Sean D'Souza: Beat the bloat - head straight for the outline

If you were to walk into a Hollywood studio, you'd expect to see actors, lights and action, right?

Right. But actors, cameras and lights are expensive. So every movie director and producer does one thing: they outline. They outline every darned thing that can be outlined. And the reason for the outline is indeed to save a huge waste of time and money. But it's also to avoid the "bloat factor".

A movie needs drama.

It needs action.

It needs flow.

It needs a storyline.

It needs a beginning and an end.

It sure as heck doesn't need to meander and bloat. And outlining enables you to immediately see where the script is going out of control.

An article careens out of control as well, if not managed well. If you start to write, you'll get ideas. Those ideas lead to more ideas. And those ideas lead to even more ideas. Of course you try to put all the ideas together. Or decide that all the ideas aren't a good idea and you start to edit. You go back and forth, adding or editing. Then tiredness sets in. And frustration. At which point you decide either that article writing is a pain in the butt, or the article you're writing is not worth the trouble.

And you'd be wrong on both fronts.

Your article went off the rails at the very start when you failed to outline. An outline gives you a clear start, middle, set of questions (how, why, what, when etc) and ending. If bloating starts, you can see it in the outline. And you can move the bloated section or extraneous ideas aside. And you're still outlining. You haven't written a word of the article.

So let's see how an article can get bloated. Example topic: How to increase prices without losing customers. Example outline:

* Why increase prices.

* How customers respond to increased prices (and how to avoid losing them).

* The problem with reduced prices.

* How the yes-yes factor helps increases prices systematically.

* How to create a yes-yes factor to increase prices.

* The yes-yes factor grid.

* Examples of price increases.

* Summary.

Now that's just the outline and you already see it's swaying wildly without writing a single word. You can spot the yes-yes factor jump in. Then the yes-yes factor grid pops in without notice and suddenly the article's gone off the rails.

Instead, we do all our primary editing at the outline stage:

* Why increase prices.

* How customers respond to increased prices (and how to avoid losing them).

* The problem with reduced prices.

* Examples of price increases.

* Summary.

In removing what you don't need (at least for now), you're left with what you need.

And outlining isn't restricted to articles or movies. The professionals all engage in outlining. Look at an architect's drawing, a Boeing design, a cartoon sketch, a travel itinerary - you'll see outlines in all of them.

There's an added bonus. Outlining keeps you focused.

But should there be some level of "creativity" in the writing?

Outlining doesn't stop you from adding flair, drama or even an additional paragraph here or there. For example, this paragraph didn't exist in the outline for this article. But because I had the outline in place, I had the liberty of putting in an additional paragraph without disrupting the core idea the article is seeking to portray.

Outlines don't stop you from adding your own touch. Because you have so much less frustration and editing, you're more than likely to have time to add a factor of creativity.

You don't have to stick rigidly to an outline format. In the outline for any article you tend to have the opening, the ending and the middle section - how, what, why, when etc.

If you find you don't need the "when", you can omit it from the outline. But having it in the outline gives you the freedom to put it in, or remove it - without wasting time writing the article, only to find it doesn't fit in.

Bloat can and should be avoided. And you can do it easily by instilling the discipline of the outline. The greater the cost, the more detailed the outline.

PS. Here's the outline for this article:

* Drama: what happens before a movie is shot.

* The reason for outlining: keeping bloat away.

* How bloating pops up incessantly.

* How to beat the bloat.

* Examples of detecting bloat.

* Examples of industries that outline: architect, cartoonists, plane designers. And why they do so.

* Summary.

Sean D'Souza is chief executive of Psychotactics and an international author and trainer. He is the author of The Brain Audit - Why Customers Buy (And Why They Don't).

www.psychotactics.com