How many drafts does it take to get to the juicy center of a masterpiece? 

The Outline: Part I

Oh, sweet endings, how do I love thee? Let me count the drafts it took to claw my way to you. I could even add the pre-draft process for a still sweeter finish. You were hard won and worth every hair-pulling trial…I hope. Dear final draft, don’t let me down; be the A+, award-winning, scholarship-earning piece of writing-craft I’ve worked so hard to make you. Don’t let my use of other people’s valuable editing time be in vain, or my defense of word choice prove unsound…

Drama aside, the amount of times I have thought I was done only to be shown how much work was still necessary before I could submit something was disheartening. Even when on my own deadlines—not just school assignments—I have experienced several moments of great disappointment. Each time I was kindly (mostly kindly) told, “This is great. I can’t wait to see the finished product,” I felt my heart sink and sadly took my papers, said thank you for looking at it, and went back to my computer. 

The shock of hearing I wasn’t finished always led to sharper stories, arguments and analyses. My shock would refocus on how I could have possibly thought it was done in the first place.

My most recent experience with this was with a creative piece. In my painstaking search for the perfect placement of a specific speech, I made a glaring chronological mistake. Remember: Order matters! I was on what I thought was the second-to-last draft, which I thought would consist of only minor changes. I was very wrong. I was also very glad my editor was as detailed and nit-picky as she was. Timeline/continuity disaster now fixed, I had the opportunity to hone many other scenes, rhymes, and speeches, (I believe I am still one more draft away from printing…I hope).

So, we will start at the beginning of the drafting process and take a few weeks to break down the writing process in more detail than I usually would.

The Outline

An outline is a way to systematically break down your draft into individual paragraphs and sections. It organizes your notes and the research you’ve already done and begins to give shape to your overall ideas. It will clarify your goals for the final paper, story, proposal, whatever, etc. I have tried to skip this step many times thinking it would save time. I’ve discovered skipping the outline creates a jumble of ideas that takes longer to make sense of than the time an outline would have taken. An outline will simplify that jumble.

To begin your outline,

• Use bullet points just like this.

  • It helps clarify subcategories and is easier to see where things need to be rearranged.

    • Yes, you will do a lot of rearranging.

• An outline includes rough topic sentences or ideas to allow you to place the supportive quotes you’ve chosen from your research. Each quote should support some part of that topic idea.

  • Tip: Actually insert your quote with its citation right into your outline for easy copy/paste access. It will save time when you are typing your first draft.

• Outlines also include rough transitional sentences or ideas to end each paragraph and start new one.

• Your bullet points do not need to be written in complete sentences like I am doing here. Some form of shorthand is fine. 

  • Make ABSOLUTELY sure you will understand what that shorthand means when you come back to write your draft!

• If your project is lengthy, make a bullet point for each section heading.

  • The next bullet will be the topic of that sections first paragraph.

    • After that, your supporting evidence.

      • Maybe a quote.

    • Another piece of evidence

      • Another quote.

    • Next, add what you think it all means and how it proves your point.

    • Finally, put the concluding idea that transitions to your next paragraph.

  • When you are done organizing that section, you are ready to transition to the next.

    • Repeat the process with all your following paragraphs.

  • If it’s a shorter project—no sections—your first bullet heading can simply be the first paragraph topic subject.

    • The opening paragraph to the entire project—The INTRO—should be its own bullet with nothing else. When you are writing your first/rough draft, you will compose an intro last.

    • Same for the CONCLUSION. Save it for later.

• Copy, paste, remove and rearrange as needed.

It will become clear very quickly if your thesis is unclear or lacking evidence. The transitions at the end of each paragraph are very important. Your outline will show how your ideas flow and lock into each other before you even write a real sentence. You may have to move paragraph 4 up to 2 and create a whole new paragraph, or just swap them. Paragraph 3 could turn out to be irrelevant. Who knows what lies at the heart of a paper’s structure? The Outline knows. It will help you feel strong in your writing process. Let it work for you and go forward to your first draft in confidence.

May nerd-dom abound!

Katrina Pavlovich

Quote-of-the-day

“My writing process is very organic. I start with an idea. I have the general story arc and the cast. But then I sit down to write, and things change.”—Sarah Addison Allen

Sarah Addison Allen Quotes. BrainyQuote.com, BrainyMedia Inc, 2020. https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/sarah_addison_allen_620214, accessed February 17, 2020.