2.10 shape the future - outlines as a writing tool
outlines can be frustrating - how do i know how to structure an argument that i haven't written yet? this week's episode talks about the two things i think an outline ACTUALLY does for a scholarly writer, and how to use them alongside drafting for more support. these aren't your high school roman numeral outlines!!
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But Katy. How can I write an outline if I don't know what I'm going to say yet? And other existential thoughts on this week's episode of
📍 Welcome to Grad School is Hard, But... A Thrive PhD podcast. I'm Dr. Katy Peplin and this is a show for everyone who's doing the hard work of being a human and a scholar. And in season two, I'll introduce you to various tools that might make the hard stuff from writing to managing your time to taking care of your brain just a little bit easier.
And if you rate and review this podcast, by the end of the month, you'll be entered to win a free session from me. More details at the end of the episode. Now let's get into the good stuff. .
There are so many things in graduate school that I find people just gloss right over. Of course, you know how to do an outline. Of course, you know how to build out your citation manager.
But what's the point of this podcast. If I don't go deep on some of the things that people assume, you know, and you might not.
And an underrated tool in that stable is the outline. An outline is simply put a roadmap of a piece of writing that you make at some stage during the writing process. Now to be clear. This isn't something that I think you have to do. But it can be an excellent scaffold around which to build a longer writing project.
Most of us are familiar with outlines that we take from writing that's already been done. So you might've been taught to outline as a reading and notation tool in primary or secondary school. You know, the really formal thing with the Roman numerals and the different subheadings, they look really impressive.
And there are a way to sort of organize information. And to many. Writers. Or are given the advice to make an outline for a piece of writing that they're working on to help them see the structure. The content ahead of time. Now. This is great advice, but it's only great advice. If you really think about what the outline is doing for you inside of the writing process.
And that's going to be a different job than the outline that you did of your AP us history textbook in high school.
So to my mind, an outline is a tool that helps you do two things.
Number one, it helps you decide what content is going to be included and crucially what content is going to be excluded. At least on a tentative basis. This is harder than it sounds. Many of us have so many ideas. And when we sit down to do things like draft a chapter, work on a conference paper more often than not, you have more ideas than you can explain fully in the container that you have.
It is more common than I can tell you that people sit down to start to write a dissertation chapter. And that first chapter one of five planned turns out to be the whole thing, because the information is so rich and you have so much to say, and you just don't know how much content fills a dissertation chapter until you start to write it.
So an outline is a preliminary step. Where you say, okay, here's what I think I'm going to cover. I am going to include this part of my experiment, but not this. I'm going to focus on these tables, but not those I'm going to use these two case studies and leave those for a future project.
The first step of an outline is that it helps you decide what's in and what's out of the current writing project. And the second function of an outline is to give you a sense, again, a tentative sense, but a sense of the structure and ordering of the ideas inside of set writing container.
Once you figure out what content is in and what content is out, an outline will also help you make some choices about what things to introduce. First, second, and third. For many of us, the writing process isn't particularly linear. We don't start at the beginning and we don't stop at the end. So an outline can help you see.
Like a quick map. Where you are in the space of the overall writing project to help you keep your bearings.
If you like me have trouble starting at the beginning of a document, then an outline can be really helpful because you can start where it feels the easiest. Maybe the first case study is something that you already typed up for a guest lecture that you gave. Great. An outline will help you see, okay. Here are the things that need to go before it, and here are the things that need to go after it.
Now that you've pitched you on the concept of outlines. I want to introduce a couple of ideas. About how you might be able to use them that aren't quite as formal and as detailed. Because the real problem with an outline is how do I know how to structure the chapter when I don't know what I'm going to say in it yet?
And I also just want to normalize that as we write, many of us do change our minds. We go on tangents, we bring things down. And an outline can also help you see where you've deviated and decide. This is good enough to make it into the overall plan, or is this something that I want to set aside for another project?
Your outline might be as simple and schematic as five key themes on post-it notes that are up on the wall that you shuffled the order of as you start to write. It might be as detailed as a multi page document with headings, subheadings, and the quotes from your literature and research sources embedded right in so that when you sit down to write, all you really have to do is fill in the prepositions around all of that information.
But no matter how detailed or not the outline is, hanging on to those two criteria, --that it's a tool that helps you decide what's in and what's out. And what order things can go in-- helps you see the outline doesn't need to sit at the beginning of the process only. In fact, I often like to think about outlines as sitting, if not literally, but metaphorically in a separate dual window with your writing. So that even if you've zoomed in to a specific section, you have the zoomed out version to help you stay oriented.
Outlines actually act a lot more like a living document. They are something that you keep updated so that you can tell how the writing process is going. For example. Maybe you made a really detailed outline and you sat down to write out the first section of it in a first draft. Amazing. In your head, you thought that section of the outline would take you two to three pages to write on paper.
And by the time you're done drafting, you actually have 10 pages. That's an excellent point at which you can check in with your outline and say, okay, If this has 10 pages of content in it. And I have five more sections. Then I'm going to have a 60 page chapter. And maybe that's totally okay for you and your advisor.
Or maybe they're expecting something along the lines of 30 pages. That outlines going to help you say, okay, which of these parts do I need to stay together? How can I rearrange the structure? Can I move some of this to chapter two or chapter three? It's like an architect's plans that are changing as you encounter the construction.
There are always bumps and hiccups. And having that updating blueprint can make it a lot easier to not lose your footing and make sure that you're keeping an eye on your time and energy budget.
If this is the kind of advice that's demystifying some of the writing process for you, then I really encourage you to click on the link in the show notes about the workshop that I'm doing with Dr. Kate Henry, next week, May 10th. 2023. I am really excited because one of the things that we're going to be doing is going into the process of making template documents.
And roadmaps for the specific thing that you're trying to write. These are skills that don't get taught very often. And I find that tools like this make a huge difference when you're working on longterm independently, guided writing projects. But whether you join us or not, I hope that this gave you a few ideas for thinking about. Maybe brushing off those Roman numerals, get your post-it notes out and start thinking about an outline as a responsive, Rather than predictive, Tool.
📍 Thank you for listening to Grad School is Hard, but... You can find more information and resources in the show notes and at thrive-phd.com. Every month, I'll select one reviewer for a free 45 minute session with me. So please subscribe, rate, and review to help spread the word about the show. Thanks so much and I'll see you again soon!