Professional Writer's Use of Outline
Professional writers realize the helpfulness of outline-making and the time it saves. Many a magazine article has been sold before a word of the finished manuscript was written. The contributor submitted an outline from which the editor contracted for the finished production. Many a play has been placed in the same form. Books are built up in the same manner. The ubiquitous moving-picture scenario is seldom produced in any other manner.
Macaulay advised a young friend who asked how to keep his brain active to read a couple of solid books, making careful outlines of their material at the same time. One of these should be—if possible—a work in a foreign tongue, so that the strangeness of the language would necessitate slow, careful reading and close thinking. All good students know that the best way to prepare for an examination is to make outlines of all the required reading and study.
It is just because the making of the outline demands such careful thinking that it is one of the most important steps in the production of a speech.