So, you were assigned an essay. Maybe you are starting early, or maybe you’re wa
So, you were assigned an essay. Maybe you are starting early, or maybe you’re waiting until the last possible second. Either way, you’re stuck. I can promise you that making an outline will help. Maybe it will only be small steps, or it might shape the entirety of your essay. It can help you reorganize something you’ve already done, or assess the strength of your thesis statement.
For more information about generally making and customizing an outline, continue reading. To see examples of a developed outline, jump to the section titled “My Personal Method”.
Common Questions:
When do you make an outline?
- Outlines can be written at any stage in your writing process, however, they will often work best once you have created a thesis statement. The outline will be used as a template in order to piece the essay together. If you put work into a good outline, the essay itself will be fairly easy. There are definitely important steps that come before making an outline, but often an outline can help you with those steps too! Sometimes students have difficulty creating a working thesis statement. Do you fall into that category? Well, sometimes it can be hard because you don’t know exactly what you want to say yet. After all, why are you going to limit yourself on what you are going to argue? So, start by picking out things you like and fill in an outline, then, from those things (whatever your main topics end up being), you can figure out what your argument would be. That way you can really map out what you want to say, where you want to say it, and how you want to address it before you put it on paper. However, there are things that you HAVE to know before you create your outline.
- What is your audience? How you talk about your topic will be greatly affected by your audience. Is it a formal audience? Your friends? Are you writing for a blog or for a research paper?
- What is the goal of the essay? You have a prompt of some sort. What are you writing the essay for? Are you promoting something? Are you arguing about something? Are you analyzing or reporting? You need to know what type of points to pick out for your outline, so understanding the overall goal of the paper is essential.
How do you plan out your essay?
- Choose a topic. (you can pick a broad topic at this point, but after you fill out the outline it will narrow itself down. Or, you can visit this guides chapter titled How to Plan and Essay for more information on how to do this.). While you do this you are going to want to determine the larger purpose of what you are going to say. What is the actual point you are trying to get across? Make sure you have a topic.
- Decide on your main goal. Persuasion? Information? Personal Reflection? You need to figure out how you want to approach the essay).
- Gather supporting materials. Write down subtopics, quotes, statistics, and ideas. Remember to note the page number so that you can easily cite the information later.
- Choose a type of outline.
- Orga