Enjoyed this article?
Take part in the discussion
Related blog/content
Caveman style ABM is pissing off everyone’s best prospects
I don’t want to hear about spear-fishing ever again. I’m Charlie, the head of ABM at Velocity. And I have a bone to pick with tired ABM metaphors. Good…
Charlie Langley | 28. 03. 2024
AI and SGE are a long-overdue wakeup call for B2B SEO
Even before AI and Google SGE came gunning for everyone’s search traffic, B2B was struggling with SEO. Despite endless effort, lots of pages languish in…
Joe Strugs | 13. 03. 2024
Why teamwork solves the B2B SEO malaise
What’s the secret of B2B SEO? Some say volume. Others say clusters. We say it’s collaboration. Find out why we’re right.
Stan Woods | 05. 03. 2024
Comments
Fiona Campbell-Howes September 30th, 2014
Hi Harry, I enjoyed this post very much – not least because I have the same problem as you do (or you did), in that my outlines always end up being rough drafts of the final piece. If you felt like doing a follow-up post on how to write a proper outline, I’d be all ears 🙂
Harendra Kapur October 2nd, 2014
Fiona! Funny story. So after I take the scriptwriting course, I’m looking for the three act structure in everything we do. And then one day it clicks. I realise our slideshares and videos DO have a three act structure and there is a level of formula to them. So I draw the little diagram and go running to Doug, giddy at the thought that there is a mystical structure we follow. He sees the structure and says it’s great. He says it’s definitely something we follow, even if we do so subconsciously. He says write the post.
So I do my standard google search to see if anyone else has written about the thing I’m about to. And I find this post about content marketing and the three act structure. And it’s brilliant. And personal – the writer’s clearly a content marketer, but she’s also dating a screenwriter. So first i get excited that someone else is thinking this way.
But then I get totally bummed that a far better writer than me has already written about the three act structure in content marketing.
And then I see her first example. It’s a video. And it’s written by Doug Fucking Kessler.
So I scroll up to see who’s written this beast of a post.
And it was you.
(PS. I’ll be attempting a ‘how to outline’ type thing soon – just have to figure out how to outline first…)
Fiona Campbell-Howes October 9th, 2014
Hi Harry, sorry for very late reply! Glad you liked the post; we’ve had James in a couple of times to train our writers in using a three-act structure (also the seven basic plots etc.) and both times we’ve used Doug’s ShipServ Pages video as an example. I love that video. I think we probably all do use three acts subconsciously as it’s the fundamental shape of what we consider a story. The skill comes in creating conflict, tension, and emotional highs and lows rather than just describing a list of things that happen. All good stuff. Looking forward to the ‘how to outline’ post!
Kristen Hicks December 1st, 2014
Good points! I also spent much of my life insisting I worked better without an outline. It’s easier to just sit down and write and figure out my thoughts through the process of writing.
Writing professionally though, I’ve learned that the writing is much more efficient and easier to organize into web-friendly formats if I create even a basic outline while I’m in the research phase. It doesn’t have to mean the work becomes more formulaic, just that you have an idea of what you’re going to say and how all the ideas you’re expressing connect to one another before getting the full piece onto paper (or computer screen, rather).