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The Outlining Stage
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Save this outlining template to your computer and use it to fill in all the parts of your essay before you begin writing your rough draft.
Or you can use this PowerPoint outlining tool to help you organize your paper (but first you'll have to put the slides in the right order!)
A few points to remember:
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This template is NOT an exact structure for your
paper. You might not have THREE main points—-you could have two or
four. Because the number of middle paragraphs corresponds to the number
of main points, their number might vary as well.
- Sometimes one of your middle paragraphs might not correspond
to a main point. In your research project, you must include a paragraph
acknowledging a counter-argument to your position. But you will not
include the counter-argument in your argument preview in the beginning.
- When you fill in this outline template, abbreviate the CONTENT of what you
actually plan to write in your paragraphs, not notes to yourself about
what you might generally DO in the paper.
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The Writing Stage
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For some, writing the paper is the easiest stage of
all, but for others it is the most intimidating.
Here are some pointers
to help you compose your paper with less stress:
- Write in your natural voice instead of forcing yourself into
"essay" mode and trying to sound smart. If your natural voice leads to
grammatical errors, you can deal with them during the editing stage.
- Use your outline as a guide for writing your paragraphs. Free
yourself from holding all of your ideas in your head at once by
referring to the ideas you have already laid out in your outline. If
you feel more comfortable writing your draft before you compose your
outline, you should write your draft first. But then come back and
write an outline afterwards and make adjustments to your draft if you
discover gaps or find that your ideas need to be in a different order.
- Try not to overwhelm yourself with grammatical concerns at
this stage. Over-monitoring yourself can lead to a robotic style of
writing, which will be more harmful to your paper in the long run than
grammar errors, which you can fix later on anyway.
- Focus on writing complete paragraphs and making your paragraphs connect to each other logically.
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