After-the-Fact Outline
As a revising tool, an after-the-fact outline can show you if your draft really says what you think it does. This technique is based on the principle that every paragraph serves a larger purpose in the essay as a whole. For example, when you say what a paragraph "does" in an essay, you are saying how it helps develops your thesis.
Further, by revealing how different parts of your essay relate to each other and to your thesis, this technique also helps you to take control of your writing.
Format:
Include the following elements in your outline:
(State the thesis of your essay)
(In two or three sentences, describe the overall movement of thought, from beginning to end)
(Briefly describe what the paragraph says. Next, describe what it does in relation to the rest of the essay)
How to Create the Outline:
- For what each paragraph says, write a one-sentence paraphrase of the paragraph. In your own words, what does the paragraph assert in a nutshell?
- For what each paragraph does, explain the function that the paragraph serves for the essay. How does its assertion move the argument forward?
- For the Strategy, explain how your essay has been designed to persuade readers that your thesis is reasonable.
Example Functions of Paragraphs
- Compare or contrast: Introduce objects or events to be examined alongside each other, for the purpose of clarifying their features or evaluating them.
- Concede: Acknowledge the presence of a fact or opinion that might counter your own argument
- Conclude: Show that the facts and opinions previously cited lead to new knowledge or judgment
- Define: State the meaning of a word or words previously or subsequently used.
- Describe: Name one or more features of an object to help the reader imagine the object precisely or understand it fully.
- Evaluate: Make some judgment about an event or condition named in a previous paragraph or paragraphs.
- Exemplify: Give an illustration of what is meant by a previous statement, or give a concrete Instance that will help make the point credible or vivid.
- Identify a cause or result: Point out what produced a particular event or what effects that event produced.
- Narrate: Name an event or a chronological series of events to assert that it occurred or to help particularize a previous point.
- Counter: Offer reasoning or evidence to demonstrate the falsity of a previous point.
- Particularize: Enumerate the specific facts or details implied or summarized previously or subsequently.
- Qualify: Restrict the meaning of an assertion already made.
- Restate: Put into different words an assertion already made to clarify or adjust the emphasis.
- State: Make an assertion about the subject of the discourse.
- Summarize: Bring together the principal ideas already introduced.
- Support: Offer reasoning or evidence to demonstrate the rightness of a previous paragraph.
Using this technique before considering a draft to be final will help you check your logic and organization. Are you really saying what you think you are? If not, you can change your essay to fit your outline, or change your outline to fit your essay.