Robert Caro doesn’t just start with a detailed outline before he starts writing his books. He starts with a clear idea of how he’s going to end it.
“I can’t write a book until I know the last line,” he said on a recent Q&A podcast episode with C-SPAN.
I’m also a big outliner — but not a last liner.
Caro tells how when writing his first book — ”The Power Broker,” a thick biography about Robert Moses, the most powerful man in New York City — he had finished his research but had no idea how to start. There was too much material. He had no idea how to begin (something a lot of creatives can relate to!).
