I’ve got a confession to make (Mrs. Boley, if you’re reading this, I’m sorry). I never did my assigned outlines in high school. It wasn’t for my English teacher’s lack of instruction or emphasis on the importance of organization.

I understood what an outline did and why it was important. It was just that I couldn’t understand how someone could possibly outline a paper they hadn’t written yet. How did they know what to put in the outline if the ideas did not yet exist?

Being an Explosive Writer 

My writing style is what I now recognize as “explosive.” I’ve written for as long as I can remember: poems scratched on the back of scrap paper, notebooks filled with angsty adolescent ramblings, stories, and—later—essays, research reports, thousands of blog posts, and a dissertation. No matter the genre or the purpose, my process starts out the same way. I sit down, and I explode words onto the page. 

They come out all at once, in a rush. Fully-formed sentences and paragraphs march out of my fingertips like they had been lying in wait for months, preparing for the moment to storm the battlefield. I don’t know what they’re going to say until they appear there on the page.

It’s only then that I can fully examine them. This doesn’t belong here, I’ll think to myself as I move things around. Do I really believe that? I’ll question a particularly bold assertion. Can I back that up? I’ll wonder as I make notes for what research is needed before the next phase. 

Confessions of an Outline Fraud

All this means that, when I was in high school, I was completely baffled by my teacher’s insistence that we turn an outline in a week before our papers were due.

Knowing no other way to find the content for the outline or the order of the ideas, I would write the entire paper and then dutifully copy down the contents into shortened versions for the outline.

I’d turn the outline in, do nothing for the next week while we were supposed to be drafting the paper I had already written, and then turn in the paper a week later that always magically matched my outline so well. 

Learning About Other Writing Styles

As I moved through college, started working in writing centers, went on to graduate school, got trained in writing pedagogy, earned a Ph.D., and eventually became a college English professor, I learned that plenty of other people write exactly how I write. 

Of course, plenty of other other people write completely differently. And it’s all just fine. 

Writing is a deeply individualistic act. It’s the intimate process of finding out how to move your innermost thoughts into an external medium. It’s vulnerable work, and we all have to find the ways that work for us. 

Some people need an outline before they start drafting. For them, the outline is the frame upon which everything else hangs. Without it, they find themselves with lots of long, draping material and nowhere to put it. The words get so tangled that they can’t find a way to get them out. 

For explosive writers like me, that’s not how it works. Outlines seem like unnecessary busy work that keep us from getting down to the actual act of writing.

But even explosive writers—I might argue especially explosive writers—need the benefits outlining provides, so what are we to do? 

Reverse Outlines 

Outlining is an organizational tool. It helps writers figure out many things: 

• What topics actually belong in the paper?
• In what order should those topics be presented? 
• Is there enough supporting evidence or examples for each topic? 
• Are ideas repeated unnecessarily? 
• Are too many ideas being expressed in the same paragraph? 
• Have I made connections between ideas? 

A good outline answers all of these questions and helps writers see where to break paragraphs, what supporting details should go in each paragraph, how to arrange the ideas in a logical order, and how to transition between them. 

The trick for explosive writers like me is that we often can’t outline before we write. We have to outline after we have our material on the page. For us, the most useful tool is a reverse outline. 

How To Create a Reverse Outline

Step 1: Draft the Paper

Just write. It doesn’t have to be perfect. Let the topic come to life on the page, and see where it takes you. You will likely still need to add some details, do some research, and rearrange some topics.

Don’t worry about any of this yet. Just write. 

Step 2: Label Each Paragraph

Re-read the draft that you made and label each paragraph with a 1-3 word description of the main topic. Did you find a paragraph that seems to have more than one main idea? Write them all down; this is important information. Did you find a paragraph that repeats a topic from earlier? Write down the topic for each paragraph. 

Where should you write it? I like to physically print out the draft and write the topics alongside the paragraphs in the margins. I also underline key phrases that connect to the main idea and draw a line to the topics to show myself where I found it. 

Step 3: Identify Supporting Details

Take a look at the supporting details in each paragraph. Circle the main support for the primary claims. This will help you see where you have enough and where you may need to do more research later.

Step 4: Order Your Ideas

All the ideas are laid out in the labels. Ask yourself what order they should be in.

Don’t worry about what order they are in. That’s just a draft. You aren’t required to keep them in that order. It might help to list them all on a separate paper and then number them in the order you believe they should appear. 

Step 5: Look for Missing Topics

Are there ideas and topics that are missing? Write them down on your list and notate where they should go in the order you laid out. 

Step 6: Combine Repeated Topics

Any topics that appear more than once show you where you should combine paragraphs. 

Step 7: Split Convoluted Paragraphs

Any paragraphs that have more than one topic show you where you need to break the ideas apart. 

Step 8: Include Support from the Draft

All of those supporting details you circled on the draft? Put them under the category they best fit on your new reverse outline.

Step 9: Add Missing Support

Now that your reverse outline has a list of all the topics you want to cover in the order you want to cover them, think about which ones might need more support. Jot down your ideas under each topic heading. 

Step 10: Draft Again

You’ve got a new perspective on the order of your ideas and the support they need to take shape. Go back to your draft and make it match your reverse outline. Move paragraphs that aren’t in the best order. Split paragraphs that are too convoluted. Combine paragraphs that repeat ideas.

 A Recovering Outline Fraud

It wasn’t until college that I learned how to use an outline with my explosive writing style, but it’s a tool that I have used repeatedly in the years since.

It’s especially important for strong writers to learn about reverse outlines. People who are able to organize short papers in their minds without ever using an outline may not be able to fully articulate what strategies they use to determine topics and paragraph arrangement.

Eventually, though, they will face longer, more difficult papers, and relying solely on internal mental processes to organize them will likely prove inadequate. Learning about reverse outlines can save explosive writers a lot of headaches because it gives them the organizational tools they need without disrupting their natural writing process.