Writing And Outliners

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Posted by Gary Carson
Jun 28, 2008 at 02:50 PM

Howdy. I was reading through some posts about the problems NoteMap has with displaying long notes that go past the bottom of the screen and they made me curious about how the writers out there are using these outliners to develop their material.

Personally, I occasionally use single-pane outliners (currently using NoteMap) for brainstorming and for working out problems of structure, but I do all the actual writing in Word 2003. I’ll print the outline for reference or display it on a second monitor while I write the piece. If I create an outline at all, it’s just for planning purposes.

I’ve never understood why a writer would want to transfer an outline into their word processor when they actually start writing copy. Outlines are for planning. Word processors are for writing. Are people actually writing rough drafts with their outliners and then transferring the copy into their word processors? If so, I’m not sure I see the point in it. Why do any actual writing in an outliner and then transfer it to a word processor? Why not just do the writing in the word processor in the first place?

Just curious. I’m always looking for ways to improve my working methods.

Posted by dan7000
Jun 28, 2008 at 04:11 PM

Outliners serve two functions in my writing process. (1) for an outline; and (2) to store and organize research. The second function is much more important to me - the outline of my piece can be done in Word or, more likely, is pretty firmly in my head.
The best outliner software for these two functions was ADM. Now I store research in OneNote, but it’s not ideal. I will probably try using SQLNotes for my next project.

Occasionally I have tried to merge these two functions - in other words, I try to create an outline of my research that matches the outline of my piece. I think that is a mistake, because my research needs to be organized in a way that is easy to find for me, and my writing needs to be organized differently.

Occasionally I have also tried to do some writing in the outliner. For instance, attempting to write snippets of material that I can move around and use in any part of my piece. That has also been a mistake, because inevitably the form of any snippet of work has to change to match its context when you move it to a different part of your piece. Note: I think that IdeaMason tries to force you to use this model, and it simply doesn’t work.

Posted by Gary Carson
Jun 28, 2008 at 05:24 PM

I’ve been using NoteMap for a long time. Ergonomically, it’s almost perfect. Very easy to use without taking your hands off the keyboard, which is an absolute necessity as far as I’m concerned. I never had any problems with it, so I got all hot and bothered when I started reading the bug reports here. I checked out the problem with notes that go past the bottom of the screen and, sure enough, NoteMap goes completely ape in that situation—a very bizarre error in a program this expensive. Didn’t the developer test his own application? I got the impression that it never occurred to the developer that users would make notes that long, so he never bothered to test for that condition. That, in turn, got me wondering WHY anyone would enter so much text in an outline, which in turn got me curious about how people were using these outliners in the first place.

I was testing the reported problems with transferring Notemap outlines to Word when I got distracted wondering WHY you would ever want to do this. I did a couple of exports and ended up with a Word document containing a structured outline complete with level icons and indented, numbered lines. Even if you were using NoteMap to write a rough draft, it looks like you’d have to spend a lot of time cleaning up the result to turn it into actual copy. Seems like you’re making more work for yourself this way. I don’t know. I’m a slow writer myself and I’m always looking for ways to speed up the process. If people are using some kind of method to turn a structured outline into a rough draft, I’d be interested in hearing about it.

Posted by Stephen Zeoli
Jun 28, 2008 at 07:49 PM

Here’s the reason I would like to use a good outliner for writing: I’m a very organic writer. That is, I write pieces as they come to me, add section heads as they occur to me. Yes, I think about my topic ahead of time, gather research and jot notes, but I rarely have my whole work mapped out before I write.

So, the advantage of a good outliner is that I can both structure and write as the work takes shape in my head. The best software I ever used for that was GrandView. Is was a powerful outliner and wordprocessor all in one. So I could both build my structure as the work progressed, but also just write away under any one topic. And because it was (is, I should say since a few folks on this forum still use it) a single-pane outliner, I could view my work as a whole all in one window, which is much more conducive to effective writing, I think.

However, since I don’t like trying to work in DOS anymore, and no other outliner matches GV, I rarely use an outliner for writing anymore. Usually, I write in a simple text editor.

That all being said, I’m now using a MacBook for my personal writing projects, and I’ve begun to use Scrivener. I’m still getting the feel for this program. I certainly would not classify it as an outliner, though it has some outlining fuctions. It has some nice features for collecting an organizing research and building drafts.

Anyway, I’ve probably wandered off topic.

Steve Z.

Posted by Hugh
Jun 28, 2008 at 08:15 PM

Whatever works for you, is what I say.

For me, an outliner has one purpose and one purpose only, and that is to save time. In both respects dan lists above (info-management and laying out the bones) I outline a lot: my skeletons run to thousands of words. So I like to keep my outlines at my elbow and on my screen; whether the nodes of the outline form the headings of my writing is somewhat immaterial. In my view, some re-typing can be good; paradoxically it can save time because it can clarify, and clarification saves time.

But writing more efficently is what it’s all about. Whatever achieves that is good.

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