The 5 Minute
Nonfiction Outline

Access your message and connect with your audience without getting hung up on the process.

Outlining is dangerous territory.

Especially for nonfiction content. It more directly represents your personal thoughts and beliefs, the outcomes are often connected to you and your career, and the work tends to be tied to some kind of deadline. The importance of your message might have driven you to write, but that same importance can seriously bog you down.

The problem isn't knowing what to write, it's trusting yourself as you do. That's when "getting it right" turns into being objectively good or writing the way [insert author] does or being exciting enough or, or, or...

Without some clear, authentic-to-you constraints, it can be tempting to write Shrodinger's draft: as long as it exists in your head, it's both incredibly impactful and too awful to actualize...yet.

The 5 Minute Outline isn't a race to the publish line or a checklist to ensure perfection.

It's a practice in becoming present to your message, audience, and process.

Save My Spot

A ghostwriter's approach to a writer's practice

Get to the heart of your message, faster.

When the content isn't mine, I have to ask the right questions to get passed the performance and down to the guts of the story. These are the questions you'll learn to adapt for your Big Idea nonfiction outline, whether you lean more toward memoir, academic, or how-to content.

Rely on validated storytelling principles.

It can be easier to focus on your message alone when you've outsourced the story skills to someone else. That's why all 5 minutes correspond to the 5 commandments of storytelling. When you have a process you can trust, you can stay present and learn to trust yourself.

Learn to embrace your own creative process.

You're here because you want to know how to outline more efficiently, but that doesn't mean my process is the answer. I spent over a year after writing the 5 minute outline post honing and refining it as a practice that can be adapted to anyone's content, flow, or stage of the process.

Learn how to sit with your own writing process—in all its messy, explorational, not-yet-perfect glory.

Pre-Order for July 1st

Course-Only

12+ self-directed lessons to set you up for success, plus a bonus analysis from The Matrix, printable templates, and a 5 Minute Outline guided recording.

After July 1: $500 Preorder: $300

Discovery Bundle

The complete 5 Minute Outline course paired with a two-hour discovery call to help translate what you've learned into a more robust understanding of what you're writing and why. Schedule after you've finished lesson 4.

After July 1: $800 Preorder: $500

Coaching Bundle

The complete course bundled with a total of 8 coaching hours to be customized to your content, hangups, and goals. Scheduled at any pace.

July 1: $2000 Space will be limited

Book Consult

Course Outline

Part 1: Setup

Learn to see your work in the context of Big Idea nonfiction—well-rounded content that invites readers to a new way of thinking, being, or doing.

1. Genre and Device: What's a Big Idea?

2. Entry Points: What's YOUR Big Idea?

3. Quadrants: Narrow the Big Idea

4. Commandments: Land the Big Idea

Part 2: The 5 Minute Outline

A deep dive into the reasoning behind, uses for, and common hangups within each minute of the 5 Minute Outline, alongside variations you might use and a running example from How to Win Friends and Influence People.

5. Minute 1: What's the Key Takeaway?

6. Minute 2: Why Do We Care?

7. Minute 3: Why Do We Resist?

8. Minute 4: What Makes Us Believe?

9. Minute 5: What's the Big Invitation?

Part 3: In Practice

Once you have a 5MO, what do you do with it? Best practices for writing and revising without losing your mind, your confidence, or the thread of your message.

10. What Now?: When and How to Write from a 5MO

11. What Have I Done?: When and How to Revise from a 5MO

Part 4: 5MO in the Wild

A closer look at masterworks from each angle of the Big Idea genre to see if the 5MO can be spotted in finished works—from hypothesis, to revision, to final product. (Spoiler: It can!)

12. Big Transformation: 4-Hour Workweek

13. Big Breakthrough: Silent Spring

14. Big Experience: The Fire Next Time

Bonus Content

How to Get Into Morpheus Mode

A Guided 5 Minute Outline

Template Bundle

A Reluctant Drafter's Outline