By Sean Brenner
Editor’s Note: I’m excited to welcome Sean Brenner (yup, my kid!) as a monthly contributor to Right Touch Editing. Sean brings a fresh perspective on writing, drawing from his experience crafting fictional universes and scriptwriting. Each month, he’ll share insights on tackling writing challenges. You can find more of his work at Imagined Worlds Writing Services. Welcome, Sean!
More often than not, the hardest part of writing is figuring out where to begin, especially when you’re writing about a complex topic with lots of subtopics you need to cover.
Organizing a complex topic can be like piecing together a puzzle without the ability to see or feel the shapes of the pieces. Trying to fit everything together this way is daunting, but there’s always at least one way to make it all work. All you need is a few trusty methods in your writing toolkit. Today I’ll share some of the ones I find the most useful when I begin writing.
Find the Connections
The best way to organize a complex topic is to allow each subtopic to flow smoothly into the next. That will push you to find connections between the subtopics, which you can then use for section transitions.
As long as each of your subtopics relate to the main topic, then there’s at least something that connects your subtopics together. This connection will be more obvious for some ideas than others. One particular aspect of your topic might provide necessary context for another – for example, if you’re writing about the history of 20th century wars, it would be best to discuss World War I before World War II.
Identify All the Angles
Another method for finding the right order for your subtopics is to list the different angles you could cover, identifying what each angle contributes to your overall topic. Once you have a clearer picture of the purpose each subtopic will contribute to the main topic, you’ll find it easier to figure out what order they need to be addressed in.
For instance, you can identify the subtopics that lay the foundation for later subtopics and put those first. Then, build on those with subtopics that depend on understanding the foundations. Some of your subtopics might even involve rebutting potential arguments against your main topic; these should be dealt with later, after you’ve established most of your main topic.
What’s the Story?
No matter what form your writing takes, a writer’s job is always to tell a story, even if you’re writing something as undramatic as an end-of-year report. This means that you can draw from dramatic structures to help yourself organize your ideas. Which subtopic would you say is the closest to the “climax,” the moment of revelation, in your project? Which subtopics build up to it, and which should be placed after the “climax?” For instance, if you’re writing a white paper about the benefits of your product, you want to build tension by highlighting the client’s struggles before you reveal how your product can help. The climax, in this example, is the reveal of the solution that your product offers to potential buyers.
Jack Hart’s Storycraft is an excellent resource for popular narrative nonfiction structures you can use. You don’t need to rigidly adhere to a narrative structure, but thinking about your ideas in those terms can help you better understand how they relate and build upon each other.
Write First, Organize After
If none of these methods are getting you anywhere, you can always go back and reorder your writing later in the process. If you’re feeling stuck because you aren’t sure what order your subtopics will work best in, try drafting the subtopics individually and organizing them later. Once you have everything down on the page, read through your work, identifying subtopics that seem out of place and moving them where they fit better.
Many times, the subtopics that seem out of place will be immediately obvious to you. While you might need to do a little rewriting to get those misplaced subtopics to fit into a new section, the work will go quicker than staring at a blank page and agonizing over what you should write first.
To revisit the analogy we started with, organizing a complex topic can feel like putting together a puzzle without knowing the shape of the pieces because you haven’t actually made the pieces yet. Once you have, fitting them together becomes much more intuitive.
Just Try Something
Beginning a new writing project can be daunting, but having an organized plan to approach it can make the process easier and more enjoyable. So much of how intimidating it can be stems from not knowing where to begin. Just trying something, even if that method ends up not working out, it makes the task much more welcoming.
Sean Brenner is a freelance writer specializing in scripts for video essays and similar forms of content. He writes scripts for YouTube videos covering Star Wars lore for Frontier Media and Star Trek for Trek Central. You can learn more about his work at Imagined Worlds Writing Services and find him on Bluesky.
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