4.3 Outlining
Once students complete the prewriting stage of the writing process, they might start drafting their essay. However, they are skipping an important stage of writing called outlining. Part of the outlining stage includes creating a working thesis statement and identifying your main ideas.
From Topic to Research Question to Working Thesis
In the prewriting stage, you have come up with a great topic, but to get from a topic to the working thesis, you should try to phrase your topic as a research question and then attempt to answer it. Once you have a focused research question, you will try to answer it by developing supporting points (or discussion points), many of which you may already have at the ready from the prewriting stage. A detailed answer to your research question will become your working thesis statement.
A thesis statement should be specific and present a claim, argument, or debatable point. A thesis is NOT the same as a topic; instead, the thesis expresses the writer’s belief or opinion about a topic. The thesis of an essay is the main point that the essay tries to prove, the central idea to which everything else in the essay is related. The thesis statement is debatably the most important component of the entire essay. Here are some quick tips to help with thesis statement writing. You should replace all nonspecific words, such as people, everything, society, or life, with more precise words to reduce any vagueness, clarify ideas that need explanation by asking yourself questions that narrow your thesis, and avoid general claims and contain only specific, supportable claims is preferable.
Idea Mapping
Idea Mapping allows you to visualize your ideas on paper using circles, lines, and arrows. This technique is also known as clustering because ideas are broken down and clustered, or grouped. Many writers like this method because the shapes show how the ideas relate or connect, and writers can find a focused subject from the connections mapped. Using idea mapping, you might discover interesting connections between subjects that you had not thought of before.
To create an idea map, start with your general subject in a circle in the center of a blank sheet of paper. Then write specific ideas around it and use lines or arrows to connect them. Add and cluster as many ideas as you can think of.
Organizing Ideas
When you write, you need to organize your ideas in an order that makes sense. The writing you complete in all your courses exposes how analytically and critically your mind works. In some courses, the only direct contact you may have with your instructor is through the assignments you write for the course. You can make a good impression by spending time organizing your ideas.
Order refers to your choice of what to present first, second, third, and so on in your writing. You will let the subject of your essay guide the order you use (ex: a historical subject is likely to benefit from chronological order), but you will also want to let your purpose and audience guide your decisions.
The three common methods of organizing writing are chronological order, spatial order, and order of importance.
There are two types of formal outlines: the topic outline and the sentence outline. You format both types of formal outlines in the same way.
- Place your introduction and thesis statement at the beginning, under the Roman numeral I.
- Use Roman numerals (II, III, IV, V, etc.) to identify the main points that develop the thesis statement.
- Use capital letters (A, B, C, D, etc.) to divide your main points into parts.
- Use Arabic numerals (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, etc.) if you need to subdivide any As, Bs, or Cs into smaller parts.
- End with the final Roman numeral expressing your idea for your conclusion.
Example Outline
- Introduction
- Thesis statement
- Main point 1 → becomes the topic sentence of body paragraph 1
- Supporting detail → becomes a support sentence of body paragraph 1
- Supporting detail
- Supporting detail
- Main point 2 → becomes the topic sentence of body paragraph 2
- Main point 3 → becomes the topic sentence of body paragraph 3
- Conclusion
Here is what the skeleton of a traditional formal outline looks like. The indentation helps clarify how the ideas are related.
Brainstorming
Brainstorming is similar to list-making. You can make a list on your own or in a group with your classmates. Start with a blank sheet of paper (or a blank computer document) and write your general subject across the top. Underneath your subject, make a list of more specific ideas. Think of your general subject as a broad category and the list items as things that fit in that category. Often, you will find that one item can lead to the next, creating a flow of ideas that can help you narrow your focus to a more specific paper subject.
Attributions
The Writing Textbook by Josh Woods, editor, and contributor, as well as an unnamed author (by request from the original publisher), and other authors named separately is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.
This chapter has additions, edits, and organization by James Charles Devlin.
