Outlines: Keeping students coloring inside the lines since forever.

Outlines. I make almost all of my clients at the University Writing Center do them, several times if necessary. I love them. I don't do them often enough, but I love them. Why do I love them? Because spending ten minutes writing a basic outline can save you hours and hours of sleepless nights trying to figure out where in the world your paper's going. I speak from experience. Without an outline, writing a paper can feel like punching yourself in the head, trying to make the next paragraph appear.

What do I mean when I say "write an outline"? Simple. Write down your ideas, your thoughts. Put them into order. Bam. Outline. Sometimes it's crazy simple, like when you're writing a paper on a personal experience. Start with the beginning and make two line notes of what happens next. Nothing more. Do that until you reach the end, and you'll be staring at an outline.

I'll go ahead and provide an example. Let's say I'm writing a paper on, I don't know. Moving. I've moved a lot, so I'll write my imaginary paper on when I moved from Texas to Wright State.

Decided to move

Told my friends

Drive to Ohio

Move into dorms

Say bye to mom

Make friends

Start classes

There's not much there, and some of it's extra information. But I know where my paper's going and now I can add details. This is where you go back and add some information on each event, breaking them up into smaller paragraphs for more specific topics. You might even find a better "topic" to make your paper out of. For example, I had to say goodbye to my girlfriend when I left. That was a significant moment, and I may want to focus my paper on that. Or maybe I want to start with the drive, focusing less on what happened after I got to Ohio and more on what led up to it. There's always options.

So let's say I decide that I want to focus on the drive, and bring up my past life throughout it. I'm a Creative Writing major, so this is probably what I would do, given the chance. So I rearrange my topics and add some details. Now my outline would look something like this:

Day one of drive

-hotel room

-mom in the room, reading

-wondering if I made the right decision

Why I left

-weather

-atmosphere

-I knew Ohio and had friends here (or so I thought)

More about past in Ohio

-Church

-High School/middle/elementary

Day two of drive

-different state

-mom watching television

-will I keep in touch with my friends?

Friends/Relationships in Texas

-Best friends right before I left

-Friendships from earlier

-Girlfriend

--Saying goodbye

-Did I stay in touch with my friends from Ohio, or did I know I wasn't going to talk to them again?

Day three of drive

-close to Ohio

Days before I left

-tearful goodbyes

-burn bridges or stay classy?

-packing van

-leaving home for the last time

Conclusion:

Campus in sight OR I drive through the town I grew up in

Look at that. I've done and wrote myself a really good outline, and I've listened to four Nick Cave songs since I started this article. That was cake. CAKE. And each of those sub-topics can be further expanded, but at this time I would probably start typing away, switching to a different paragraph if I got stuck. I can go back and add sensory details once I have a working draft, and I can fine tune it and refine the dialogue and add all the razz-a-ma-tazz polish after that. But spending twenty minutes jotting down a rough outline of my paper saved me boat loads of time. I know where my paper is going, and I know how it's going to get there. And I do all that on the back of a piece of scrap paper in a coffee shop or while waiting for a professor to show up or whenever I have some time to kill.

If you're writing a research paper, the same principles apply. Grab a few books from the library, write down some interesting topics, some quotes, and then write down your outline. Then go back to your outline and find places where you can add more details, more quotes. Keep your outline on you when you read texts so you can reference it and find places where you can use good information. I can't emphasis the usefulness of outlines enough, but don't take my word for it. Try it out with your next paper, and I'll give you your full money back if you don't find writing your paper significantly easier.