Organizing Your Writing: Outlines
Bill Walsh
The only way I've written, all the way from junior high school really, is in outline form. Point one and two and three, or point one, A, B, C, or whatever. And a distinct thought, or statement is made, then I move to the next. Then following that, I then add narrative to it.

Debra Wilson
Any time you're writing anything, regardless of whether it's for comedy, or whether it's a college course, or whether you're writing for a newspaper, you have to start with an outline. And that outline will be your skeleton. It will support, which is what it does, a skeleton supports everything around it. And so no matter how great the idea is, no matter how wonderful the idea is, it's going to be all over the page without a skeleton.

Dave Barry
I remember learning the, learning the outline form. And you know, Roman numeral, capital letter, Arabic numeral, lower case letter. I remember thinking, I thought God, I thought this was actually in the Bible somewhere, that that's how you did it. And if you had a one, you had to have a two. And then I later realized this had almost nothing to do with the way you actually think or write. It's how you make an outline and get an A on your outline.

Joe Harris
Back in the bad old days, I'm told, that teachers did tell students—OK, roman numeral one, capital letter A, Arabic numeral one, etc. You'd make that long elaborate outline. And I think that the problem…there were two problems with that. One was that it asked students to map out what they were going to say before they had said it, and if they were in a position to make that kind of outline you would think they were done as a writer rather than beginning as a writer. The second thing was that it imagined that everybody went about the process of organizing their thoughts in the same way.

Janet Turner
One thing I don't like at school is that outline they make you write before you write a paper. You do whatever you need to do to get your thoughts on paper. Roman letters, ABC, forget it. I can't operate that way. In fact what's so funny is in high school you'd always have to turn in your outline before your paper…well, I'd write my paper and then go back and do my outline, because I could not think that way. It's ridiculous.