Reverse Outlines: A writer's technique for examining organization (2019)

i would not call myself a writer though my education was literature, and whether by intent of my instructors or just by how the writing process works, this is more or less how i write more formal or “professional” items.

it’s not nearly as conscious of a process as what the article describes but this really is the self-check process in my head as i write. each section i just try to understand what do i want to say, have i said it anywhere else, have i effectively made the point with supporting context for it, and have i expressed the source/type of information i am presenting (it’s my opinion, my thought, as best i understand a fact, etc).

it’s a discipline for sure and as such i don’t always do it well, but for any piece i want to write for work or blogs or creatively, this process helps me and after some practice it’s very easy to fire off unconsciously.

the best thjng for me was having very good instructors who did constructive criticism well; they tried to understand my intent and purpose of the writing and noted places where i didn’t quite meet my intent or there were better ways to express it.

i got into programming later on in life and i would equate the process to a good code review. it can be strict and intimidating given it’s a critique of how you express yourself in the medium, but the strictest code reviews are immensely important for my growth as a programmer, and even more so as a writer as writing with human written languages is a lot more “open” in many ways with less strictly defined methods of accomplishing a task.

Benjamin Franklin would take a reverse outline of an article he liked, and use it (after a few days) to compose his own version of the article, after which he'd compare them side-by-side in order to see where he might improve his own writing.

Shouldn’t it be called an inverse outline? These outlines are certainly not in reverse.

Sounds lije a useful LLM tool.