How planning helps you write more efficiently

In my blog on headings (Part 1) I suggested that headings perform two crucial functions. First, they guide your readers through what you’ve written. Second, they help you to plan your writing. Because planning comes before writing, it’s worth looking at in greater detail. Why should I plan? Some people are very fluent. They just write without planning beforehand, and it all comes out perfectly. But those people are the exception, not the rule. For everyone else, whether writing a one-page letter or a 100-page report, planning is crucial. If you do your planning properly, it will:

1.  give you a structure;
2.  help you include all the the topics  you need (but not the ones you don’t need);
3. make sure you cover them in enough detail – not too much, not too little;
4. make writing easier and quicker for you; and
5. help you see connections between topics.

How will planning make me feel more comfortable about writing? Planning also confers psychological benefits, because it will:

• get you started on your task (it’s sooooo easy to put off writing);
• overcome writer’s block;
• remove some of the stress that writing can create (especially if you tend, like most people, to do your writing at the last minute!).

Planning also gets your brain ticking over—consciously and subconsciously—about your topic. You will find new ideas bubbling to the surface when you’re in the middle of doing something completely unrelated to your writing. How long should I spend on planning? I believe that planning is worth spending up to a third of your overall time on. Yes, that’s right. Up to one third. The better you plan, the easier it will be to write, and the less time you will  spend rewriting. When writing Damp Squid, I devoted a lot of time to the synopsis of the book, and then to each chapter. It saved me masses of time when it came to actually writing.