Detailed Table of Contents or Outline

Writing a book can seem like an overwhelming project. Where do you begin? One good way to start is to create an outline or a detailed table of contents (TOC) for your book.

What’s the difference between an outline and a detailed TOC?

An outline is simply a list of short sentences that describe the contents of your chapters, arranged in the order in which you want to present them to your book’s audience. It serves as a roadmap for your writing, keeping you on track.

An outline provides a sense of the information you’re presenting and how it will be organized. By writing it down, you get to see all your ideas and thoughts on paper, which allows you to begin to move things around to create a more effective flow of your material.

Outlining can be done using sticky notes, 3×5 cards, or software (e.g., the Microsoft Word® outline view). As you compose your outline, jot down what you want to say about your subject in the general order you want to say it. You can make changes as you begin to write the actual text.

Your outline should include the title at the top (if you have one yet) and a list of your preliminary chapter headings. Under each chapter heading, write a brief description of what you think will be the content of that chapter. This will make the actual writing much easier, and will prevent you from possibly forgetting some concept. Take note that the outline is flexible: it can change as you write — so keep it up to date.

It’s useful to do the same thing for each lower level heading that you’ve detailed in your outline. The one thing to remember, though, is to keep all of this brief and at a relatively high level. You want to be able to see your whole work at a glance by laying just these few pages either one after the other or side by side.

Finally, an outline can serve as your scratchpad. It’s a great place to add new ideas and thoughts as they occur to you. And they can be fitted just where you want them.

A detailed table of contents (TOC) should include the name of the work (if you have one yet), the words “Table of Contents” or just Contents”, first-level headers (e.g., chapter numbers and titles), second-level headers (e.g., section numbers, if any, and titles) within each chapter, and sometimes, third-level headers (e.g., subsection numbers, if any, and titles). The more descriptive you make your headings (without getting carried away), the more useful the TOC is to your readers. Furthermore, some online book websites have a feature that allows potential buyers to see the beginning of a book (e.g., Amazon “Look Inside”). Potential buyers who skim your TOC may make a buy or no-buy decision based on what they see there.

The TOC of a typical print-book (p-book) shows page numbers for each of the above headings, which makes it different from an outline. Formatting for the page numbers varies, but most often, the page number is located at the right side of the page, with the heading name connected to the page number by a continuous series of dots or periods. A good example can be found in the series of “for Dummies” books.

Electronic books (e-books) don’t have page numbers; instead, there are links that take the reader to the specific location in the e-book where the heading is located.

A TOC may be composed manually, but these days, software can do the work almost automatically. The almost part is because the author must use specific styles for chapter titles, headings, subheadings, etc., which go into the TOC.

Conclusion

Creating an outline or a detailed table of contents is not necessarily for everyone. However, if you’re one of those people who needs a visible support or a way to organize your thoughts, these tools can be very effective.

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