This is a bit general, but I’d love to know about different approaches of outlining a story.

Good question. I guess most writers eventually find their own best way, some more thorough than others. I have a very intense outlining process that Sam says is the most organized system he’s ever seen. I don’t always outline, but when I do, it works like this:

1. I research the topic before doing any interviews, and divide it up into sections. For instance, for this piece on c-sections, based on my research, I could divide the sections into: (1) what is a mahurat c-section (2) stats and trends (3) culture of astrology (4) natural birth vs. c-section - differences, and problems (5) ethics - astrologers and doctors. (I don’t remember the actual sections I’d created, but these are close.)

2. Armed with some information about what my piece is possibly about (I always keep an open mind until I’ve spoken to people), I come up with questions and do my interviews.

3. For this piece, as you can see, I interviewed five people. I transcribe each of the interviews (or copy my notes into a Word file) and then I color each person’s quotes with a different color, like this. I note down which color belongs to which person, and then I’m free to play with the quotes in my Word file without worrying about not attributing correctly.

4. I organize the entire text of all the interviews, throwing it all in parts under the general sub-headings from Step 1. Now I have a section that discusses ethics, for instance, with quotes from people on what they’ve said about ethics in this situation. Of course, I won’t use all the quotes, but I’ll be able to pick and choose the best ones if I can see them all together. Sometimes, there are things in the interviews that I’ve forgotten, and I’ll make new subheads for them if they don’t fit in anywhere else.

5. Now I start the writing. Obviously, as you probably tell from the finished piece, the outline isn’t firm, and I move around bits and pieces as I get to them. For instance, while I had initially intended to start my piece with quotes from a woman who had a c-section, I decided to go for the doctor’s quotes instead, because I had some really good material from her that allowed me to explain the issue right at the beginning. I’d also initially decided to talk about ethics straight up, but in the final piece, pushed it toward the end.

Once I’ve got this very organized structure down, the writing is fairly easy. Sometimes I’ll discover right at this point that it’s not working and I need to do something different, and it saves me a huge amount of time.

So that’s my fairly intensive organizing process. Anyone else care to share theirs?