Transcript: Week 15 Content Overview (and Advice)

Before I get to this week’s overview, I want to take a minute to ask if you completed the writing process action plan from last week. If so, you’ve drafted your thesis and you already know some of the main points that your essay will cover. This means that you are in a very good position to begin the outline assigned in this week’s writing process action plan. Please contact your instructor early this week with any questions you might have about your preliminary thesis.

Because the four page draft of your essay is due on Friday, we strongly encourage you to complete your outline by Tuesday so that you can move directly to drafting on Wednesday. This will give you a solid three days within which to complete the full four pages that are required for this week’s draft workshop.

Now let’s talk a little bit about outlines. I have seen far too many students skip outlining and dive right into drafting because they view outlining as a time-consuming, unnecessary extra step. Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, I will argue that it is much easier for students to develop a longer essay if they start with an outline. I would also argue that the outlining process can actually decrease the amount of time you will need to spend in drafting. This is something I honestly didn’t buy into until well into my graduate school years, but I hope that you will hear me out and avoid my naiveté!

At the onset, an outline will save you the frustration of staring at a blank screen while you wait for inspiration to hit you. You know you’ve all been there! Even more important, however, an outline will save you time by providing you with a writing plan as well as a base structure within which you can simply and relatively quickly add your analysis and supporting details.

You see, essay organization can be incredibly challenging when writers generate pages of text and then try to impose order. It is so hard to create a critical distance from your words once you’ve put them on paper; and students who don’t begin the process with an early eye toward organization and structure will -- more often than not – end up with drafts that ramble, drafts that include redundant, irrelevant, illogically developed, or seemingly obvious content. Please, don’t let this happen to you! When you take the time to outline, to lay out your thesis and your topic sentences, along with a few paraphrased facts to ensure you have support to develop your main points, what you end up with is a detailed roadmap for the entire essay; and a roadmap can be easily expanded and quickly checked for gaps in logic or development. All of this in mind, we encourage you to print out and complete the outline template early this week. Then, talk to your instructor or a tutor at the REAL Center or ILC if you have any questions about the base structure of your outline.

Finally, you will notice that this week’s attendance-related assignments are scheduled differently. Unlike most weeks, your first attendance-related submission (the four page draft) is due on Friday instead of our typical Wednesday. Although there is no Wednesday submission this week, don’t think this means we are giving you a vacation! On the contrary, we just wanted to provide you additional time within which to complete your outline and four-page draft. Please use the time with wisdom, and feel free to submit your draft early if you are able to do so! Your workshop responses due on Sunday will be this week’s second attendance-related assignment.