Writing can often be a challenging and time-consuming task, especially when you’re trying to organize your thoughts and ideas into a structured format (while staring at a blank page!)
Fortunately, that's where outline generators come to the rescue. An outline generator is a tool that helps you create a basic structure for your writing, such as a blog post, article, or essay.
In this article, we'll cover how outline generators work, the best outline generators on the market, and the best free option if you’re starting a new blog on a shoestring budget.
Disclosure: Although I receive affiliate compensation at no additional cost to you to support this site that compensation in no way influences my recommendations, which are strictly informed by my 10+ years of online business experience consulting for clients large and small. My aim is to always recommend tools that offer the best return for your investment (for more details, read my Affiliate Disclosure).
How Do Outline Generators Work?
An outline generator works by taking your ideas and turning them into a structured format, such as a bullet point list or a table of contents-styled hierarchical structure.
A good outline generator will also allow you to input relevant information, such as your target keywords and your target audience in addition to your main topic and key ideas you want to convey.
The tool then processes this information and generates an output in the form of a fully fleshed-out outline. At this point, you can use it as is to write your article, or you can further refine it by incorporating your personal touch.
What Are The Best Outline Generators?
When it comes to choosing the best outline generator, there are several factors to consider, including features offered, ease of use, and pricing.
Based on these criteria, here are some of the best outline generators currently on the market:
Scrivener
Scrivener is a powerful writing tool that includes a range of features for organizing and structuring your writing. It offers a wide selection of templates in many categories, including not just blog post outlines but also outlines for essays, novels, and even screenplays.
Airstory
Airstory is another great option, offering a clean and intuitive interface, along with advanced features for organizing and structuring your writing.
Outlinely
Outlinely, on the other hand, is a simple and easy to use outline generator that offers a more limited range of templates for various types of writing at a much lower cost.
Jasper
Jasper is a cloud-based AI writing assistant that offers outlining as one of its many templates. Jasper can also be used for topic ideation, paragraph generation and even to create entire long-form articles, chapters and even entire books.
Writesonic
Writesonic is another AI writing assistant with similar capabilities to Jasper’s, including outlining, headline creation, text summarizing and many other valuable features to reduce writer’s block and increase productivity.
What's The Best Free Outline Generator?
For those on a shoestring budget, the best free solution in my opinion is Rytr.me.
This is primarily a paid AI writing assistant along the lines of Jasper and Writesonic, but they offer a generous free plan that includes most of the features available on their paid plans, provided you don’t generate more than 10,000 words per month.
While this may not be adequate for generating long-form articles, it’s just perfect if all you’re looking to generate is outlines.
How Do You Make a Content Outline?
There are several steps to making a content outline:
- Identify the main topic or theme of your writing
- Break down the main topic into subtopics and main ideas
- Organize the subtopics and main ideas in a logical order or hierarchy
- Add supporting details and examples to each main idea
- Review the outline to make sure that it covers all of the necessary information and is well-organized so you can use it to drive your writing project forward
Making a content outline can be done manually, using a pen and paper, or using a tool such as an outline generator.
Old school outline generators take all main topic and subtopic information you input and automatically generate a structured outline for you, making the process quicker and easier.
But new AI-powered outline generators take this process to the next level by creating the entire outline based on your topic and a couple of other general inputs, like your target audience.
In Conclusion
Outline generators can be a valuable tool for writers and marketers. They help you organize your thoughts, write more effectively, and make sure you never have to face writer’s block again.
Whether you're a professional writer or just starting a new blog, an outline generator can be a great addition to your content creation workflow.
But as they say, the proof is in the pudding. Give some of the above tools a try and see if they meet your needs.
Many of the paid tools offer either a time-limited free trial or a money-back guarantee that eliminates your financial risk.
