Book Outline and Writing

The Outline

A great book begins with a solid plan. Your outline is the blueprint that keeps you focused, guides your flow of ideas, and prevents you from wandering off track. It doesn’t need to be perfect—far from it. It simply needs to give you direction. As you shape your book, your outline will naturally evolve. You can hire someone to create an outline for you, but why spend the money? The best outline is the one you build yourself, because it reflects your vision and your voice.

Before you start outlining, revisit your customer research. It tells you what readers are expecting and how your book will meet those expectations. Begin with a rough list of ideas—what you want to teach, in what order, and how you want the information delivered. Group similar ideas together, and watch your chapter structure begin to take shape. And if ideas aren’t flowing, don’t panic. Give ChatGPT your topic, customer research, and your vision for the book, and ask it for a starting outline. Consider it a spark, not a final product.

Another advantageous strategy is to review the Table of Contents of a few competing books you admire. Identify what they include, what they miss, and what you can do differently. You’re not copying—you’re gathering inspiration. Remove the chapters you don’t need, add what’s missing, and shape the structure into something uniquely yours.

Once you’ve generated a preliminary outline from both approaches, you’ll start to see your book take shape. Now you enter what many authors consider the most critical part of the process: Outline Revision. Spend time here. The clearer your outline is, the faster and smoother the writing stage will be. Ask yourself: What exactly do I want the reader to learn? What is the cleanest way to guide them through it? You’ll shorten some chapters, expand others, combine ideas, or split them apart entirely. New ideas will appear. Old ideas will fall away. Watch for repetition early—it’s far easier to remove it at the outline stage.

Don’t hesitate to use ChatGPT along the way. Ask it questions, explore new angles, or get alternative structures. It will always offer suggestions—your job is to choose what fits your book.

Step away from the outline occasionally. Come back the next day and look at it with fresh eyes. Add subchapters, bullet points, illustrations, quotes—anything that strengthens your eventual manuscript. Your outline is where the book has its greatest chance to become something exceptional.

You’ll know when your outline is ready. It will feel clear, logical, and aligned with the book you want to create.

 

The Writing

For many authors, writing feels like the most intimidating part of the entire process. We’ve all seen the classic image of a writer staring at a blank page, waiting for inspiration to strike. Writer’s block isn’t a myth—it’s simply a moment where your brain hasn’t decided how to say something yet. Every writer has their own way of pushing through it. Some freewrite. Some talk out loud. Others pace around until the ideas settle. As a publisher, I rely on technology to get the wheels moving.

Once your outline is ready, paste the entire thing into ChatGPT. This gives the software a complete picture of the book you’re creating. Then ask it to write a draft of your first chapter. Provide the writing style you prefer—conversational, informal, professional, inspirational—whatever feels right. The first time you see your book come to life on the screen is genuinely exciting. Try generating a couple of different styles to see which one resonates most with you. Once you find a style you like, have ChatGPT create each chapter individually.

Very quickly, you’ll accumulate a collection of text files. How you organize them is up to you, but you’ll thank yourself later for staying organized from the start. Word and Google Docs both work, but I personally prefer Word. Create a dedicated folder for each chapter and save every new version inside it. Label your files clearly—you will end up with many versions as you write and edit.

I strongly recommend avoiding the temptation to write and revise everything in a single document. Once changes are made, you can’t always see your earlier thinking, and sometimes you’ll want to revisit your original wording. For every new revision, copy the previous version, start a fresh file, and label it accordingly.

Now comes the polishing stage. This is where your vision becomes clearer, and your writing begins to shine. Expect to copy, paste, rearrange, delete, expand, and experiment. You may go through several iterations of each chapter—and that’s completely normal. If a paragraph feels awkward or flat, drop it into ChatGPT and ask for alternatives. You don’t have to accept its suggestions, but the options often spark ideas you wouldn’t have thought of yourself. This part of the process is surprisingly enjoyable. You’ll watch your book transform from rough ideas into a polished manuscript—one revision at a time.