The Secrets Of Essay Outline Writing – 5 Things To Know

Writing an essay is a multi-stage procedure. The process of writing should start with developing a thorough outline. It's necessary for logical organization and presentation of your materials, determination of your goal as well as creating the thesis. Such planning of your future work helps reveal relationships among facts, ideas, and evidence. The process of writing splits up into 5 main stages.

Brainstorming

Your primary task is to analyze the materials you've gathered and generate ideas concerning the content of your essay. You can use various techniques for doing this:

  • Make a list of all the ideas concerning the topic that come into your mind. If necessary, you will be able to add new thoughts in the process of planning your work.
  • Draw clusters. Clustering allows to see interrelations among ideas clearly and rank them according to their consequence. Write down the thesis in the center of a sheet of paper and draw several lines in the form of a spider. Put down an idea corresponding to the main idea of your thesis at the end of each “paw”. Develop the clusters further by writing everything that refers to each of these ideas. Your work will result in a scheme showing what materials you lack and what can be excluded.

Formation of Categories and Subcategories

At this stage, organize your ideas into groups. See to that they are connected logically to each other. Large groups will make categories, the ideas within them – subcategories. In your paper they will correspond to paragraphs. Try to make categories as general as possible – their number should be 3 – 4 for a paper of 7 – 8 pages.

Putting Categories and Subcategories into Logical Order

By arranging them logically, you will build up the whole essay in your mind. At this stage it's easy to check what arguments you need to include into your paper and what evidence you need to support them.

Naming and Deciding on Structure

After you've put categories and subcategories into order, you can entitle them and organize them structurally. You can use either sentences or brief phrases to render their essential content. The structure of the outline may be either alphanumerical or decimal.

Writing the Outline

Your outline should follow the required format: introduction, body, and conclusion. In introduction, state the subject of the essay and the thesis that you are going to argue about. The body will consist of the names of categories and subcategories. In conclusion, you should restate the thesis, give concluding statement, and suggest your solution.