Prewriting and outlining are essential to the writing process, as they will guide you and help you define and plan your work's scope. These strategies are not just useful in the beginning of your writing process but can be revisited as you write. While this handout covers general concepts, always work with your audience and assignment in mind.

Analyzing Your Assignment

Determine the genre (type of writing), purpose, audience, and tone of your writing to simplify and focus your writing process.

• Determine the purpose of your writing.
  • What has your instructor or the assignment description asked you to do? What is the purpose of the paper? What is the genre of the assignment?
• Identify the audience of your paper.
  • Who will read my paper? What does my audience already know? What does my audience not already know? What topics, details, or approaches will interest my audience? What level of language should I use?
• Establish the tone of your work.
  • Do I sound knowledgeable? Do I sound professional without sounding artificial? Am I using jargon or terms my audience may not be familiar with?

Prewriting and Outlining Strategies

Create a Cluster Diagram

To help you understand the relationship between your ideas and visualize how you could organize them in an essay, group your thoughts into categories according to their similarities.

Formulate a Thesis Statement

A thesis statement presents your main point, limits your topic, and indicates your paper’s organization. It is typically placed at the end of your introduction. Composing a working thesis that incorporates your main claims before you begin writing can help you structure and form a clear argument throughout your essay. You will likely continue to refine your thesis as you write.

Try Freewriting

Freewriting can be a great way to get all your thoughts down on paper. Try writing without stopping, setting a timer, writing down all you know about your topic or even recording a conversation where you explain your topic to a friend.

After freewriting, you might find that your paper jumps among topics and lacks focus. There are a few different strategies you can use to organize your draft:

• Make a reverse outline: Make a heading for each paragraph that sums up what that paragraph is about. Move any off-topic sentences to the paragraph(s) where they belong.
• Pick a color for each subtopic your paper touches on and color code each sentence in your essay. Put all the sentences of the same color in the same paragraph. You could also print out your paper and use scissors to cut it up and rearrange paragraphs or sentences.
• Do another freewrite—you may find that after getting all your ideas out, your second draft will be more focused and cohesive.

Develop an Outline

Outlines help you organize all the information you have gathered. Outlines can be as detailed or as general as you want. The process of creating an outline depends on your individual writing style and creation process, so there is no wrong way to make an outline.