Organizing Your Draft

The way we explain things out loud often makes more sense than the way we write them down.&nbsp;Taking the time to talk through your ideas can help with organization. Find a friend, your professor, a relative, a Learning Commons tutor, or any sympathetic and intelligent listener Your listener does not need to be an expert on the subject matter your paper addresses in order to provide relevant feedback.&nbsp; Explain what your paper is about Pay attention to how you explain your argument. Chances are that the order in which you present your ideas and evidence to your listener is a logical way to arrange them in your paper. Let’s say that you begin by describing your working thesis. As you continue to explain, you realize that one of the first things you talked about was a subject that isn’t addressed in your paper until the last two paragraphs.&nbsp;You may realize that you need to discuss this subject earlier in the paper. Take notes or record the conversation You and your listener should keep track of the way you explain your paper. Written notes are extremely helpful—you won’t be able to remember all the details of your conversation. Compare the structure of

the argument in the notes you have taken to the structure of the draft you’ve written. Another good strategy to try is recording your conversation. This will allow you to talk without worrying about taking notes. Later, you can review the conversation and make changes to your draft. Get your listener to ask questions It is in your interest as a writer to receive constructive criticism so that your draft will become stronger. You want your listener to say things like, “Would you mind explaining that point again? I wasn’t sure I followed” or “What did you mean by _______? “I thought I knew where your argument was going, and I wasn’t expecting you to bring up that issue.” Questions you can’t answer may signal an unnecessary tangent or an area needing further development in the draft. Questions you need to think about will probably make you realize that you need to explain more in your paper. In short, you want to know that your listener fully understands you; if he or she doesn't, chances are your readers won’t, either.

Getting your listener to ask questions provides you with helpful feedback.

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Flow Many students who come to the Learning Commons have received feedback about their paper’s “flow”—that is, whether the ideas are connected in a logical order to make a strong argument. If you’re worried about flow, chances are there may be problems with your paper’s organization.&nbsp; Before you organize Two prerequisites will help you organize your draft more clearly. One is vital: a working thesis statement to give you a focus for organizing. If you’re having trouble with this, see our&nbsp;<a href="https://libguides.volstate.edu/ld.php?content_id=55818396">thesis statement&nbsp;</a>handout. The other thing you might want to check before you begin is your&nbsp;<a href="https://libguides.volstate.edu/ld.php?content_id=55820656">paragraph development</a>. It may be easier to organize your ideas if your paragraphs are complete.&nbsp;

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The following pages contain five strategies you can use to organize your draft more effectively. Read through all of them before you begin and decide which seems like the best fit for your current needs.

Before you can organize, you need a thesis statement!

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Sometimes what may be giving you trouble with organization is the fact that some of the terms in your thesis statement are very broad.&nbsp;If you look more closely you can narrow your argument by finding more specific terms.&nbsp;This will help you rethink your organization. In a&nbsp;<a href="https://libguides.volstate.edu/ld.php?content_id=55905201">compare and contrast</a>&nbsp;paper, where you distinguish between and explain two sides of an issue, listing can help clarify both the organization and the argument. Make a list In two columns, list the points regarding the two sides you are discussing. You will be able to visually determine whether the points for each side are laid out in your list as they are in your draft and revise as necessary. Re-examine the thesis You should now be able to see if the draft offers clear terms for your argument or if you need to revise your thesis to offer more specifics.&nbsp;In this way, you may be able to organize your draft more successfully by narrowing the scope.

Re-examine the draft’s general structure If it seems from the list and the revised thesis statement that you probably want to establish the similarities first and then explain the differences, you can check your draft to see if you began with the similarities and then moved on to the differences? If not, you need to reorganize. Reorganize the argument You need to ask yourself which differences are most important. The order in which you present your points generally reflects a hierarchy of significance for your readers to follow.

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Many people find that a visual technique such as clustering, mapping, or webbing is a good tool for rethinking a draft’s organization. We tell you how to use these techniques in our handout on <a href="https://libguides.volstate.edu/ld.php?content_id=56058887">brainstorming</a>. When you are organizing your draft, these techniques can help you visually connect the points in your draft.&nbsp;They allow you to see the arrangement of your ideas in a new way.&nbsp;

Mapping and clustering can help you rethink your draft's organization.

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<a href="bookcreator://page/4YkN0AFYRiyE8ycrWGUJqA/left">Introduction</a> . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . <a href="bookcreator://page/i4KNLi_YRwCRIt2KMX4TKA/left">Strategy 1: Reverse Outlining</a> . . . . . . . . . . . . <a href="bookcreator://page/bSU_9D9iQ-2qp-o3teTuTA/left">Strategy 2: Talking it Out</a>. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . <a href="bookcreator://page/Nzq1V_sYRPO2yCqAUmwbnw/left">Strategy 3: Sectioning</a>. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . <a href="bookcreator://page/hRLfXWQKQTSHv8_z46ZCSw/left">Strategy 4: Listing</a>. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . <a href="bookcreator://page/d96qAxB0SYmsnz6pFRzr0w/left">Strategy 5: Visualizing</a> . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . <a href="bookcreator://page/j8v1Y6VUSm6gmiQHp7rJig/left">Final Thoughts</a> . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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If you are worried about overall logic and transitions, you can ask: *Is this the order I would use if I were explaining my idea to a friend in conversation? *Will this order be easy for readers to follow? *Why did I put the ideas in this order--what was my organizing principle? *Are there places where I seem to suddenly change topics or bring up a new idea? If so, do those places have strong transitions? *Did I follow the order my thesis suggests, and did I include everything the thesis promised to cover? If you are concerned about answering the prompt, you can ask: *If I look at the prompt as a checklist, did I answer all of the questions in the prompt? *Do I have the right balance between different parts of the assignment (for example, have I balanced my summary of someone else's argument and my criticisms and/or analysis of the argument)? Re-examine the thesis, the outline, and the draft together Look closely at the outline and see how well it supports the argument in your thesis statement. You should be able to see which paragraphs need rewriting, reordering, or rejecting. You might also decide that you need to revise your thesis statement to better fit what you ended up discussing in the body of your draft, and that’s okay too.

Once you are happy with your outline, go back to your draft and make the necessary changes. Then you can start proofreading.

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Reverse outlining can help evaluate organization, reasoning, repetition, transitions, and completeness.

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Taking the time to revise the organization of your draft is an important step because many writers find that their ideas really take shape as they write them.&nbsp;This means that the original thesis may not match the paper you end up with.&nbsp;Checking the paper against the thesis and reorganizing as necessary will assure you end up with a final draft that is easier for readers to follow.&nbsp;After all, keeping the reader’s attention so you can convince them is the purpose of your writing.&nbsp;&nbsp;

We consulted the following resources while writing this handout. This is not a comprehensive list of resources on the handout’s topic, and we encourage you to do your own research to find the latest publications on this topic. Please do not use this list as a model for the format of your own reference list, as it may not match the citation style you are using. For guidance on formatting citations, please see one of our handouts on <a href="https://libguides.volstate.edu/ld.php?content_id=56059722">citing sources</a>. <a href="https://writingcenter.unc.edu/tips-and-tools/reorganizing-drafts/">Reorganizing Drafts</a>. The Writing Center. The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, <a href="https://writingcenter.unc.edu/">https://writingcenter.unc.edu/</a>. Accessed 24 Jan. 2020.

Sectioning works particularly well for long papers where you will be contending with a number of ideas and a complicated argument. It’s also useful if you are having difficulty deciding on the goals of each paragraph. Put paragraphs under section headings Say your argument has four main categories of support. Put each of your paragraphs into one of the four categories. If any paragraph (besides the introduction or conclusion) fits into two categories or all three, you may need to look at our <a href="https://libguides.volstate.edu/ld.php?content_id=55820656">paragraph development</a> handout. Ideally, each paragraph should have just one central idea. If some paragraphs don’t fit any category, then they probably don’t belong in the paper. Again, numbering your paragraphs may be helpful in this exercise. Re-examine each section Assuming you have more than one paragraph under each section, try to distinguish between them. Write down the distinctions—they will help you formulate clear topic sentences. If a single paragraph includes several arguments or points—for example, two arguments and one counterargument—you probably need to revisit paragraph development. You may be trying to do too many different things within a single paragraph.

Re-examine the entire argument Which section do you want to appear first? Why? Which second? Why? In what order should the paragraphs appear in each section? Look for an order that makes the strongest possible argument.

Sectioning helps clarify the goals of each paragraph.

A reverse outline is one you make after you have written a draft. Your aim is to create an outline of what you’ve already written, as opposed to the kind of outline that you make before you begin to write. The reverse outline will help you evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of both your organization and your argument. This strategy will help you see how your ideas are arranged, look for gaps in your reasoning, identify unnecessary repetition, check whether you are answering all parts of the assignment prompt, identify places that need transitions, and tell whether you are presenting ideas in a logical order. Read the draft and take notes Read your draft, and as you do so, make very brief notes in the margin about what each paragraph is trying to accomplish. You may want to number your&nbsp;paragraphs, so if you decide later that entire paragraphs need to be moved, you can do so by number. Each paragraph should be talking about only one main idea; this is referred to as unity.&nbsp;If you are concerned that your paragraphs may not be unified, you can make a more detailed reverse outline that includes a note about the main idea of each sentence. This will ultimately help you decide where to break your paragraphs so that each one sticks to one main idea.

Make the outline After you’ve gone through the entire draft, make your outline by transferring your brief notes to a fresh sheet of paper, listing them in the order in which they appear. It’s okay to write in sentence fragments or use abbreviations, since the outline is for you. Make sure you are creating an outline of what is actually in your paper, rather than what you intended to have in it or think should be in it! After making the outline, take a break for a few minutes! Examine the outline Now it's time to focus on your outline. Look eat each point and ask yourself questions that address your top concerns. If you are worried about coherence, you can ask: *How is this idea related to my thesis? *How is this idea related to the ideas that come before and after it? If you are worried about repetition, you can ask: *Do the same words or phrases appear in several places here? *If so, could I eliminate or combine some of the paragraphs or sentences?

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