I would do them in a text editor, one thought per line. The beauty of using a text editor is the shortcut keys that make it easy to move items up/down in the list. This is really nice as the outline develops and you build the plot and connecting tissue that ties the ideas together -- it's easy to play with different narratives in a text editor.
I showed this method to a friend who is a NYT best selling author. He doesn't know a lick of code, but uses a text editor in his process now too.
I actually do all of my writing in a text editor that doesn't have any spelling or grammar checking. This helps me stay focused on the ideas and think about editing later. My very last step of editing is moving the text into a word processor to catch spelling and grammatical errors that I may have missed.
Anyway, I share this in case anyone else finds it useful. If someone has a process that works really well for them, I'd love to hear about it too!
Could you elaborate on your process for outlining? What level of detail do you go into? Do you nest bullets or stick to one top-level list? Do you try to lay out the substance of your argument?
I’d be interested in reading anything you’d recommend on the subject, too. Always appreciate hearing from people who do this on the daily.
It depends on how developed the idea is. When I have give a lot of thought to something, especially the very moving and important points, I often know exactly how I want to phrase something poignant. In that case, I may write a full sentence, and if a great idea strikes me at this moment I might continue writing a full paragraph, but I ONLY do this if the inspiration is flowing and I don't want to lose it. Whenever possible, I will channel that flow into additional bullet points and work on the phrasing later.
> Do you nest bullets or stick to one top-level list?
I don't usually nest with formatting, unless the order of the sub points are really important; I usually list related ideas below each other. I do this because when I'm playing with the plot, sometimes I'll move those related points to come earlier in the story, even though they happened later in chronological time -- especially if I'm trying to pull in the reader during the first or second paragraph with something that is interesting, but is not an important event in the story.
> Do you try to lay out the substance of your argument?
The main points are usually the first items in the list and then I insert the connecting ideas and points in between. In terms of how substantive those list items are, I try to keep them short and stay high level in the brainstorming/outlining mode.
Other suggestions on process:
I delete a lot at the end. I scrub every word and phrase that isn't absolutely necessary.
The last paragraph I write is the first paragraph of the article/essay -- it's so much more natural to create a map of where you're going after you've already been there. This also takes the pressure off of getting started because you can start anywhere, and it makes writing the introductory paragraph so easy it feels like cheating.
The last thing I write is the title.
In that sense, listicles (as they are known) are a suboptimal/locally optimal solution to the lack of trust readers have, which was engendered by too much bad writing out there. Readers have learned to mistrust long articles that aren't obvious at a glance about the value they will provide.
The traditional humanities teach appreciation of their own form of connective tissue, so to speak. Business writing arguably can be learned more quickly and emphasizes getting to the point.
Getting to the point on nuanced issues like strategy or design is actually quite difficult because you have to both understand your point well enough to distill it and you have to be good at putting the words down. I'd argue that the "understanding" part is harder because, from my personal experience, someone who is thinking clearly and just not fluent in English still organizes the writing clearly, but someone who isn't thinking clearly will produce great syntax but the reasoning is hard to follow.
I see much more of the latter than the former in my day to day.
If anyone has a better, more specific link, please reply, I'm curious.
Today's premium Mac offering is OmniOutliner ($20 barebones or $100 full-featured) https://www.omnigroup.com/omnioutliner/
* Workflowy * Roam Research * RemNote * Zavala
http://scripting.com/2021/04/03/133021.html?title=theMakingO...
And, I also think this is not an either_or situation, text can be locally structured by outline method, and then at other places marked by nonlinear growth, or progressing by lists. And these domains can overlap, and be of different sizes. Nor do I think there are only these three methods. Text can accommodate vastly different approaches.