It’s easy to get lost when you are writing. You often start out okay having at least a sense of where you want to go. You know about how many words you need. You know roughly what you want to say. But this is just a picture of where you are headed. How are you going to get there?

Take a lesson from the road. You wouldn’t hit the streets with just a photograph of your destination. You get a map. This works for writing too. The big difference being that you can’t Mapquest it or plug it into GPS, you have to make this one yourself.

Some might call it an outline. This is another path to take. As with any trip, you have to think about your goals. Do you want to get there in the shortest time possible? Do you have some time to meander about? What stops do you want to make? Regardless of whether you get around to the map or outline, the more you think about what you are trying to accomplish before you start writing, the better it will go.

This map can be as sparse or elaborate as you like. The point is to give you a sense of how you are going to get from lead to the final sentence. As you put it together, you will get a sense of what are major points compared to minor ones. You will see before you’ve wasted time whether you need more information.

Think about taking your reader on a journey. In the lead, you have to convince them to join you. At each stop along the way, you have to convince them to stay with you since they can get out of the car at any time. And at the end, if you’ve done your job well, you’ve delivered them to the final destination.