Outlining and summarising

I know – it’s quite cheeky for someone who can’t do their eyeliner properly to write an entire blog post about outlining, but it’s a skill that comes in very handy for planning and pitching work. As well as giving you the ability to keep track of your plot-line, characters and events, planning ahead is a valuable tool for strengthening your writing.

Whether you’re writing a research paper or a long-winded fiction piece, summarising and outlining is a good way of hitting every point that you wish to include. It’s an optimal approach to firstly plan your outline, and then summarise after you’ve finished writing to both check that everything is included and also to make sure your work is as strong as it can be.

Why you should outline your work

Creating an outline of your work means that you can accurately signpost key content points to include in your work. With that kind of forward planning, it’s even easier to develop your argument, visualise a potential structure and even organise your ideas in a clearer way. Creating an outline varies depending on your work’s purpose, goals, format and level of detail – but as a basic guide, it can be useful to:

• Have a clear idea of what you want to achieve through your work. Is this an academic argument, a social commentary, or a persuasive piece?
• Know how you’re going to structure your work. You may need to give more focus and detail to some sections over others, as well as being mindful of tone and length.
• Understand the order you want your points or events to happen in. You don’t have to nail this right away – in fact, this is probably the stage that’s best for reorganising your ideas.
• Depending on whether your text is academic or not, you may also want to section out your points to cover them in enough detail, as well as your arguments and counterarguments.

Although outlining is used heavily for academic or research writing, it can also really help when initially plotting a creative fiction text. For example, storyboarding is a form of outlining, which can help you devise a plot and key story elements. Using a cohesive plan like this can help you stay on track and strengthen your story – along with the added benefit of remembering otherwise small details which you could refer back to later, ultimately creating a more cohesive and detailed world.

Why you should summarise your written work

Summarising your work is also useful for pitching it – you can give an all-encompassing rundown of the main sections, events or plots you’ll be covering in order to get those executives (or presses) interested. Some journals even ask for a pitch of an article or blog post, deciding on whether they’d be interested in it after you’ve given them a brief rundown.

Finding the right balance between short enough to intrigue but detailed enough to give enough information is a fine art. It’s best to include some key elements such as an introduction, an explanation of what your story’s unique selling point is (what it does differently to others out there), either a contrast or comparison to existing media to try and give the people you’re pitching to more of an idea of how your piece will fit into their catalogue, and a sample of the work, if you’ve already started writing it.

Depending on where you’re sending your work, the journal may have their own guidelines for submissions or pitches, so ensure you scour their details carefully and add any specifics that they’re looking for.

Pitching your written work

Again, pitching can work out differently depending on the type fo work you’re looking to submit. A guest blog or article pitch may outline your main points, a research paper pitch would follow a line of query and try to answer a question, whereas a pitch for a creative piece may include key information about characters, plots or settings.

Especially in the case of creative writing, ensure you also have a synopsis handy – although often mistaken for one another, the pitch is more like a wisp of smoke to grab the reader’s attention – the synopsis is where the real meat of the story lies.

Creating a synopsis

Defined as a ‘brief summary’ – a synopsis is, well, just that. However, it does differ from a pitch as the synopsis is where a lot more of the technical detail and interwoven plot threads lie. Many authors actually struggle to create a synopsis they feel confident about as it’s hard to condense down the inner mechanisms of a story into a short side of A4, as is often the requirement.

As with many things in life, practise makes improvement. Try to recall main plot points oratory arcs from memory, or try writing a synopsis for a piece of existing media to see where the main memorable sections reside.

School’s out for summarisation!

In this blog post, we covered the synopsis of a story, why it’s a good idea to outline your main points (as it can help you write the rest of your work) and the importance of summarising. I think you’ve earned a break now!