What is an outline?
The outline of your writing is the way to plan the structure of your argument before you dive into writing. Each outline topic can be a sentence, question, argument, quick point, really anything that will help keep you grounded and guide you through your writing process. An outline brings you back each time you start to lose focus.
The structure of an outline
We recommend creating an outline of ten to fifteen topics. For example, an ideal number of topics for a 1000-word essay is ten. However, the fundamental outline should not get much longer than fifteen topics, even if your work is several thousand words or more in length. This is because it is difficult to keep an argument of more than that length in mind at one time so that you can assess the quality of its structure.
So, write an outline with ten to fifteen topics, and if it is longer than a thousand words, then make sub-outlines for each primary outline topic.
Here is an example of a simple outline:
Topic: Who was Abraham Lincoln?
Outline topics:
Why is Abraham Lincoln worthy of remembrance?
What were the crucial events of his childhood?
Of his adolescence?
Of his young adulthood?
How did he enter politics?
What were his major challenges?
What were the primary political and economic issues of his time?
Who were his enemies?
How did he deal with them?
What were his major accomplishments?
How did he die?
Here is an example of a longer outline (for a 3,000-word essay)
Topic: What is capitalism?
Outline topics with subtopics:
How has capitalism been defined?
Author 1
Author 2
Author 3
Where and when did capitalism develop?
Country 1
Country 2
How did capitalism develop in the first 50 years after its origin?
How did capitalism develop in the second 50 years after its origin?
(Repeat as necessary)
Historical precursors?
(Choose as many centuries as necessary)
Advantages of capitalism?
Wealth generation
Technological advancement
Personal freedom
Disadvantages of capitalism?
Unequal distribution
Pollution and other externalized costs
Alternatives to capitalism?
Fascism
Communism
Consequences of these alternatives?
Potential future developments?
Conclusion
Revisit your outline
Once you've written, edited, and reordered your sentences then it's a good idea to revisit your outline to assess what might need to change.
First, take a look at the order of your paragraphs and then your outline topics. If you've edited your work quite a bit, then your paragraphs may read and flow differently than they did before. This may be the case with your outline topics as well, try reordering the topics to see if the content flows better.