If you’re an author preparing to submit your academic book manuscript to a publisher, then it’s likely you’ll be required to write a chapter outline. This is where you outline the content and direction of each chapter in detail.

Sounds simple enough. Yet this part of the book submission process often troubles authors. For that reason, we’ll explain how to outline a chapter when submitting your academic book.

What is a chapter outline, and why is it necessary?

Academic books contain a lot of research and data. A monograph, or in-depth scholarly discussion of a single subject, often extends beyond the 100-page mark. Likewise, edited books often consist of many extensive chapters from various academics. This makes reading monographs and edited books a time-consuming task. For this reason, it’s necessary for those wishing to assess the quality of a manuscript to be able to see a breakdown of the contents of the book beforehand.

A chapter outline serves as a roadmap for a book, detailing the content and direction of each chapter. Any in-depth chapter outline should provide the reader with an overview of a book’s argument and logical progression. You want the aims of your book to be clear, ensuring that there’s coherence between each of the chapters.

How to outline a chapter

You can’t outline your chapters without being able to outline your entire book. If you can define the aims of your research, then you can relate the contents of your chapters to these overarching aims.

When submitting a proposal to MDPI Books, it must include tentative chapter titles and short abstracts or summaries for each chapter. For edited books, the proposal must include: a comprehensive list of planned chapter contributors with affiliations; whether potential authors have been contacted or confirmed; and a brief explanation of efforts to ensure diversity among contributors (e.g., geographic, disciplinary, methodological, gender, or career stage).

These are the specifics required when outlining your chapters. But how do actually do so? Start by concentrating on what each chapter brings to the book’s argument, summarising its key elements, methods, and issues. As you would breakdown a book into chapters, it’s useful to breakdown your chapters into logical steps too to help you see their progression.

Even though you’re outlining your chapters one at a time, don’t forget that these individual outlines need to cohere with the other chapters. So long as the progression between chapters is clear and naturally develops your book’s thesis, then you’re good.

Tips and exercises to remember

Now we know the fundamentals of how to outline a chapter, it will be useful to discuss some specific tips and exercises to aid you further.

Two-sentence summary

One way of really testing whether you know the purpose of your chapters is to try and write a two-sentence summary of each one. This will force you to really think about what each chapter is trying to accomplish. And being concise shows that you clearly know what that purpose is. Once you can do it in two sentences, see if you can cut it down to just one. When writing your full chapter outline later, refer back to these sentences.

Create a roadmap

Creating a roadmap for each chapter’s logical progression can help you visualize your argument. Break down each chapter into smaller sections; these can then be labelled with a title to help you memorize each section’s purpose. If it helps, you can implement a plot-like structure to your roadmap, defining a beginning, middle, and end for your chapters.

The clearer the direction of your chapter to you, the more effectively its content will be communicated to the reader. Readers can sense uncertainty. Creating a roadmap can help steer you and your readers in the right direction.

Consider your target audience

Writing a monograph is different to writing a PhD thesis. Whereas your audience for your PhD thesis typically consists of academics with specialist knowledge who are there to evaluate your research, the audience for your monograph will be broader. That being said, you’re still publishing research within a particular field, so it should appeal to those with an interest in your subject. With a monograph, striking a balance between being broad and niche is key.

Outlining your chapters can help you and those judging your manuscript to better understand how the various elements of a book cohere to appeal to a certain demographic. Always keep your target audience in mind as you think through your outline.

A chapter outline is for your benefit

It’s important to remember that writing a chapter outline isn’t just for the benefit of those judging your manuscript. Yes, as an overview it serves to guide others through the structure of your argument. But, and perhaps more importantly, it’s meant to help you precisely define what it is you’re trying to say. Don’t think of writing a chapter outline as a chore; think of it as the construction of a necessary roadmap for you to follow when the writing process gets tough.

Want more tips on how to write a book proposal beyond chapet outline guidance? Check out our other blog post on getting your book proposal ready.