Post-Draft Outline

Post Draft Outline

Wait, didn't we just turn in an outline?

Pre-draft outlines are good for generating ideas. But let's be honest, how many times did you look at that outline, while you were actually drafting?

Even if you did refer to it while you were drafting, or built off of your memories of it, it's very likely that you didn't follow it exactly. You probably made small changes as well as large ones, along the way, as you encountered the "real world" situation your essay faced.

Post-draft outlines let us see it all at once. Even better, they let us experiment with changes with no risk. It's easy to rearrange a few sentences, and get a sense of what the net effect will be on an argument.

So, let's try it. Pull open the file of your research essay draft, whatever the most current version of it is. (If you've added more to it since turning in the rough draft assignment, great. Use the most complete draft you've got.)

How to do it:

• Step 1: count the number of paragraphs in the draft.
• Step 2: open a new Word document. Create a numbered list on that document--one number for each paragraph in your draft.

• Step 4: step back and view the completed list. Read through it, line by line. This should allow to you to get a sense of what the flow of the overall product is, at the moment.

As we covered before, it's a heck of a lot easier to move one small sentence around on a page, then to try and envision half of a paragraph elsewhere in a full draft.

To look at a paragraph, do the same basic thing:

count the number of sentences in that paragraph; create a numbered list that has one number per sentence; and jot a summary of what each sentence says on that list.

You should be able to quickly spot repetition, bulk, or empty lines in this way.

This is probably too time-consuming to do with EVERY paragraph, but if you've got one that just doesn't want to behave, give this a try.

This draft has 5 paragraphs, currently. So, my numbered list goes to 5.

Post Draft Outline

(your draft will probably have more paragraphs, which is good)

• Step 3: on the new document, write no more than ONE SENTENCE describing what the paragraph is about, for each number on the list. Less is fine, like a phrase.

What can this tell us?

That's where the post-draft outline comes in.

It's very hard to get one overall picture of what a multi-page essay looks like, structurally. Remembering what's on page 3, by the time you get to page 5, can be difficult. By the time you get to page 8, fugettaboutit.

If you see repetitive ideas in different paragraph summaries

If you had a hard time simplifying a paragraph's contents into one sentence...

then you know you'll need to condense these ideas down, combine them, or delete something.

then that's a sign that there are too many primary ideas in that paragraph, and it should be broken into smaller paragraph pieces

If you seem to be missing a step or notice a gap

then you can fill in further information in that hole

You can also use this opportunity to experiment. What happens if you swap the order of your examples? What about if you move the story of your personal experience to the first paragraph? To the next-to-last?

So far, we've been talking about the entire essay draft.

But this same technique can be used on a smaller scale, too: To bring a closer look to one particular paragraph that seems problematic.

I think you'll find this post-draft outline very useful to see your essay in a new way. Hopefully this offers inspiration to move forward, getting this thing ready for completion!