By Emily Long Olsen
I am a passionate outliner. In my own work, writing without an outline is like driving without directions: I don’t know where I’m going or how to get there.
So when I’m revising for structure and organization, I find myself imagining what an outline should have been—what is the most effective and direct route to my destination?—and trying to retroactively impose it on the work I’ve already done. The reverse outline is a great strategy for this, and I use it often in my own work and my work with students. But in the process of revising my dissertation these last few months, I have also come to really love color-coding.
The fourth chapter of my dissertation had become a “dumping ground,” where, over the better part of a year, I had been opening the document, scrolling down to the general abyss beneath the chapter heading, and quickly writing a few paragraphs on an idea I had before it flew from my mind. I had betrayed my love of outlines in favor of just writing down my ideas, even knowing that I was in for a challenging mess of revisions . . . later. When “later” finally arrived, I was completely overwhelmed. The ideas were related, but many had evolved over time and lost their way. Others were simply spread out across the mess of 50+ pages, in disjointed sections. Yet others were repeated, either the same idea or a slightly modified version. On the computer, I isolated the chapter that needed to be reworked and read through, highlighting in a different color each of the main ideas I could find. I wrote a chapter introduction that worked to present each of them one at a time and highlighted each in its new color. Then, I printed that page out and taped it to the wall, turning to the rest of the chapter. I went through again, highlighting each paragraph in the color it matched up with. Soon I had a clear, macro-level, visual map of where these ideas were distributed throughout the chapter and how to bring them together. Anything that wasn’t pink, aqua, yellow, green, or orange got deleted, heavily revised, or moved to a new section.
I’m not sure this method can work for everyone. We’re all different learners and writers, and I definitely have a propensity for visual approaches. I also felt most gratified by how this works with long pieces, when the tedium of scrolling through paragraphs and paragraphs, or shuffling through pages on the desk, is just too much; sometimes, you need a zoomed-out view. Still, I’ve found it can help students see why they need an organizational method when there’s a thesis that’s present and consistent, but when paragraphs and sections aren’t transparently marked.
Published July 17, 2018
