Practical templates for planning and revising your writing
A template is only useful if you can read it, judge it, and start using it in the next ten minutes. Everything here is complete on the page — nothing to download, nothing to sign up for, and nothing that stops halfway and asks for an email address.
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One template, because one exists. This page will grow when there is something real to add to it.
How we think about templates
Most writing templates fail in one of two ways. Either they are so general that filling them in tells you nothing you did not already know, or they are so prescriptive that following them produces a book shaped like the template rather than like your idea.
The fields here are questions worth answering, not boxes that must be filled. If a field does not apply to your book, that is information — delete it. If answering one is genuinely hard, that is usually the part of the book you have not thought through yet, and it is better to find that out in an outline than in chapter nine.
Nothing on these pages is stored, submitted or sent anywhere. Copy what is useful into wherever you actually work.
Guides that go with the template
A framework is easier to use once you know what it is for. These explain the thinking the template compresses.
- How to Organize a Nonfiction BookGetting from scattered material to an argument in order.
- How to Outline a BookA flexible outlining method for planners and discovery writers.