Structure your work with this step-by-step guide

There’s one thing that instantly turns an okay-ish piece of writing into one that hits the nail on the head, achieves your goals, gets talked about at the next company town hall. 

And luckily, it’s something all of us (even if you class yourself as a non-writer) can do. 

Structure. 

Are you the kind of person who lets all their ideas just tumble out on to the page, hits send and goes about their day? I hate to break it to you, but you’re not going to get employee of the month that way. 

Next time, keep my quick tips for structuring your work handy. Your colleagues, clients and customers will thank you for it. 

1. Let it all out

A bit like when you’re doing a big wardrobe clear-out, you have to travel through messy before you arrive at organised. So just like you have to tip out all your clothes on to the bed to sort through them, tip all your ideas out on to the page. Spill everything. All your ideas, thoughts, quotes, sources. Just get it all out there. Don’t stress about order or logic or anything making sense at this stage. Just throw it all down.

2. Start sorting

Now you’re going to label your jumble of notes by theme or idea. You might like to do this using colour coding, or you might want to make little headings and start gathering information together. Say you’re writing a post about why we should switch to ethical banking, you might have a subheading for the problem with traditional banks, another introducing the alternatives and another about how to make the switch. 

If you haven’t already, give each theme a heading or a name and add any extra information you feel might be missing to round them out. 

3. Put them in order

Once you’ve got your themes, you want to put them in a logical order to present to your reader. There are a million ways to structure your themes, so don’t feel you’re looking for one ‘right’ answer, you’re just looking for the best structure for your readers. Here are some ideas to get you started:

• If there’s a way to structure your themes chronologically, this is usually a safe bet. 
• It can help to picture a conversation with your reader about the topic. What questions would they ask? Put them into the order they would naturally fall in a conversation and then use your sections to answer them. 
• If you’re presenting arguments for and against something, group them together so that you aren’t flip-flopping back and forth. 
• Think of your sections like guests at a dinner party. You’ll make the writing a whole lot easier for yourself if you sit similar sections next to each other. It’ll help your writing flow more naturally.
• Think about the goal of your piece. If you’re trying to convince your audience how you can reel them in. One way is to kick off with a section that makes them want to learn more. 
• If your content has a moment of huge dramatic tension or excitement, it can be fun to start with that to reel your reader in. 

The best way to get a feel for this is simply to read other articles and analyse their structure. Or write your subheadings on Post-its and move them around until you feel happy. 

4. Zoom in 

Once you’ve sorted the broad structure, go paragraph by paragraph, organising your notes within them using the same technique as above. You want each paragraph or section to start with a clear opener, get into the details, then clarify what you’ve been explaining before you move on. If your section has subsections, use the same rules to organise them in a logical order that will make sense to your reader. 

5. Start writing

All of this happens before you even start drafting your piece. But just like building a house, it’s going to be a lot easier and quicker with a solid plan in place. 

If you’d like to chat more about writing for your business, I’d love to hear from you.