Six Stages of the Essay Writing Process: 3

Stage Three: Outlining

An outline is a working plan for a piece of writing. It’s a list of all the ideas that are going to be in the piece in the order they should go. Once you’ve got the outline planned, you can stop worrying about the structure and just concentrate on getting each sentence right. In order to make an outline, you need to know basically what you’re going to say in your piece—in other words, what your theme is.

Themes

One way to find a theme is to think one up out of thin air, and then make all your ideas fit around it. Another way is to let the ideas point you to the theme—you follow your ideas, rather than direct them. As you do this, you’ll find that your ideas aren’t as haphazard as you thought. Some will turn out to be about the same thing. Some can be put into a sequence. Some might pair off into opposing groups. Out of these natural groupings, your theme will gradually emerge. This way, your theme is not just an abstract concept in a vacuum, which you need to then prop up with enough ideas to fill a few pages. Instead, your theme comes with all its supporting ideas automatically attached.

Using index cards

One of the easiest ways to let your ideas form into patterns is to separate them, so you can physically shuffle them around. Writing each idea on a separate card or slip of paper can allow you to see connections between them that you’d never see otherwise. Making an outline involves trial and error—but it only takes seconds to move cards into a new outline. If you try to start writing before the outline works properly, it could take you all week to rewrite and rewrite again. In an exam, you can’t use cards (see page 208 for another way to do it), and you’ll gradually develop a way that suits you. But doing an outline on cards—even a few times—can show you just how easy it is to rearrange your ideas.

Finding the patterns in your ideas

One way to put your ideas into order so that your theme can emerge is to use the most basic kind of order, shared by all kinds of writing:

1. A Beginning—some kind of introduction, telling the reader where they are and what kind of thing they’re about to read.
2. A Middle—the main bit, where you say what you’re there to say.
3. An End—some kind of winding-up part that lets the reader know that this is actually the end of the piece (rather than that someone lost the last page).

Exactly what’s inside the compartments of Beginning, Middle and End of a piece of writing depends on whether it’s a piece of imaginative writing, an essay or some other kind of writing. It helps to remember that behind their differences, all writing shares the same three-part structure—just as all hamburgers do.

The ‘Hamburger Thing’

TOP BUN
Where it all starts: a beginning that
gives the reader something to bite into
FILLING
A middle that gives the reader all kinds
of different stuff
BOTTOM BUN
Finishing off the piece: something to
hold it all together

Making An Outline For an Essay

You’ve now got a collection of ideas that all relate in some way to your essay assignment. What you’ll do here is rearrange those ideas so they end up as an orderly sequence that will inform or persuade the reader. To do that, you’ll need to know what your theme is—the underlying argument or point of your essay. The first step towards this is to put each of your ideas on a separate card or slip of paper. That makes it much easier to find patterns in your ideas. As you look at the ideas on the cards, chances are you’ll start to notice that:

• some ideas go together, saying similar things;
• some ideas contradict each other;
• some ideas can be arranged into a sequence, each idea emerging out of the one before it.

By looking at these groupings, you’ll begin to see how you can apply your ideas to the task of your assignment. Once you have a basic approach (you don’t need to know it in detail), you can begin to shape your ideas into an outline. Start with the most basic shape, using the fact that every piece of writing has a Beginning, a Middle and an End.

Beginning

Often called the introduction. Readers need all the help that writers can give them, so the introduction is where we tell them, briefly, what the essay will be about. Different essays need different kinds of introductions, but every introduction should have a ‘thesis statement’: a one-sentence statement of your basic idea. As well, an introduction may have one or more of these:

• an overview of the whole subject;
• background to the particular issue you’re going to write about;
• a definition or clarification of the main terms of the assignment;
• an outline of the different points of view that can be taken about the assignment;
• an outline of the particular point of view you plan to take in the essay.

Middle

Often called the development. This is where you develop, paragraph by paragraph, the points you want to make.

A development might include:

• information—facts, figures, dates, data;
• examples—of whatever points you’re making;
• supporting material for your points—quotes, logical cause and effect workings, putting an idea into a larger context.

End

Often called the conclusion. You’ve said everything you want to say, but by this time your readers are in danger of forgetting where they were going in the first place, so you remind them.

A conclusion might include:

• a recap of your main points, to jog the readers’ memories;
• a summing-up that points out the larger significance or meaning of the main points;
• a powerful image or quote that sums up the points you’ve been making.

Just sitting and looking at a list of ideas and trying to think about them in your head doesn’t usually get you anywhere. Writing is like learning to play tennis—you don’t learn tennis by thinking about it, but by trying to do it. You might have to spend a while rearranging your index cards—but it will save time and pain in the long run.

The ‘Hamburger Thing’ Again…

TOP BUN
Beginning (introduction): where you
tell the reader briefly how you’re
going to approach the subject
FILLING
Middle (development): where you lay
out all the points you want to make
BOTTOM BUN
End (conclusion): this ties the essay
together and relates all the bits to
each other

Different ways of organising the middle of an essay

The Middle of an essay should be arranged in an orderly way: you can’t just throw all the bits in and hope for the best. What that ‘orderly way’ is, depends on your assignment.

One-pronged essays

Some assignments only ask about one kind of thing or one way of looking at a subject. In that case you can just put the filling into the burger in whatever orderly way seems best for the subject. One kind of arrangement might be to present the ideas from the most important to least important, or from the most distant in time to the most recent.

Two-pronged essays

Some essays want you to deal with two subjects (not just oranges, but oranges and apples) or two different points of view (for example, an assignment that asks you to ‘discuss’ by putting the case for and against something, or an assignment that asks you to ‘compare’ or ‘contrast’ different views). With these twopronged assignments, it’s easy to get into a muddle with structure. For two-pronged assignments you can organise the middle in either of the following ways (but not a combination!).

Making An Outline For an Essay: 10 steps

1. Look at the assignment again

• This is so you don’t stray off it.

2. What groups of ideas are here?

• If you’ve got ideas that point in different directions within the assignment, you might have to decide which to focus on.
• Or you may be able to organise the ideas into a ‘two-pronged’ essay.

3. Get some index cards

• Normal sized index cards cut in half seem to be most user-friendly for this.
• Write each idea on a separate card.
• Just a word or two will do for each (enough to remind you of what the idea is).

4. Think about your essay’s theme

• Look for ideas that go together, that contradict each other, or that form a sequence.
• From those patterns, see if a theme or argument seems to be emerging.

5. Pick out cards for a Beginning pile
Ask these questions about each card:

• Is this a general concept about the subject of the assignment?
• Does it give background information?
• Is it an opinion or theory about the subject?
• Could it be used to define or clarify the terms of the assignment? If the answer to any of these is yes, put those cards together.

6. Pick out cards for a Middle pile
Ask yourself:

• Could I use this to develop an argument or a sequence of ideas about the assignment?
• Could I use this as evidence for one point of view, or its opposite?
• Could I use this as an example?
• If the answer to any of these is yes, put those cards together in a second pile.

7. Pick out cards for an End pile
Ask yourself:

• Does this summarise my approach to the assignment?
• Could I use it to draw a general conclusion?
• Could I use it to show the overall significance of the points I’ve made, and how they relate to the assignment?

If the answer to any of these is yes, put those cards together.

8. Refine your outline
Ask yourself:

• Can I make a ‘theme’ or ‘summary’ card?
• Are the ideas in the Middle all pointing in the same direction (a onepronged essay)? If so, arrange them in some logical order that relates to the assignment.
• Are the ideas pointing in different directions, with arguments for and against, or about two different aspects of the topic (a two-pronged essay)?
• Are the cards in the Beginning in the best order? Generally you want to state your broad approach first, then refer to basic information background (such as definitions or generally agreed on ideas).
• Are the cards at the End in the best order? (You may not have any cards for your End yet . . . read on.)

9. Add to the outline
Ask yourself:

• Have I got big gaps that are making it hard to see an overall shape?
• >>> (Solution: make temporary cards that approximately fill the gap: ‘find example’ or ‘think of counter-argument’.)

• Have I got plenty in one pile but nothing in another?
• >>> (Solution: get whichever pile you have most cards for, into order. That will help you see where you go next, and you can make new cards as you see what’s needed.)

10. Not working?

• Am I stuck because I can’t think of what my basic approach should be?
• >>> (Solution: start with the Middle cards and think of how these ideas can address the assignment. If one point seems stronger than the others, see if you can think of others that build on it.)
• Am I stuck because my ideas don’t connect to each other?
• >>> (Solution: find the strongest point—the one that best addresses the assignment. Then see how the other points might relate to it. They might give a different perspective, or a contradictory one, but if they connect in some way, you can use them to develop your response to the assignment.)
• Am I stuck because I haven’t got a Beginning or an End?
• >>> (Solution: make two temporary cards:








on the first, write ‘This essay will show…’ and finish the sentence by summarising the information you’re going to put forward, the argument you’re going to make or the two points of view you’re going to discuss;

on the second, write ‘This essay has shown…’ and finish the sentence by recapping the information you will have given by the end of the essay, the argument you will have made, or by comingdown in favour of one of the two points of view.)

IN THIS SERIES ABOUT THE ESSAY WRITING PROCESS:

Previously…

• Stage One: Getting Ideas
• Stage Two: Choosing Ideas

To follow…

• Step Four: Drafting
• Step Five: Revising
• Step Six: Editing