Are you a person who loves organization, planning, methodical approaches, and creating step-by-step sequences to get a task done?
If you answered “yes” to any of the above, then awesome! You probably have a system together for your writing process, including, perhaps, prewriting strategies such as outlining.
But what if you aren’t a person who loves order, or you are, but you have no idea how to create order in your beautiful, chaotic inner world of ideas? What if your writing process is the classic “brain dump,” maybe the night before a paper is due? What if the thought of creating a structured outline before writing a paper makes you feel like you are breaking out in hives?
Having perfectly organized thoughts in a paper often doesn’t come in a single brain dump. However, sometimes classic pre-writing activities, like outlining, don’t quite “mix” with your writing process or personality.
If so, try this revision exercise—an outline in reverse.
Reverse outlines are a great way to see how your ideas are “hanging together” after you’ve written your rough draft. And reverse outlines are pretty simple to create because you are working from a written document, unlike a regular outline, where you begin with an intimidating blank page.
At the top of a blank document, write your primary thesis or claim for the text. Write down the thesis statement exactly as it appears in your draft. If you can’t find the thesis statement, write “not present.” (This is an important note to make!)
Create two columns on the page below your thesis.
Read, preferably out loud, the first body paragraph of your draft.
In the left column, write “Body Paragraph 1” and then write the topic sentence or main idea of the first body paragraph (again, this should be using only the words that are actually on the page) Then, try to identify the paragraph’s purpose. Do you find more than one main idea in the paragraph? If so, write those sentences/ideas down, too.
In the right column, summarize, in your own words, how the main idea of that paragraph supports the thesis. If you aren’t sure, write down that you aren’t sure.
Repeat steps 3-5 for each body paragraph of the draft.
Once you have completed these steps, you now have a reverse outline! You can look at your outline and note any places where there are several ideas in one paragraph or similar ideas in different places in your essay. This makes it easy to see if you need to group ideas together, move sentences around, add a topic sentence, or clarify your thesis statement.
This is only one way of putting together a reverse outline. You can make your reverse outline as detailed or as general as you like (e.g., instead of going paragraph by paragraph, you could take it to a deeper level by going sentence by sentence). The main goal is to help you organize your thoughts and identify the gaps in the structure or “flow” of your essay. So, if you don’t think a prewriting outline is for you, try backing it up in reverse after you’ve written your draft. Make your writing process work for you. For more resources on reverse outlines, check out this two-minute video tutorial by UNC Chapel Hill or this handout from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Let me describe a scene to you: You’ve finished your reading, research, and preparation for your written assignment; you have ideas or at least knowledge about the subject you have to write about. You sit down to knock out your assignment in one rapid fire writing session, motivational music in the background, and drink in hand.
… And you stare at the screen for an hour with no idea where to start. You sit frozen, facing the blank page whilst your information and thoughts cycle in your mind in a whirlwind too fast to pin down.
Don’t worry! This is a common experience amongst writers and students at one time or another (or all the time). Whether this problem stems from perfectionism, lack of confidence, or difficulty expressing thoughts into words, I have a process that may help. I call it The Crayon Box Method.
Why a Crayon Box?
Imagine for a moment a large, well-used crayon box (I’m talking the 120 pack!): disorganized, jumbled, and a flurry of colors in random places. There’s no pattern to the madness, but every color is present. Can you picture it?
That’s your paper.
It’s all there in your head. All the details, all the facts and opinions you formed, all the pieces of information your paper needs are sitting in your head, but all of it is unorganized and chaotic. Writing your paper will take steps similar to organizing that crayon box into a lovely rainbow display.
Step One: Dump the Box
When organizing a large crayon box, what is the most efficient first step?
Dump the box out.
The most effective first step is to get all the colors out on the table, allowing you to easily see what you have and organize quickly. You cannot organize what isn’t in front of you. It is the same with writing the information in your head.
Open a document or notebook. Don’t think of it as a draft. Drafts resemble papers, and the perfectionism or editor’s voice in your mind may complain about how it looks.
This isn’t a draft. This is an information dump.
Give the document a wacky name. Allow yourself to be messy or funny or motivational or purely honest. For example, I titled my “dump” document for this blog post: “Okay, i want to write this totally awesome blog post and I don’t know where to start, well wait that’s a lie i have ideas let’s see what are the ideas.”
Unload every thought and idea you have, every bit of information or research whether you think it’ll be useful or not. It doesn’t have to look organized or pretty or even be full sentences yet. Just dump out the crayon box. Here is an example using my process while writing this blog post!
Notice there is no real concern for sentence structure, style, or punctuation here. It is simply a place for me to unload my thoughts. If this concept is difficult, some useful tools I use for this step are:
Voice to text. Most notes apps and word processors have a voice to text feature. It may not be the most accurate, but it accomplishes the brain dump if you’re still having trouble typing or picking up the pen.
Written Kitten. This is a fun tool I use all the time to motivate me to write. You simply type in a textbox, and for every 100 words you write, you are rewarded with a picture of a kitten! Try it here!
Changing your font color. Most word processors allow you to change the color of your font. If you’re prone to self-editing, you can change the font color to white, effectively creating an invisible ink in which to type your thoughts. This prevents you from editing as you go.
Remember, the point isn’t organization or order yet. This step is all about dumping the information from your mind to the page.
Step Two: Group the Colors
Once you’ve dumped out your ideas, it is time to begin the organization process. Going back to our crayon box analogy, this involves gathering the reds, blues, greens, etc., in their own piles on the table. When we’re writing, this step is done by looking at all the thoughts you’ve put down on the paper, opening a new document, and organizing those thoughts into groups.
Some people complete this step by writing headers that they can either keep or delete later. Others arrange their thoughts by topic or by events. How you organize depends on your preference and the type of assignment you are working on.
For this blog post, I took all those thoughts from my idea dump document and grouped each topic under different headings, but I didn’t concern myself with getting everything in the correct order yet. In this step, we’re still not worrying about details. You can flesh out those fragments into whole sentences, but don’t worry about all the finer points yet. We’re taking our crayons and making piles of similar colors. We’re not arranging them to look pretty.
Step Three: Sort the Colors
Now that you have your ideas dump and your organized thoughts draft, it’s time to get more detailed. In this step, we are sorting those piles of colors and making sure they blend together. Just like with crayons, grabbing the pinks that blend into the reds, into the purples, into the blues into the greens— we do the same thing with our writing. How? Well, you’ve already done most of the hard work. Your information is already grouped by topic. Now, it’s time to sort those paragraphs into logical order and work on your transitions to create a paper that flows.
At this stage, the paper is beginning to look like a paper with a coherent and logical structure. This state is where the most time and revision will happen. It may take you one draft; or it could take two or three. However many tweaks you need to make are perfectly fine, but don’t worry about the formatting just yet. The content and writing is still the focus with this step.
Step Four: Arrange the Box
Alright! You’ve made it!
Your thoughts are out of your head. You’ve grouped them and organized them. Everything flows logically, and you’ve developed your controlling idea. Your crayons are making a beautiful rainbow on the table. The only thing left is to put them back in the box.
This step is the final proofread. It is where you build and make sure your citations are correct. It is where you double check your grammar and spelling, and make sure your formatting is right. Give your mind a break before this step. It will be easier to come back to it with a clear head than to press on in a rush to finish.
Once you’re done, your paper should be complete! Congratulations!
Final Tips
Now that we’ve learned how writing is like a crayon box, here are some final tips!
Remember not to rush yourself. Procrastination is a struggle, but take these little steps one at a time. Let your mind quiet down and relax.
Remember that any writing is better than no writing. It doesn’t have to be perfect, that comes later. It doesn’t have to be formatted in the first draft.
Use your voice! If you have your ideas all up there, ask a friend to listen to you talk about your paper and record what you say. You’d be surprised how much information you have!
You’ve got this; and if you really do need that clock counting down for you, here’s a resource that I like: Writing Timer. It is a timer that will allow you to set a specific goal.
Writing doesn’t have to be a struggle. You’ve got so much potential. Remember to have fun with the process and boldly write!
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