UMUC

Effective Writing Center (EWC)

I have an assignment, now what?

Prewriting and Outlining (Continued ...)

Prewriting and Outlining PDF

Outlining your Paper

An outline is a plan for the paper that will help you organize and structure your ideas in a way that effectively communicates them to your reader and supports your thesis statement. You’ll want to work on an outline after you’ve completed some of the other exercises, since having an idea what you’ll say in the paper will make it much easier to write. An outline can be very informal; you might simply jot down your thesis statement, what the introduction will discuss, what you’ll say in the body of the paper, and what you want to include in the conclusion.

Remember that all writing—even academic writing—needs to tell a “story”: the introduction often describes what has already happened (the background or history of your topic), the body paragraphs might explain what is currently happening and what needs to happen (this often involves discussing a problem, the need for a solution, and possible solutions), and the conclusion usually looks to the future by focusing on what is likely to happen (what might happen next, and whether a solution is likely). If you work on telling a story in the paper, it will help you to structure it in a way that the reader can easily follow and understand.

Sometimes you may be required (or you may want) to develop a more formal outline with numbered and lettered headings and subheadings. This will help you to demonstrate the relationships between the ideas, facts, and information within the paper. Here’s an example of what this might look like:

  • Introduction
    • Fact that grabs audience attention
    • Background/history of issue/problem/topic
    • Thesis statement)

  • Current state of issue/problem/topic
    • Topic/claim sentence: make a claim that explains the paragraph is about
    • Evidence that supports/explains the claim (this is often research from secondary sources)
    • Analysis that explains how the evidence support your claim and why this matters to the paper’s thesis statement

  • The need for a solution or course of action
    • Topic/claim
    • Evidence
    • Analysis

  • Possible Solution
    • Topic/claim
    • Evidence
    • Analysis

  • Conclusion
    • What might happen now?
    • Is a solution likely?
    • What’s the future of the issue?

Your outline will contain more detailed information, and if there are certain areas that the assignment requires you to cover, then you can modify the outline to include these. You can also expand it if you’re writing a longer research paper: the discussion of the problem might need several paragraphs, for example, and you might discuss the pros and cons of several possible solutions.

Resources

<< previous