import xml.etree.ElementTree as ET
tree = ET.ElementTree("tree")
document = ET.Element("outer")
node1 = ET.SubElement(document, "inner")
node1.text = "text"
tree._setroot(document)
tree.write("./output.xml", encoding = "UTF-8", xml_declaration = True)
<?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8'?>
<outer><inner>text</inner></outer>