Essay Writing for Neurodivergent Students: Outlining
This post covers the second step in writing an essay: creating an outline. At this point, you should have already selected a topic for your essay. If you don’t yet have a topic, head on over to Essay Writing for Neurodivergent Students: Selecting a Topic. Once you have your topic, read on to learn how outlining can be helpful, and how to create an outline.
Why Make an Outline?
You’ve probably heard of outlining before, but you might be wondering why it’s so important. Wouldn’t it be faster and easier to just start writing? What’s the point of adding another step? Isn’t that just extra work, making the whole thing take longer?
Many teachers will recommend outlining, but many students resist doing “extra” steps simply because they are told to do them. And honestly, I can’t say I blame them. In fact, I’m actually in favor of questioning why something is important. Especially for neurodivergent students, the most effective strategy often differs from standard advice, which is designed for neurotypical students.
I’m all about doing things whatever way works best for you, even if that means deviating from the standard path. Perhaps your approach is to write whatever comes to mind until you hit the minimum required length, then turn it in. And if that works for you and you’re satisfied with the grade you get, absolutely keep doing it! No need to fix something that isn’t broken.
If Writing Is a Struggle
However, if you’re here reading this, chances are writing an essay isn’t so simple for you.
Perhaps you find yourself staring at a blank page, struggling to get started. Or maybe you’re able to write a little bit, but you run out of ideas well before meeting the length requirement. Even if you can write the full amount, you may have trouble editing it into an organized and coherent essay.
Or, perhaps you’re unsatisfied with the grades you’ve been getting, but aren’t sure how to improve. Or maybe you’re able to write a satisfactory essay, but you find the process vague and stressful, or it takes you a very long time.
If any of these situations sound like you, know that writing an essay doesn’t have to be so confusing and difficult. You shouldn’t have to spend hours struggling with what to write next, or rewriting and editing until it’s perfect, or wondering why the grades you’re getting aren’t what you’d hoped for.
How Outlining Makes Writing Faster and Easier
Although it may feel like extra work, outlining can actually make writing an essay easier and faster in the long run. It’s sort of like looking at a map and planning your route before starting a road trip. It’s a bit of extra work upfront, but it makes it much easier to take the shortest route to your destination (and avoid getting lost!) than if you just started driving in what vaguely seems like the correct direction.
It’s the same with writing an essay. You could just start writing, and you may end up with a decent essay from that. However, it might take you a long time, or be very stressful, or lead to a less-than-ideal grade. In those cases, creating an outline can be extremely helpful, saving time and sanity for more enjoyable tasks.
Your outline provides a clear path from blank page to finished essay, breaking the task down into more manageable chunks. You don’t have to wonder what to write next, because it’s all planned out. And, it can make editing much faster, because the basic structure is already well-established before the first draft. On top of all that, starting with an outline often leads to more organized and cohesive essays, which is a major factor in getting a good grade.
Now that we’ve discussed the why, let’s move on to actually creating an outline.
How to Make an Outline
In general, your outline should contain a main point, plus about three supporting points. There’s some flexibility in how many supporting points you have, but 2-4 is typical for a standard middle school, high school, or undergraduate essay.
You may have some idea what main point you’d like to make with this essay. If so, you can definitely keep that in mind when gathering evidence. If not, that’s also perfectly fine, and sometimes even advantageous. In either case, your first step will be to gather evidence related to your topic.
Step 1: Gather Evidence
Start by finding as many pieces of evidence as you can that are related to your topic. Most likely, this evidence will take the form of quotes, either from an assigned book or from academic articles. Don’t worry about finding the best evidence yet, just find as much as you can that seems relevant.
Literary Essays
If this is a literary essay about a single book assigned by the teacher, I’m assuming that you’ve already read the book. If not, you’ll want to read the book before writing your essay. As you read, mark any lines that seem related to your topic by underlining, highlighting, using sticky notes, or any other method that will help you find the lines later.
If you’ve already read the book, you may have already marked some potential quotes for your essay. If so, flip through and mark any ones that specifically pertain to your essay topic.
If you didn’t make notes while reading, that’s okay too. Go ahead and skim through the book, searching for any key words related to your topic, and mark those lines. In addition, there may be specific lines or scenes you remember reading that seem relevant to your topic. If so, find and mark those.
If you have a digital copy of the book, you can also find relevant quotes using the search function. You might search for your topic directly, or for terms related to it. If you’re planning to write about a specific character, search for their name. This can be a lot faster than skimming a physical book by hand.
Research Papers
If this is a research paper, then finding your evidence will involve more than looking through a single book assigned by the teacher. Depending on the assignment, level of schooling, and specific class you’re taking, finding evidence could look like a lot of different things. Based on your situation, you may want to consider articles published in academic journals, popular media articles, social media posts, physical media such as books or newspapers, textbooks, class notes, or even your own personal experiences.
Unfortunately, covering all the ways to collect evidence for different types of research essays is outside the scope of this post. However, your teacher should have provided some indication of how to move forward with gathering evidence for your essay. See if you can find any guidance in your class notes or the assignment instructions. If not, it would be reasonable to ask the teacher what types of evidence they would accept, and how they would recommend finding that type of evidence.
Consolidating Your Evidence
Once you have a good amount of evidence, it may be helpful to copy the quotes onto a separate piece of paper or text document. That way, you can see them all in one place, without having to flip through the book.
If there are a lot of quotes, or the quotes are very long, I would suggest saving time by copying just enough that you can remember what the quote is about. Also include the page number so that you can easily find the original quote later. You’ll also need to include the page number after any quote you use in your essay, so noting it here will save time later.
Now that you have an initial list of evidence, you’re ready to move on to the next step.
Step 2: Find Your Supporting Points
Next, look for patterns in the evidence/quotes. Are there common themes or points that the evidence repeatedly supports? If so, put your evidence/quotes into groups based on what theme or point they support. These groups will eventually become your 2-4 pieces of supporting evidence.
If you’re having difficulty finding these patterns, there are a number of strategies that can help. If you learn best with visual or kinesthetic support, it may be helpful to copy each quote onto its own strip of paper or post-it note. Then, you can freely move them around, testing out different groupings to see what fits together.
Another strategy is to summarize the main point of each quote, ideally using only one or two words. The goal of this is to find broad themes, which may be similar across multiple quotes. Keeping it to just a word or two can make it easier to spot these patterns. The summaries may not be exactly the same, but similar words can indicate potential groupings.
As you’re doing this, you may find that some of the quotes fit into the categories you’ve identified, while others don’t really seem to fit anywhere. That’s okay! As long as you have enough evidence to write a full essay, there’s no need to use every single quote you’ve found. Set aside any outliers, and move on to the next step using the groups you’ve identified.
But what if you can’t find any patterns at all? Don’t worry, you can still write a perfectly good essay with only one quote (or piece of evidence) per supporting point. Select 2-5 quotes that stand out to you in some way. For example, they might support a main point you have in mind. Or, you might choose the quotes that you find the most interesting, easiest to understand, or that you have a lot to say about. Then, move on to the next step.
Step 3: Draft a Main Point
At this point, you should have several candidates for supporting points. These supporting points may be the themes you found in the previous step (with each point having several quotes), or they may each have a single quote.
If You Had a Main Point In Mind
If you had a main point in mind when you started this process, go ahead and test it against your potential supporting points. Do the supporting points actually support your main point? If so, you’re almost done with the outline. First, pick your favorite 2-4 supporting points. If you have leftover supporting points, set those aside for later. You may not need them, but they could be useful if your original selections don’t result in an essay that meets the length requirement. Then, move on to the next step.
If your supporting points don’t actually support your main point, no need to worry. Simply change the main point to match 2-4 of the supporting points.
For instance, suppose you had planned to write about why dogs are the best pets, but after researching you found more evidence that cats are the best. You could go out and find more evidence for your original argument. However, it’s often much easier to simply change your main point, so that you can use the evidence you already have.
You may still think dogs are the best. But, with your current evidence, writing an essay about that would require you to redo the entire research phase. And that’s a lot of extra work. So, whether or not you personally agree with your new argument, for the sake of completing the assignment in a timely manner, I would suggest changing your main point rather than finding entirely new supporting evidence.
If You Didn’t Have a Main Point In Mind
If you didn’t have a main point in mind, that’s okay too. Essentially, your goal is to come up with a main point or an argument based on the supporting points you’ve found. This could mean noticing how the supporting points all speak to a larger theme, or support a certain stance on a controversial topic. For literary essays, your main point may involve interpreting a particular piece of imagery in a book, or hypothesizing about a certain character’s hidden motivations.
In general, it can be helpful to add some controversy to your main point. For example, if I had researched the differences between cats and dogs, I could write a paper simply comparing and contrasting the two. However, arguing why one is a superior pet might make for a more compelling essay, because it takes a controversial stance rather than being purely informative.
This makes the topic more interesting and relatable to others, allowing them to engage with and respond to the essay. Rather than throwing information into the void with no clear purpose, adding a controversial stance opens the door for additional discussion.
In addition, keeping your topic narrow can paradoxically make it easier to write more. If a topic is vague, then you will only be able to make vague statements about it, which often leads to quickly running out of things to write. In contrast, when your topic is more specific, that allows you to do an in-depth analysis of all the details. Essentially, narrowing your topic gives you more specific things to focus on, which makes it easier to write more.
Step 4: Assemble Your Outline
You’re in the home stretch now! This last step is mostly a formality, and you may have already done it as you were following the previous steps. By now, you should have a main point as well as 2-4 supporting points, with each supporting point having at least one piece of evidence (quote).
To finish your outline, arrange these pieces of information in the following format:
Main point
Supporting point 1
Quote or evidence 1 for supporting point 1
Quote or evidence 2 for supporting point 1
Supporting point 2
Quote or evidence 1 for supporting point 2
Quote or evidence 2 for supporting point 2
Supporting point 3
Quote or evidence 1 for supporting point 3
Quote or evidence 2 for supporting point 3
Your outline may be longer or shorter, depending on how many supporting points you have, as well as how many quotes or pieces of evidence you have for each supporting point.
Congratulations, your outline is done!
Conclusion
This post discusses how outlining can make essay writing easier, and provides step-by-step instructions for creating an outline. First, it explains how to gather evidence related to your topic, then find patterns in that evidence to come up with 2-4 supporting points. These supporting points can then be used to develop your main point. This main point along with the supporting points (and their evidence) make up your outline.
Once your outline is complete, the next step is to draft your thesis statement.