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.

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.

I believe writers write because they feel they have something they need to say to the world. The act of writing is not a skill that can easily be mastered, but the urge to share something relevant with other human beings lies within each of us.

Before you quit your day job to join the thousands of other penniless scribes scratching their way through life, you may want to ask yourself of couple of important questions that will help put your ‘urge to write’ into context:

1. What are you hoping to achieve? Fame? Earn extra money? Use the book as a stepping stone towards a new career?

2. Do you possess the basis skills required to write and pitch a manuscript? If you’re a little rusty, you may want to consider reading up on the craft and taking a writing course at your local college. Writing and submitting articles to magazines, or launching your own blog is another way to practice the art of writing.

3. Have you done your research? Are there already several books on the market on this subject? If so, it might be hard to convince a publisher why they should get behind yet another book on the subject. However, it could also mean that this is a popular topic with an audience of potential book buyers. You’ll need to convince the publisher why your book’s take on the subject warrants a publishing deal of its own.

4. Do you like working solo the majority of the time? Freelancing can be pretty lonely. It’s not a lifestyle for everyone.

5. Do you have the time to write? If you quit your job to write full-time, how will you pay your bills? If you plan on writing in the evening while keeping your day job, you may have less energy than you need to make it to the finish line.

6. Have you consulted with your family about your newfound passion to write? Might be a good idea to discuss your writing desires with them in advance — as you will likely need their support to be successful.

7. Can you take criticism and rejection? If not, you might want to quickly develop thick skin, as writing, editing, pitching, and promoting your manuscript will inevitably mean you will receive feedback you don’t like, want, or agree with.

Developing a bug list can be a great way to uncover unmet needs that you may want to solve in your organization. Not only does it help document known issues, but the process of creating a bug list can also serve as a release valve for frustrated employees. Think of a bug list as a modern day suggestion box that’s a bit more open and interactive than the time-honored approach.

Ready to give it a try?

Spend a few minutes jotting down “things that bug you” in your daily work life. What annoys you? What could be fixed if people only knew it were a problem? How might productivity be boosted if a particular issue were revolved?

Here are a few ideas to get you started. These are some thing bugging me right now:

• Our e-commerce department takes too long to update website content
• We have to follow a cumbersome legal process to get content approved
• Visit to lead ratios on landing pages need improvement
• There is too much chatter and lollygaging around the copy machine

Now that you have your short list of bugs, it’s time to do some solution sketching to come up with ways to eliminate the bugs from your life. This type of brainstorming session may not solve all of the bugs on your list, but they will most certainly stimulate healthy debate (and possibly identify a few good solutions) if your team is asked to participate in a debugging session.

So what are you waiting for?  Click the image below to see a larger solution sketch template I created for some things that are bugging me right now.

We are all creative beings. Yet, for most of us, our creative juices do not flow easily from brush to canvas, mouse to screen, or from thought to written word.

Our creative abilities are much like the muscles of an athlete. With regular use, muscles become stretched and toned. When not exercised regularly, they become flabby and weak. Similarly, when we are in touch with our creative talents and put them to use on a daily basis, our creativity flourishes. This is the challenge facing artists everywhere; discovering the creativity within and putting those talents to use.

What Makes You Tick?

As unique human beings, each of us brings to the creative table something fresh, new, and invigorating. We bring our memories, prejudices, habits, joys, sorrows, strengths, and weaknesses––the core elements that make us who we are. But who are we really? What is our agenda? What inspires us? What is our emotional make up? What makes us tick?

Deep introspection helps us flush out our personal wants, needs, desires, and shortcomings––the driving force behind our very being.

Clues which can help us unlock our own personal dramas are all around us––in our movies, theater performances, novels––even the interpersonal soap operas which unfold around the water cooler at the office.

James L. Halperin’s best-selling novel, The Truth Machine, provides us with a fine example of a character facing a powerful inner struggle. Randall Peterson Armstrong is the protagonist. He’s rich and famous, possesses a near perfect photographic memory, and runs the world’s most powerful corporation. Yet he is flawed––just like you and me. He is tormented by the death of his younger brother, Leonard. And, he hides a terrible secret that could have a profound impact on the “new world social order.” Randall’s outward appearance rarely betrays his innermost secrets, wants, and needs. But when Randall comes face to face with what makes him tick––when his inner demons collide with his outer persona––Randall must redefine his goals and aspirations so that they mirror his “reborn” self. It is in this period of “rediscovery” that readers uncover (along with Randall), exactly what makes him tick. This visceral bond between reader and protagonist is perhaps what so endears us to fictional characters we love. This is the power of deep introspection and self discovery.

So what makes you tick? You might want to start down the road of personal self discovery by asking yourself:

1. Are my current life goals superficial or are they deep and meaningful?
2. Are my dreams and aspirations attainable or purposely out-of-reach?
3. Am I proud of who I am and where I am going?

Everything starts with an idea. Think about it. Paintings, cars, songs, airplane designs, companies, buildings—and even books.

Developing an idea is where work and time come into the picture. When you go with an idea, it may carry you to unknown areas, to the heights of satisfaction or to the depths of depression when you get bogged down with it.

In the superb novel, The Fountainhead, by Ann Rand, architect Howard Roark states that “the creative artist has a unique right to the original ideas he produces and develops. Others cannot make use of this creative work without agreement and compensation. What is reflected in The Fountainhead is the truth that “everything is built upon something else in creation.” Play with a single basic idea and what happens? More ideas present themselves to you.

The act of creating means to shift qualities or elements from one thing to another. Hollywood has been doing this for decades, lifting (some say stealing) a key element from an old classic film and building a new film from or around it.

The creative process takes varying amounts of time, depending upon the desired result. A book obviously takes much longer to create than an article, short story, or song. There are exceptions to this when you consider prolific authors like Barbara Cartland, Isaac Asimov and Ray Bradbury. They could turn out a new book in a week and often did so.

Creative ideas may evolve into creative problems, real puzzlers for their originators. They then require much more thought and effort to work your way through the sticky areas. Thomas Edison spent ten, twenty years, and longer on some of his creative inventions.

As writers, marketers and artists, it’s imperative that we use our creativity to link unrelated concepts in a way that allows for bold new solutions to spring up. One way to start is to look at the same thing as everyone else and then think of something different.

EXERCISE #1

Imagine that you’re a contractor for a major builder. You’ve been hired to convert a dilapidated warehouse into office space. However, there is one problem. The previous owner of the building left behind 5 million unused cotton balls.

Your assignment is to think of creative things to do with the cotton balls before the new office space is completed. List a few ideas.

EXERCISE #2

Suppose for a moment that you are a development executive at an interactive media publisher. One day, the head honcho ushers you into her office and proclaims that the company is dramatically shifting its development strategy. Due to a cash crunch, the firm will now develop innovative games based solely on properties in the public domain.

Your responsibility is to come up with some test concepts for a new title based on the nursery rhyme, Jack and Jill. Harking back to your childhood, you recount the story: Jack and Jill went up the hill to fetch a pail of water. Jack fell down and broke his crown and Jill came tumbling after. Jot down a few variations of the story.

EXERCISE #3

You’re a marketing assistant for a large manufacturer. You have been assigned a project that may help land you a promotion if completed to your employer’s satisfaction. Your mission is to come up with a list of unique names for the following new consumer products in development:

• A hair brush that doubles as a portable telephone
• Auto body paint that changes color every few days
• An inflatable bicycle helmet

As you focus your creative energies on the various tasks outlined above, you may find one or more of the challenges difficult to complete. Don’t give up!

Remember to use your knowledge and experience to help stimulate extraordinary ideas. Use your wackiest thoughts and your strangest solutions to help break down the mental barriers that stand in your way. Go on. Have some fun.

So how did you do with the cotton balls in Exercise #1? What creative solutions did you come up with?

Here a few examples I thought of:

• Stuff the cotton balls into the walls of the building (in place of standard insulation)
• Dip the cotton balls in caramel and market them as exotic confections
• Sell the cotton balls to an aspirin manufacturer (and pocket the cash!)
• Make fashion accessories out of them

The cotton ball exercise demonstrates on interesting point. When cotton balls are taken out of their usual context, many more uses for the items become possible. I’m not predicting that carmel-covered cotton balls will become a candy craze anytime soon. However, when we place cotton balls in the food category, our minds can suddenly find all sorts of exotic new uses for cotton. Cotton candy anyone?

How did you do with the Jack and Jill exercise? As a development executive placed in an extraordinary situation, you have been pushed off your routine path and forced to “think of something different.” When approaching the story of Jack and Jill, one might first pose a series of questions to help formulate a new approach to a familiar set of circumstances.

Questions such as:

• What caused Jack to fall down?
• Why was Jack wearing a crown?
• What caused Jill to come tumbling after?

Or perhaps alternative situations such as:

• What if Jack and Joe went up the hill?
• What if the hill was a pyramid instead of a hill?

By posing a few simple analytical questions and altering at least one key element familiar to our story, whole new creative ideas suddenly become possible. For example:

Jack and Jill climbed up a pyramid to fetch a golden amulet. Jill tripped Jack and he fell down. Jill snatched his crown, scooped up the amulet and was never seen in the city again.

With a little more tinkering, the concept could be expanded into a full-blown adventure game concept–– a Jack and Jill meets Torin’s Passage:

On a day that starts like any other, young Jack learns that the world he knows is about to change forever. A mysterious warlock, known only as Jillian, puts his parents under an evil spell and snatches his father’s magic crown, then vanishes into the vast labyrinth of the black pyramid. Knowing only the sound of the Jillian’s voice, Jack vows to find her, force her to relinquish his father’s crown, and release his parents from bondage. Thus begins an exciting adventure that will take Jack to the five inner worlds of the black pyramid––a world filled with danger and fantasy. Use your wits to help Jack solve many challenging riddles, as he discovers more about himself than he could ever have imagined.

How did you make out with exercise #3? Given the task of having to create unique names for new products in development, how did you fare? Write down your ideas next to the brilliant ideas I came up with:

A hair brush that doubles as portable telephone:

• Telebrush Magic
• Hairphone
• Your idea?

Auto body paint that changes color every few days:

• Mood Paint
• Liquid Skin
• Your idea?

An inflatable bicycle helmet:

• Airhead
• BrainSafe
• Your idea?

1. Differentiate yourself from your competitors (if you can’t, you are only selling an alternative)
2. Create viable products or solutions (passion for a product or service is instantly recognizable and highly contagious)
3. Keep in touch with old friends and business colleagues (and never burn bridges)
4. Focus on target markets (niche markets are less saturated and are usually more open to new ideas)
5. Join a business organization and network (what better way to bond with someone new than to size them up and shake their hand?)
6. Give something back to your community (good deeds are rewarded eventually)
7. Fulfill your promises / follow up on what you say you’ll do (some day you will move on to ther things but your reputation will follow you wherever you go)

Solution sketching is a lot like brainstorming. (I happen to be the world’s foremost expert on solution sketching because I just made up the term three hours ago).

Solution sketching can help unleash your create energies to focus on solving a problem. It starts a lot like brainstorming—a process of releasing your thoughts as rapidly as they come into your mind and capturing them for consideration. By coming up with a wide variety of creative ideas, you greatly increase your change to solve a problem in a bold new way.

A related technique is visual mapping—which is a process of following your natural intuition and freely associating seemingly random concepts so that a patchwork of uncensored ideas begins to develop.

The key to solution sketching, brainstorming and visual mapping is allowing for the free flow of ideas—good and bad—and then sort, edit and prioritize at a later time. Find yourself short on ideas? Got creative writer’s block? Try this simple exercise I like to call Out of Body Visualization. It’s a fun way of placing your mind into unusual situations in order to stimulate creative solutions. It’s like batting practice for your brain!

Many creative artists tend to get hung up on the fine details…editing their creative thought process as they go. This can limit the number of creative possibilities you might consider, but switching your mind from ’solve it now’ mode to a more artistic mode (such as sketching) forces you to focus on an alternative activity, which may lead to capturing thoughts that might normally slip away from your mind.

So without further adieu, here are my five simple tips for solution sketching:

1. There are no bad ideas: Capture every idea no matter how silly, irrelevant or disconnected you think that idea is from what you are trying to solve. Bad ideas can stimulate alternative ideas that are more closely aligned to the task at hand.
2. Sketch your thoughts: By visualizing your ideas using pencil & paper, pen & easel, marker & whiteboard or your laptop text editor—you greatly increase your chance of recalling all of these wacky ideas that may have bounced though your head because your thoughts are right there on ‘paper.’
3. Map your ideas: Once you have an entire whiteboard stuffed with every last idea that can be squeezed out of your feeble noggin, it’s next to add a little pizaz to your solution sketching session. Try placing your ideas into bubbles and draw lines radiating out showing how each idea is related to the main idea or issue you are trying to solve.
4. Set a time limit: Research shows that having a goal for your solution sketching session, especially a goal with a time limit, will lead to a more productive session (especially in group settings). People tend to focus and contribute more when they know there is only a limit amount of time to make their ideas heard.
5. Let it stew: Your solution sketching exercise is over. But before setting out to solve your problem, take a little extra time to let your ideas simmer. Mull things around in your head. Sleep on them. The dreaming mind is forever voyaging and sometimes presents an unexpected solution. Sometimes the best solutions come when not actively working on a problem.