How to Use a Reverse Outline to Review Your Book's Structure
- Siân Smith
- 4 days ago
- 7 min read
When you’re writing a book, at some point you will need to review its structure. This approach varies from writers who do this at the very start of their book process and continue refining it as they write their book, to those who just start writing with a very loose agenda.
A well-structured book is crucial to its readability: too much jumbling and flitting from one point to the next and your reader will have a hard time keeping up – at worst they will stop reading the book out of confusion and frustration. Following a structure too rigidly as you write, however, can also impact your book: it’s highly possible you’ll miss out on some of your best writing because it doesn’t fall in with your original structure (also known as an outline).
Structuring a book is often one of the biggest hurdles for writers overcome, so if you’re struggling with coming up with a structure or organising your latest draft into some sort of cohesive flow, you’re not alone.
Luckily for you, I’ve got a trick developmental editors use to identify the structure of an early draft that you can apply to ANY stage of your book: from initial outline to scratching your head over your fifth draft.
In this blog post, I’ll explain what this approach is called and how you can use this in two different ways: using it on published books so you can see how other books are published, and/or applying it to your current draft. You can use both approaches together for ultimate clarity.
The basics of a reverse outline
The device I’m referring to is called a ‘reverse outline’. In essence, it’s a retrospective outline where you create an outline of a book that’s already been written, which can be a published book or your own current draft.
Write a one-line summary per chapter of the book. That is the most basic form of this outline, but it’s still incredibly useful if this is all you can manage.
These one-liners will help you understand the way a writer has divided their book into themes or topics, and how this contributes to the overall narrative or argument (non-fiction centres on a central argument, with narrative non-fiction centring on more, erm, narrative, or using narrative elements to underpin the book’s argument).
One step beyond these one-line summaries would be to distil these down into the classic start, middle, end of the book, grouping where the chapters fit in this tripartite structure (e.g. chapters 1 to 3 is the beginning, 4 to 10 is the middle, and 11 to 13 is the end).
The level of detail you go into depends on your learning personality. Some people love getting into the granular detail of things; for others, this can become too confusing and overwhelming. If it’s in your wheelhouse, you can colour code the book into the different themes and topics, helping you spot patterns and how often these themes are used.
A reverse outline in practice
I’m going to show you what a basic reverse outline can look like, using one of my author’s books, Just Run by Merili Freear. When I did her manuscript appraisal I used a reverse outline to work out more which chapters seemed relevant, which needed developing, and in which order they should appear.
From this, we decided to split her book into 3 distinct parts: how she went from not running at all to running a marathon; what happened the year after her marathon; and ending with Merili’s running style (her tips and running anecdotes).
This reverse outline is of the final version of her book, not the earlier draft. Also, the summaries are not the same as the chapter titles, and I have been mindful not to reveal any spoilers!
Reverse outline of Just Run by Merili Freear
Part 1: from zero to marathon
Chapter 1: first run during the Covid lockdown
Chapter 2: running childhood and early adulthood
Chapter 3: creating a running habit
Chapter 4: running trainers
Chapter 5: long runs and deciding to run a marathon
Chapter 6: vegan running
Chapter 7: marathon training and taper
Chapter 8: running a marathon!
Chapter 9: running adventures after the marathon
Part 2: a year of setbacks
Chapter 10: depression and running injury
Chapter 11: depression in the past and running for mental health
Chapter 12: working on mental resilience and injury rehab
Chapter 13: signing up for another marathon
Chapter 14: joining a running group
Chapter 15: second marathon!
Chapter 16: setting new challenges
Chapter 17: ill and injured
Chapter 18: Run the Thames challenge
Chapter 19: training for first ultramarathon (40 miles)
Chapter 20: first ultramarathon!
Part 3: running tips and anecdotes
Chapter 21: training based on running 3 times a week
Chapter 22: runners love doing long runs on Sundays
Chapter 23: half marathon experience
Chapter 24: what is runner’s high?
Chapter 25: running on the treadmill
Chapter 26: virtual races to in-person races
Chapter 27: setting small goals to keep you motivated
Chapter 28: running in a running group
Chapter 29: running in the rain
Chapter 30: running with a dog (canicross)
Chapter 31: running on holiday
Chapter 32: books and movies about running to inspire you (prose, not a list)
Chapter 33: Merili’s top tips for running (mindset, kit, training, fuelling, etc.)
Chapter 34: motivational conclusion on why you should run
Merili’s book being in those 3 clear parts makes it easier to work out the 3-part structure, but hopefully you can see how you could also do this via the chapter summaries. Perhaps you might have decided to split those 3 parts differently, or move certain chapters into other parts. That’s fine! Writing and editing a book is subjective, after all. The whole point of doing a reverse outline on a published book is to see which elements you like and which you’d change. It’s more about providing some inspiration and a loose framework than coming up with a rigid outline for you to copy and paste.
Using a reverse outline to help structure your book
If you’re just getting started on the outline of your book (before writing it), then doing a reverse outline of a book in the same genre or covering the same topic as yours is a great way to get started. Particularly with more practical books (how-to guides or personal development books), it’s helpful to do this with a few books so you can understand the commonalities across them: certain formulae and structures work for a reason!
When reviewing several books, be sure to keep your notes as brief as possible. Stick to your one-line chapter summaries and then summarise the 3-part structure. Don’t bother with themes and topics until you have your own basic outline drafted (you may not even need to go into this much detail at all with published books as it’s likely to just cause confusion).
Once you’ve created an outline for your own book, remember it’s OK to deviate from this during your first draft. If you’re enjoying writing a chapter that you’re not sure fits in the outline, just write it! Even if it doesn’t stay in the book, you could repurpose it as a blog post, or use it in another book. Don’t let a rigid mindset stifle your creativity. You can soon come back to the book’s purpose by reviewing the outline and seeing if you still want to write the book you planned (I have more tips here about what to do if you’ve written a different book to the one you planned).
Using a reverse outline on your own draft
You can also reverse outline your current draft, at any point during the writing process.
Write one line that summarises each chapter of your draft. This could be a complete draft or a partially written draft. Reverse outlining a partial draft can be particularly helpful for spotting where to go from there. Are there any themes or memories you haven’t yet included that can help you get from where you currently are to the end?
Look at these chapter summaries and see if the placement of each chapter makes sense: are there any chapters that can easily be moved? Even deleted?
Next, when you’re self-editing or writing your current draft, keep your one-line chapter summaries in mind: are any parts of this chapter straying from that chapter’s point or theme? As above, don’t worry too much if you struggle to do this when writing. If you find this approach stifles your writing flow, save it for when you’re self-editing.
If you give reverse outlining your own draft a go and get stuck, practise reverse outlining published books first. That way you’ll have cracked the trick of condensing chapter summaries right down before you come back to summarise your own chapters.
A note on using a reverse outline for memoir
You CAN reverse outline memoirs to see how they’ve been structured, including which themes the author covers and in what order, but memoir structure is far harder to pinpoint than other non-fiction. Memoir’s structure is usually non-linear and unique to each author’s voice and style.
What’s more, don’t compare the first draft of a memoir to a published memoir: they’ve often gone through months, sometimes years of re-drafting, and first drafts work particularly well when written with minimal agenda or shape in mind. I also agree with Lily Dunn here that the structure of most memoirs reveal themselves to you as you write.
So if the idea of coming up with an outline for your own book fills you with dread (and procrastination) or you’re ready to move your draft into the trash,* try a reverse outline first. While it can’t do the actual redrafting and editing for you, it just might give you the bird’s eye view you need to review your manuscript more objectively.
Should you need help putting things into action once you’ve been up to the editorial crow’s nest, give me a shout!
*Please never put your draft in the trash – either electronically or in real life – please file it away safely, in its current state, in a folder you can easily retrieve later.
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