How to Organize Your Thoughts on Paper
Do your research., Free-write., Delineate categories and subcategories., Choose a way to organize your categories., Write down main point at the top of the paper., Finish writing your outline.
Step-by-Step Guide
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Step 1: Do your research.
If you’re working on a school project, this will mean reading the necessary articles and books.
If you’re working on a personal problem, this might just mean asking yourself or others for their viewpoints.
In any case, make sure you’re relying on credible sources (friends can be a credible source for a personal problem), and not relying too heavily on anyone source., Free writing can be an extremely useful tool for discovering what you think or where you stand on an issue.
Free writing simply means getting your thoughts down on paper without concerning yourself with grammar, structure, or even sense.
Often it’s best to keep writing for a set amount of time (5-10 minutes should be sufficient)., This is really important for structuring your ideas.
Categories can be any type, including sub-points and evidence for an academic paper or main events of a novel.
If you are outlining a plan of action or a process, these will the steps.
As you write out possible steps, it is not immediately necessary to organize them, as you will want to generate all the ideas first, if possible. (If not, it is fine to add ideas later)., This will help you get a sense of the overall structure of your ideas.
There is no right way to organize your ideas, as long as the sequence is logical or at least useful for you.
For most outlines, it is best to limit the number of main categories to three or four, especially for a shorter or less involved task.
The following ways to organize are often useful for a variety of tasks, but especially for writing tasks:
Organizing by importance will help you make an argument or categorize tasks for work.
It helps you (and your reader, if applicable) see what’s important about the outline by placing most important items first.
Organizing by chronology will help you get a sense of the timeline of events, thoughts, etc.
For household tasks, this can be arbitrary, or based on when it is best to complete a certain item.
Organizing by process is where you write out the steps of a process.
The process can be anything from a thought process to a simple how-to guide.
Organizing by space will help if you are writing a novel, or describing a space that raises specific concerns such as the everglades—you can organize by parts or regions of the everglades.
Organizing by cause and effect will help your reader follow the trajectory of an idea.
This is especially useful in talking about difficult concepts or controversial ideas such as gun control.
Organizing in order to compare and/or contrast can be helpful when you want to compare competing ideas or methods.
You can organize in one of several ways including comparing the objects or concepts point by point, or by discussing all the important aspects of one of the concepts followed by the important (comparable) aspects of the latter concept. , If you are writing a research or academic paper, this will be your main argument or thesis statement.
For a novel, it will be the basic plot.
For any thing else, it should be whatever you’re trying to organize., Once you’ve decided on how to organize, and what your main point will be, it should be fairly simple to write the ideas down in an organized way.
Writing your outline should enable you to get a fuller and more structured view of your thoughts, which should help you proceed with any project you’ve started. -
Step 2: Free-write.
-
Step 3: Delineate categories and subcategories.
-
Step 4: Choose a way to organize your categories.
-
Step 5: Write down main point at the top of the paper.
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Step 6: Finish writing your outline.
Detailed Guide
If you’re working on a school project, this will mean reading the necessary articles and books.
If you’re working on a personal problem, this might just mean asking yourself or others for their viewpoints.
In any case, make sure you’re relying on credible sources (friends can be a credible source for a personal problem), and not relying too heavily on anyone source., Free writing can be an extremely useful tool for discovering what you think or where you stand on an issue.
Free writing simply means getting your thoughts down on paper without concerning yourself with grammar, structure, or even sense.
Often it’s best to keep writing for a set amount of time (5-10 minutes should be sufficient)., This is really important for structuring your ideas.
Categories can be any type, including sub-points and evidence for an academic paper or main events of a novel.
If you are outlining a plan of action or a process, these will the steps.
As you write out possible steps, it is not immediately necessary to organize them, as you will want to generate all the ideas first, if possible. (If not, it is fine to add ideas later)., This will help you get a sense of the overall structure of your ideas.
There is no right way to organize your ideas, as long as the sequence is logical or at least useful for you.
For most outlines, it is best to limit the number of main categories to three or four, especially for a shorter or less involved task.
The following ways to organize are often useful for a variety of tasks, but especially for writing tasks:
Organizing by importance will help you make an argument or categorize tasks for work.
It helps you (and your reader, if applicable) see what’s important about the outline by placing most important items first.
Organizing by chronology will help you get a sense of the timeline of events, thoughts, etc.
For household tasks, this can be arbitrary, or based on when it is best to complete a certain item.
Organizing by process is where you write out the steps of a process.
The process can be anything from a thought process to a simple how-to guide.
Organizing by space will help if you are writing a novel, or describing a space that raises specific concerns such as the everglades—you can organize by parts or regions of the everglades.
Organizing by cause and effect will help your reader follow the trajectory of an idea.
This is especially useful in talking about difficult concepts or controversial ideas such as gun control.
Organizing in order to compare and/or contrast can be helpful when you want to compare competing ideas or methods.
You can organize in one of several ways including comparing the objects or concepts point by point, or by discussing all the important aspects of one of the concepts followed by the important (comparable) aspects of the latter concept. , If you are writing a research or academic paper, this will be your main argument or thesis statement.
For a novel, it will be the basic plot.
For any thing else, it should be whatever you’re trying to organize., Once you’ve decided on how to organize, and what your main point will be, it should be fairly simple to write the ideas down in an organized way.
Writing your outline should enable you to get a fuller and more structured view of your thoughts, which should help you proceed with any project you’ve started.
About the Author
Emma Smith
Enthusiastic about teaching cooking techniques through clear, step-by-step guides.
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