1. Prewriting: OUTLINES
Outlining Your Essay

2. FOCUSING YOUR TOPIC So you’ve narrowed your broad SUBJECT
Down to a focused TOPIC
And you’ve established your MAIN IDEA
And you’ve drafted a THESIS STATEMENT

3. GENERATING IDEAS Now you’ll need material to support that Thesis.
This will be the raw material for your OUTLINE.
To generate ideas:
BRAINSTORM FREEWRITE

4. ELIMINATING & SELECTING
Now that you have ideas on paper, you can
“trim the fat” or “separate the wheat from the chaff” or “find the diamonds in the rough.”
Your goal in selecting is to choose the best ideas that support your thesis.
If they don’t back up
Then you must leave out

5. ELIMINATING & SELECTING
Eliminate, cross out, delete
the poor ideas
the irrelevant ideas
those that don’t support your Thesis
Keep, circle, select
the quality, excellent ideas
the unique, interesting, fresh ideas
those relevant and supportive of your Thesis

6. SELECTING & ORDERING From the remaining list of quality ideas
chose the best 3-5 ideas
Then narrow that list down again to the best 3.

7. ORDERING Lastly, arrange these premium ideas in the “EMPHATIC ORDER”
putting last the “most important” or “most significant”

8. OUTLINING Now it’s time to draft your OUTLINE. OUTLINE THESIS:
I. POINT #1
A. SUPPORT
B. SUPPORT
II. POINT #2
III. POINT #3
Now it’s time to
draft your OUTLINE.

9. OUTLINING THESIS STATEMENT: NUMBERED LIST:
At the top of the Outline page write your Thesis
in a complete sentence
NUMBERED LIST:
Then take the numbered ideas from the previous Brainstorming Exercise and list them here
in Emphatic Order
use Roman numerals

10. OUTLINING MAIN IDEAS: MAIN IDEA =
The Roman Numerals indicate your Main Ideas
each main idea = single paragraph
MAIN IDEA =
Reason
Type or Role
Similarity or Difference
Cause or Effect

11. OUTLINING SUPPORT: TYPES of SUPPORT Beneath each Main Point
List your means of Support
use capital letters for each
TYPES of SUPPORT
Examples, instances
Stats, Anecdotes
Quotes from experts

12. OUTLINING OUTLINE: An Outline for a 5-paragraph essay
THESIS:
I. POINT #1
A. SUPPORT
B. SUPPORT
II. POINT #2
III. POINT #3
OUTLINE:
An Outline for a
5-paragraph essay
should look something
like this:
Each point =
a Body paragraph