Tips and Tricks for Making a Reverse Outline

As a writer, it often becomes very difficult to realize just when you are, or aren’t making a mistake when writing out any piece of academic work. For most writers, once they really get into the flow of writing, making mistakes and ignoring them, at least for the time being, becomes pretty normal.

Once the writing part is over however, it is an easy matter to go back and correct all grammatical and syntax errors that you come across, improve the sentence structure also, if you feel that that is needed and, viola! You have the perfect academic paper ready in your hands. But, have you ever noticed how, the perfect paper doesn’t always get perfect marks? In fact, if anything, do you remember how many times you handed in an assignment expecting to get full marks in it, and your teacher returned it to you and you realized you had barely managed to scrape together a passing grade on it? When you ask your teacher about the assignment you get told that it was not to the point, and looking back, you realise the teacher does have a point.

For most of us, when writing, going off the topic is actually quite common and an understandable mistake to make. Reverse Outlining is one sure-fire way of getting rid of that biggest mistake of all: writing a perfect answer that is, unfortunately, irrelevant.

• Write Out A Complete Draft

Once you have your ideas clarified in your own head, it is important to put them all down and write out a complete draft that can work for you. The best way to ensure you get down all your points is to write out the draft, revisit the question and then re-read the question to be sure that you have covered  all of the requirements for your paper.

• Put Together An Outline

Now, putting together an outline is just as important as anything else. Once your draft and outline are in place, all that is basically needed is that you fill in all the gaps in your work, and by writing out all the explanations, get a complete answer together.

• Number/ Put Your List In The Order You Are Going To Write It In.

Getting a Hodge-podge of ideas down is all very good in its own place, but, and this is especially relevant when your assignment is a very lengthy one, students tend to forget just how they were planning on writing out the answer. Writing down the draft part of the planning process ensures that you get all your points down, but numbering those points, or just using your preferred method of bookmarking to ensure which points come first and which ones come next helps writers stay really focussed and make writing out the final draft really easy!

• Answer The Right Question

Finally, to ascertain that you are answering the right and relevant question, it is important to ensure that you are meeting the following requirements.

• Is every paragraph relevant to the central idea of the question?
• Can a reader have difficulty following your train of thoughts in any paragraph?