What is an Outline and Why it is Important for Writing?
Outline is a framework that becomes a reference in building an article. Outline helps a writer in organizing his ideas. Without an outline, a piece of writing flows without a good focus and has the potential to fail to achieve its writing goals. This article discusses what an outline is, why an outline is important for writing, and the concrete steps for creating and developing an outline.
What is an Outline?
If you are a student, you may have been assigned to write an essay or article. At first, you might start by choosing a topic, or looking for topic ideas on the internet. After you find a topic in your head, suddenly your mind feels empty, full of confusion, and has no direction to go. Your eyes stare at a blank paper (or laptop screen) and ask yourself, "Where should I start my essay?" This condition is experienced not only by a student or a novice writer. Many professional writers also experience this kind of confusion, clumsiness, and lack of direction. The main reason is the absence of an outline that was prepared in advance. In other words, they start writing activities in the wrong way.
How to start a post properly? You can guess the answer. Yes, you are right, by making an outline first. Then, what exactly is an outline?
Imagine that you are going to build a house. What do you think you do first? You must have some ideas about your dream home. You want to have a large yard with a swimming pool, a comfortable veranda, a beautiful living room, luxurious rooms, clean bathrooms, and a neat kitchen. You also know that the veranda doesn't have to be in front of the house; maybe the veranda is on the side of the house. Even if these brilliant ideas are in your head, you can't possibly build your dream home with abstract ideas running around in your head. You have to make the ideas concrete first.
With those ideas in your head, you go to a friend and discuss your dream home with him. What will he say? Exactly, "Let's go visit Alfred." Who is that Alfred? He is an architect. The architect will make a complete scheme of your dream home based on the ideas you convey to him. What you see from the schematic is not the walls, floors, doors and windows, but the lines that build it all up. You then hire home builders to build your home. Will they be referring to the abstract ideas you have in your head? Of course not. They will refer to the schematic of your house created by Alfred.
Writing is like building a house. If in building a house you need to make a scheme, then in writing you need to make an outline. In other words, an outline is a schema for your writing. By making an outline, you are no longer referring to the ideas in your head, but referring to the outline that you have made. The outline itself is your ideas in concrete form. Compared to abstract ideas in your head that can change in seconds, outlines are ideas that, although they can be changed or expanded, are organized.
Why is an Outline Important for Writing?
A tailor won't make clothes without a sketch, you won't build a house without a schematic, a writer won't write without an outline. Why is that?
As I have mentioned, an outline is a concrete form of organized ideas. So, in short, an outline is important in writing because of its function to organize ideas. With an outline, your mind will not run wild and move from one discussion to another without a clear direction.
An overzealous writer usually can't control the flow of his writing. He forces the reader to go back and forth to explore his disorganized ideas. This is a bad example and should not be imitated. In addition, the passionate writer may forget important points to be discussed in his writing because he is too busy breaking down unimportant ideas. This can be avoided if he has an outline.
You can certainly conclude that outlines are important in writing for two reasons. The first is its function to organize ideas and the second is its function to remind us of the ideas that we must describe in our writings. In other words, the outline prevents us from forgetting about the ideas we should write about. But I will add one more thing. The third most important function of the outline is that it limits us so that we know where our writing should end.
Outlines, simply put, have three main functions that make them important in writing, namely: determining the beginning of the article, organizing the ideas in the writing, and determining the end of the article.
How to Create an Outline?
You already know what an outline is and why it's important in writing. Now, let's see how to create an outline.
Take notes of what you know about the topic
You have a topic to write about. The question is, what do you know about the topic? How much knowledge do you have on the topic? Let's say you have enough knowledge about the topic you want to write about. Make a note of what you know about the topic.
You can make notes in the form of a keyword list or draw a keyword web similar to a spider's web. By creating, let's call, a word network, you have not only the key words but the relationships between them. This will help you decide where to start your writing.
Think about your Readers
When creating an outline, think of your readers. This is what you should think about. Can they understand this idea? To understand the idea of X, what must they understand first? For example, if you are writing about how to make passive sentences properly, are you sure that starting your writing with passive voice formulas will help? Shouldn't you first explain the meaning of the passive voice and its function in conversation?
Let's stick with an example of the topic I just mentioned. What is the purpose of your essay? Of course, the purpose of your essay is to give the reader an understanding of how to make grammatically correct passive sentences. Think of your readers. What do they need to understand in order to make grammatical passive sentences? They must first understand what a passive voice is, what its function is, what are the examples, and how to construct it.
Arrange them Up
You already have a number of keywords that represent the ideas that readers need to understand in order to achieve your writing goals. Now is the time to organize those keywords. Think about where you start and where you will end your writing. In general, an essay begins with an understanding and ends with a conclusion. You can follow this path unless you are writing a short story or novel. However, even writing fiction requires an outline which we will discuss on another occasion.
First, give the reader an understanding of the topic you are discussing. Make clear boundaries about the terms you use. After that, organize your ideas narrowly (from general to specific). Lead your readers to understand one idea at a time and make sure that the flow and connection of the ideas is maintained. At the end, come to a conclusion.
Consider an example below:
You will write an essay entitled "Aristotle's Brilliant Ideas on Language". The purpose of your writing is to provide readers with an understanding that Aristotle had a number of ideas about language that you would find brilliant. In order to achieve this goal, all you have to do is start your essay by giving a description of Aristotle and stating that this great philosopher thought not only of the universe and politics but also of language. Imagine that your readers are now curious about what ideas Aristotle had about language.
List and explain Aristotle's ideas about language one by one. Be sure not to rush into two ideas at once. You can change the organization if you see fit. But make sure that all of Aristotle's ideas about language have been mentioned.
After all the ideas have been spelled out, end with a conclusion. Make sure that there is synchronization between the opening and conclusion paragraphs in your essay. I address this issue in how to write an essay quickly.
A Tips on Writing an Outline
I advise you to look at the table of contents for books written by professional writers. A table of contents is a concrete representation of an outline. By studying the table of contents of a book, you also learn how a professional writer organizes his ideas in the book.
This short article should teach you that an outline is very important in writing. Its functions of organizing ideas cannot be underestimated even by professional writers. And the tips I gave earlier, learn how professional writers write their table of contents, I think you will be ready to make an effective outline of your writing.
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