Organization: Traditional Outlines

For some papers, particularly long ones, the good old traditional outline still works. It allows the writer to focus in both large and small units; it suggests a coherent procedure and gives the writer a sense of mastery. However, outlines can often go astray and weave themselves into knots: the more impressive they look, sometimes, the harder they are to follow when the writer sits down to do the first draft. 

Advice about traditional outlines is likely to be so commonsensical that it's just plain boring. Nevertheless, for writers who want to improve their skills at outlining, here are three suggestions, which use a modified outline form for illustration.

1). Keep thoughts and details of equal weight parallel in structure.

Here is a simple outline which doesn't work because the writer has strayed from the logical order. Topic: Who is more evil: Frankenstein, Frankenstein's monster, or Dracula?

I Evil as Inversion of Normal Humanity

A. Victor Frankenstein's perverse scientific methods

1. Creates life from dead things
2. Does his work in secret
3. Loses sight of his own motives

1. First act is one of murder
2. Subsequent acts are those of revenge
3. Reads Paradise Lost

1. Takes life instead of giving it
2. Destroys people's free will
3. Cannot cross running water

I Evil inverts normal human behavior.

• A. Victor Frankenstein perverts the constructive ends of science by building his monster.
  1. He creates life from dead things. (Chapter IV)
  2. He does his work "in a solitary chamber," separated from humanity. (p. 48)
  3. "A new species would bless me as its creator and source." (p. 47)

3). Try writing outlines and putting them aside; or, trash your way to glory.

Once upon a time there was a mean old professor who assigned a huge task to one of his graduate students. The student had to read fifty nineteenth-century novels in three months, keep careful notes on their plots, themes, and characters, and present herself at the end of that time for examination. Dutifully and anxiously the student read and read, keeping a fat journal of notes, and showed up, weary and bleary, on the appointed day. The professor asked, "Have you done the task I assigned?" "Yes, sir," she mumbled. "Then," said the professor, "you've no need to take the exam. Doing the work was what I wanted."

An outline can serve the same purpose as the crusty old professor's assignment: it can get you thinking, organizing, matching evidence to ideas, noticing what quotes you need, helping you figure out a line of argument. And then you can go ahead without it. To stick closely to it in some cases might not work, especially if it is elaborate. Writing an outline summary, a list of major points deriving from the Grandmother Outline, might serve you just as well and make you less tense when you start to write. 

This technique of turning the big outline into a kind of trial outline helps writers who characteristically begin their papers with a page covered in doodles, telephone numbers, and bits of ideas scribbled all over in a kind of three-ring circus effect. Whatever structure the writer comes to use, preliminary outlining can help clear the head. It's a more constructive occupation than sharpening a few boxes of pencils, polishing the polish on your furniture, or adding to your collection of paper wads.

   Using The Paper Topic
   Rough Magic
   Grocery Lists
   Up Against The Wall
   Paragraph Outline
   Building On Evidence
   Traditional Outlines
   Starting With Last Paragraph