the problem, the evidence, the intervention, and the stakes. But the process that helps you find the argument is not always the same as the structure that helps someone else follow it.
So, I walk through a more useful process for explorer-writers: start where there is traction, write to discover, harvest what appears, cluster before sequencing, name the emerging argument, build the reader’s path, and use a reverse outline to refine the structure.
You don’t have to begin as the architect. You can instead begin as the explorer, learning the shape of the terrain as you go.
