Words on a page

Outliners

Most people I know who put words to paper (or on screen) for a living start every project off by creating an outline. For the longest time, I'd write my outlines on pieces of paper folded in half. These outlines would show the major points and overall flow of the piece, as well as delineate key sections, in short form. If you've ever seen my handwriting, then you know that these bits of paper quickly became useless -- there were times when I can't read what I've written.

Luckily, enterprising software developers have created outliners, which make the whole process easier and more convenient. I've tried a number of freeware, shareware, and commercial outliners and have found three that I really like. When working in Linux (and that's most of the time), I use TkOutline; a little app called Thought Tracker is a close second, and the outline mode of the Emacs text editor is third. In Windows, my fave is KeyNote. And, when I'm tapping away in NewDeal Office, I thank the folks at BreadBox Computing for their Outliner program. It makes writing and planning my writing projects in that environment a lot easier.

Using an outliner has a lot of advantages. It makes sure that your thoughts and ideas are organized before you commit them to paper or screen. Sure, free writing can be a useful exercise, but I've found that it more often than not ends perhaps not in tears but with a lot of unworkable prose. And, most outliners (including the ones I use) let you export information into a format that can be used with your favourite word processor, or at least to copy and paste an outline into another application.