This short video is a great way to see the process for rapidly creating an article.

In order to write an article very rapidly you would set your thesis statement. What is the main point you want to make? Then you would brainstorm and come up with all the different things that pop in your head about this topic. The third thing you would do is group the ideas that have come pouring out of you into clusters. While you’re doing that you might then set the scope during that third phase.

Once you’ve got the groups, you’ll organize the groups themselves in order. So, which things come first, which comes next, etc. That creates your outline. Once the outline is done you’re ready to go into step five, which is to write a first draft based on that outline. Then, and only then, do you edit the draft.

cardsmith writing board example

You’ll notice what’s happening here is I’ve just gone from idea and brainstorm to grouping and eventually creating an outline. We go from unstructured brainstorming into structured grouping and organizing and outlining.

Once I’m confident that the outline is correct I’ll be ready to move to the rapid writing steps. When the outline is really detailed like this it’s super easy to write. Everything is very fresh in my mind and I’ve already got a five hundred to a thousand word article. You’ll see that doing it in these phases is extremely fast.