FYS 100.121: Making an outline

One of the best ways to ensure that an essay will communicate your ideas effectively is to create an outline for the essay.

An outline is a bulleted list showing how the essay is organized. Here is rough sketch of what an essay outline might look like:

Introduction
- Background/context on the essay topic
- Thesis statement: what are you claiming?
Supporting evidence
- State evidence in support of your thesis
- Begin to lay the groundwork for your argument in support of your thesis
Analysis and interpretation
- Make a logical argument explaining how the evidence supports your thesis
- Discuss the implications of your findings
Conclusions
- Restate the thesis and briefly summarize how your argument supports it

When creating your essay outline, don’t just copy the bullet points above. Instead, adapt them as appropriate for your essay. For example, fill in your actual thesis in place of the “thesis statement” bullet point.

Once you have a solid outline, writing the essay will be much easier because you will be simply expanding the outline. The outline will also help keep your essay organized so that the ideas flow naturally.