Writing outlines for your essays will often help you write a better first draft (and subsequently, the final one too). By doing some of the work during the outline, you eliminate a portion of the work that needs to be done in the draft. Outlining is a great time to sort through your ideas, refine them, and order them in a way that makes sense. There are proven steps on how to write an essay outline for college, so check them out.
Pin Down Your Topic
Good outlines, just like good essays, can’t be written if you don’t know your topic. So this first step is always to look at your essay prompt carefully and choose a topic that fits the bill. When choosing a topic, keep in mind that you generally want something that is neither too broad nor too narrow.
For example, if you were to write an essay of 5-7 pages and wanted to talk about steroids, you would have way too much information to sift through. However, if you narrowed steroids down too far and wanted to focus solely on steroid usage in fifteen-year-olds in a specific part of the country, you may not find enough information to sustain a paper that long. Find the right balance.
Full Sentence Outline
When writing up your outline, you have the choice of quickly jotting down phrases/ideas or full sentences. If you write the sentences up in the outline, then you only have to copy them over (and slightly modify) when you assemble your first draft. It is for this reason that full sentences are recommended.
At the very least, consider going beyond a few keywords and working with rough ideas. Also, bear in mind that these full sentences don’t have to be the best ones you’ve ever crafted. They just need to get the point across and the information down, so that later you have some solid material to work with.
Getting Things In the Right Order
When working on the outline for you essay, remember to include all the parts and shape it so that it will follow your essay structure. Start first with the introduction paragraph, include your thesis. From here, start asking yourself questions. Do you need a background information paragraph or can you just dive into body paragraph #1?
With every paragraph, make sure to include the topic sentence and concluding sentence. It is also a good idea to include the support that backs up your claims (whether directly quoted or paraphrased) and your analysis. Again, the more work you do in the outline, the less work you have to do when you are writing up the first draft.
If you’re having trouble figuring out how to order things, think back in terms of ideas. Every paragraph should represent one idea. If you’re wondering why a certain section might seem too packed in, it’s probably because you’ve got two different ideas kicking around in the same paragraph (or in this case, section of the outline).
So, ask yourself what the main idea of each section is about. Then, make sure you have things spread out, so that there is only one idea per paragraph. Lastly, once you have all of the main ideas out in front of you, you can more easily decide what order you want them to appear in.
Choose Outline Format That Works for You
It might sound arbitrary, but you need to pick the right format if you want your outline to make sense to you. You need to choose between a bulleted outline (using all bullets), an alphanumerical outline (using Arabic numerals and letters), or a decimal outline (using all Arabic numerals that extend by decimal points).
Don’t Be Afraid To Change Things Around
An outline does not have to set things in stone. In fact, although this guide recommends you write very fleshed out outlines, feel free to start rough. If you want to start with just key words because that’s easier, go right ahead. Then, once the basic framework is down, you may find it much easier to flesh things out.
Furthermore, as you keep writing an essay outline, you might find that one of your ideas changed or you want to fiddle with the order a little bit. Writing an outline is a great time to experiment to see what you think will work best once it reaches essay form. So, don’t worry about setting things down in stone; an outline can always be changed in whatever way you deem necessary.
Now, outlining essays is an art, much like essay writing itself. Writing outlines might seem difficult and time-consuming at first. But most college instructors will agree that when students outline their essays first, they end up receiving better grades on them by the time they turn a final draft in.