5.2 Outlining Your Message

Introduction

Once the organizing principle has been determined, create an outline for the message.  An outline will help plot the bare-bones structure of the message so it can be fleshed out into full sentences and paragraphs. Outlining helps writers get past one of the most terrifying moments in the writing process: writer’s block. Even after completing all the other steps of the writing process explored above, freezing up while staring down a blank screen is an anxiety-driven mental bottleneck that often comes from either lacking anything to say or thinking that the first draft has to be perfect.  Drafting is supposed to produce a sketchy, disappointing mess only because the goal at this stage is to get ideas down fast so that you can fix them up later in the editing stage.

Outlining is a structured brainstorming activity that helps keep you on track by assigning major, overarching ideas and relatively minor, supporting points to their proper places in the framework of your chosen organizing principle. At its most basic form for a three-part message, an outline looks like the following:

You can add further points in the body and, as shown in the middle of Figure 5.3.1, subdivide them even further with lowercase roman numerals, regular numbers, lowercase letters, etc. depending on the size of the document and the support needed. View the video Outlines, by UNC Writing Center for an overview of the outlining process.

Table 5.3.1 presents an outline of an email message for someone who wants to subscribe to a snow-removal service.  The draft of the email message is also presented to demonstrate how to move from the outline to the completed product.

Table 5.3.1: Brief Message Outline as a Basis for an Email Draft

Once an outline is in place, the details of each point can be fleshed out into full sentences and other conventional message components as well.

The specific architecture of the outline depends on the organizing principle chosen as appropriate to convey the writing purpose.  Table 12.2 below demonstrates three principles.

Table 5.3.2: Outline Possibilities Based on Organizing Principles

As we shall see later in the textbook, outlining is key to organizing other projects such as presentations and reports.  Outlining keeps you on track and prevents wasted efforts.