Jon Samsel

An outline is a roadmap for writing your book. This is why having an outline can keep you enthused and help get the book completed. Never underestimate the power of enthusiasm. Staying enthused about your book in progress is vitally important.

Enthusiasm can keep you hanging in there, making decisions, thinking, writing and rewriting, and at your desk until your book is completed.

Take the effort and time to write the best outline you can for it will have a double payoff for you. It serves as a guide to what comes next, and it generates enthusiasm.

Cliché or not, it’s still true that man “succeeds by bits and pieces,” meaning all of us. Most humans need to see the next step in our journey toward a specific goal. An outline shows an author that next step, the next section or chapter to write.

Some nonfiction authors and novelists do not like using outlines because they feel it cramps their freedom, style, or creativity. Many other authors would never think of writing a book without first developing a sound outline.

Peter Benchley (Jaws) sold his first novel on the basis of a one-page outline that described his idea for a book about a great white shark that terrorizes a Long Island resort.

Benchley had mentioned this idea to an editor at Doubleday, and he asked to see the idea expanded. Benchley described it on paper. Doubleday liked the outline enough to take an option on seeing four chapters.

The eventual book, Jaws, was finished nineteen months later and made publishing history. Here alone is vivid proof of the value of an outline.

Robert Louis Stevenson was a hard-working novelist though a semi-invalid. While lying in bed during one illness, he started a new work and emerged with the full manuscript after writing non-stop for days. He read it to his wife, who criticized it.

Stevenson became enraged and threw the manuscript into the fire, saying his wife was right about it. He promptly returned to his bed with pencil and fresh paper.

He wrote three more days with little sleep and emerged again with a completely new manuscript of the same idea. The slender 149-page book, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mister Hyde, was published in 1886 for one shilling. When the London Times praised the new book, it quickly became a best seller, selling 40,000 copies in six months.

The world of published novels includes such memorable classics as Call of the Wild, The Time Machine, The Power and the Glory, The Catcher in the Rye, Fahrenheit 451, How Green Was My Valley, Great Expectations, War of the Worlds, The Great Gatsby, A Tale of Two Cities, This Side of Paradise, Gone With the Wind, David Copperfield, Little Women, Doctor Zhivago, What Makes Sammy Run? and modern works such as Executive Orders, The Firm, Microserfs, A Dangerous Fortune, The First Wives Club, Neuromancer, Snow Crash, and many more.

Ah, the novel. How many have vowed to write a novel and see it published? Lots of people. Just completing one, hopefully a worthy book, is a considerable achievement.

There is no guarantee that if you get a good novel idea you’re going to actually develop it. Many have no doubt thought of good novel ideas but never got around to writing even the first page. A good idea coupled with the desire to develop it can form a strong combination. If the desire to write is there and the idea keeps asking to be developed, this may be enough to get you started.

I am reminded by a line by Jerry Pournelle that goes something like, “In order to become a writer, all you have to do is write a million words and throw them all away.”

A million words. Ready? Set. Type!

Some people know Carl Bressler as the memorable character, Saul Berg from the feature film, The Usual Suspects (1995). Others will recognize Carl as one of the most prolific social networkers on LinkedIn, number 275 (most globally connected) out of 23 million + people on LinkedIn, as of September 1st, 2008.

I’ve known Carl for many years–back in the day when Carl was an actor, agent and producer and I was shifting careers from Hollywood Agent to Multimedia writer and business entrepreneur. I had the good fortune of catching up with Carl recently via email and I asked him a few questions about the power of social networking.

Q: How many LinkedIn connections do you have?

A: 6,613 and counting. I started migrating my contact database online back in March of 2004.

Q: Why the dedication to LinkedIn as opposed to Plaxo, Facebook or other social networking services?

A: Well, I have always been a power networking kind of guy. Plaxo couldn’t handle my 10,000+ contact list and Linkedin was the right solution when I started wanting someone other than me to keep track of my contacts. I am dedicated to FaceBook as well.

Q: Are there any benefits to being so well connected?

A: Interesting people ask to meet me. And I get to help people.

Q: What would you like people to know about you that may not be apprarent until someone gets to know you?

A: Always coming from mutuality.

Q: What’s your number one personal goal for the year?

A: A personal goal for 2009 is to get in better physical condition. Professional? Get in better financial position!

Q: In your opinion, can companies benefit from social networking?

A: Sure, all companies can benefit. From generating sales leads to conducting free market research to finding new sources of funding.

In spite of the conglomerate infusion into publishing, the mergers, takeovers, cancellation of author contracts (it can happen), downsizing, cutbacks, letting editors go or firing them, the worship of the bottom line, and the breathless race for the next mega book––the majority of those who write books (part or full-time) are happy people who would not change their lifestyles for anything. The truth is that most authors are not happy unless they are working on new projects. The more writing a real author does, the more they want to do.

The wisdom of Aristotle once said: “The ennobling of the human spirit comes to us via the written word.” Novelist Thomas Wolfe referred to being published as “the naked, blazing power of print.”

The mere fact that you haven’t written much before could mean that you would bring a degree of freshness to your book subject. In the long run, any writing experience you have had will help, and that includes articles, short stories, feature writing, or the beginning of a novel.

Let your heart and mind and spirit feed on this truth: Nobody in the book business really knows for sure what books will sell and what will capture the public’s fancy and interest. Nobody knows what books will become the great success stories of tomorrow. That is one fact alone that makes the book publishing industry continuously fascinating year after year.

So get to your computer and try your hand at writing a manuscript. If you are already published, renew your enthusiasm for writing and start that new tome today. Even if you can devote just a few hours a week, or on weekends, to working on a book, you will enrich your life for the effort. And who knows? You may fall in love with the unique act of bringing a new book into existence that was never here before and knowing that readers out there will be entertained, informed, or helped (hopefully) because of your book.

To hold a new book in your hand, nonfiction or novel, and know it’s your baby, that you created it, is one of life’s singular joys.

Naming your book is one of the most important decisions you will make as a writer. Editors respond to great titles when considering book proposals. The best thing about some proposals for books is the title, which could well be the strongest selling point of the book. Work hard to think of a compelling, magnetic title.

Book readers almost always respond favorably to catchy titles by purchasing the title.

One way to create the perfect title for your book is to bounce ideas off a family member, relative, friend, or anther writer. Two heads are usually better at it than one. You can also think of possible titles when you’re doing the proposal or have the manuscript in progress. If you’re stuck, conduct a brainstorming exercise or go to Amazon.com and browse through thousands of published titles to stimulate new ideas.

One thing to keep in mind is that titles by themselves cannot be copyrighted.

One thing that bugs some authors is the fact that a publisher may, and usually does, change the title of a manuscript prior to publication. An author may have dreamed up the ‘perfect’ title, only to see it changed when it hits the book stands.

Here are a few sample book titles that stand out:

• Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil
• Chicken Soup for the Soul
• One Hundred Years of Solitude
• Even Cowgirls Get the Blues
• Mexifornia: A State of Becoming
• America’s Man on Horseback: A Fable?
• The Dangerous Book for Boys
• Potty Train Your Child in Just One Day
• The Black Book of Hollywood Diet Secrets
• The Cluetrain Manifesto: The End of Business As We Know It
• The First Immortal
• What To Expect When You’re Expecting
• Bare Knuckles and Back Rooms
• Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus
• A History of God
• Parenting Isn’t For Cowards
• Ten Stupid Things Women Do To Mess Up Their Lives
• The Dark Side of Camelot
• You Suck: A Love Story
• The Hollow Chocolate Bunnies of the Apocalypse

A well-done book proposal acts as a signal to an editor that the project should receive careful attention. If an author receives a quick response, that reaction could be because the editor made an automatic no decision. Proposals that are well-executed, and on subjects that fit a publisher’s list, usually take longer for a decision. Obviously, some proposals arrive at the right time, are on target, and excite an editor’s enthusiasm. Such proposals are a delight to editors.

Try your best to send only terrific proposals to publishers. They take more time and effort, but the positive results they can bring are worth it. Remember what Scott Fitzgerald said about writing a book. “It takes time to complete a book.” And it also takes time, sometimes a lot of it, to complete a topnotch proposal for a book.

Why Many Authors Dislike Proposals and Outlines

Different authors give various reasons why they dislike doing outlines and proposals. Here are the general reasons they turn thumbs down on one or both:

1. Outlines set a limit on the creative process. The author may feel that he or she cannot make any changes once the outline has been set.
2. The minds of many authors go blank when they have to do an outline.
3. Changes are quite likely to suggest themselves to an author while the actual writing is being done.
4. “Outlines are flat and cold,” say a number of authors.
5. An outline, even a proposal, may be a poor indicator of the final book. The completed book may turn out far better than the proposal or outline suggested. Yet editors may turn the project down if they don’t like the way the proposal-outline reads. So an outline or proposal may not give an accurate appraisal of the book’s potential, style, and quality of writing. The outline may be misleading in a number of ways.
6. When it comes to fiction, many novelists prefer to “turn a character loose” and see what happens. They like to discover the story as they write it, and an outline or synopsis cramps this method.
7. Many authors are often more stimulated by working from an opening sentence, setting, or whatever, and they don’t like feeling restricted by what was stated in an outline or proposal.
8. Some authors swear that a proposal or outline simply short-circuits their enthusiasm for a project.

The final decision is up to the author. But to sell a nonfiction book these days, you will usually have to complete a proposal first. In fiction, it naturally helps to know your main characters when beginning a novel, along with an idea for the setting and ending. Some good deal of planning for a novel is probably a must (for most authors), and that will mean a carefully thought out synopsis.

You should experiment to see what works best for you. Try doing a proposal for one book, perhaps a basic outline for another. Go with what each project seems to call for.

Remember that a promising proposal for a nonfiction book can go a long way toward selling your project to an editor. Unless novels are your specialty, sound outlines and proposals for nonfiction books will more than likely mean more book sales for you.

Discover what works best for you through experience. Keep in mind that you can always tear up an outline, even a proposal, change it to please you, or do a brand new one.

Proposal, or outline, or neither? Let it be a new question for each book that will hopefully bear your name.