When it came to writing an outline, my teacher was very vague. If asked how long the outline should be or what it should contain, she would answer “However long it needs to be,” or “Whatever needs to be in it.” So it was no surprise that when I sat down to write my outline, I was at a loss for what to do.
I was never a person who benefitted from outlines. I always found when writing essays for other classes that I would have an easier time writing if I let my thoughts come naturally without thinking about them too much. I knew that this writing process would be very different from anything I’d done before, so I forced myself to come up with some sort of outline.
After trying to write topic sentences, big headings, little headings, and everything in between, I decided to stray away from the typical outline format. Instead, I would use the outline as a place to easily access all the quotes I could possibly use in my paper. I divided the outline up into four sections (introduction and background, the white papers’ portrayal of the Panthers, the black papers’ portrayal of the Panthers, and their similar portrayal of the cops). From there, I sifted through all my documents and typed up any quote that may have been of help to my paper and put them under the appropriate section. Then under each quote, I put the bibliographical information, and a few words of analysis as a reminder to myself of what I would use the quote to prove. After that I went back to the very top the section, and listed in bullet points a few key phrases I found myself using in the analysis of the quotes.
This process took a while of course. It was a lot of work but I was able to pull it off. Now that I am going through the process of writing, I’m not sure what I would have done if I didn’t have my outline.