The paragraph outline works best when the writer feels sure of a line of argument and has mastered the reading. Sometimes, however, a writer needs to write a draft or two in order to decide what her thesis is. This is known as the "how-can-I-know - what-I-think- till -I-see-what-I-say?" problem, and it often crops up when you confront material which offers no easy answer. "Just how 'liberal' were college students in the '60s?" "Does Charles Dickens portray all his child characters in a sentimental manner?" "How revolutionary was the recent Iranian revolution?" "What has and has not been changed by the Civil Rights Act of 1964?"

Such questions ask you to look at the evidence from more than one point of view: to keep questions alive in your mind while writing, before emerging with conclusions, judgments, or definitions. You may write much better about such questions if you focus on a selection of specifics from the material (works of art, scenes, incidents, economic or political changes, significant statistics, signs of the mites) and build the whole paper out of "mini-papers," separate sections which take bits of evidence and evaluate them. 

If you don't know or can't decide at the beginning, for example, how revolutionary was the Iranian revolution, you may want to look at three or four examples of changed circumstances: the fate of political moderates, changes in the lives of city dwellers, women, and students. With each of these categories you may want to assemble materials, asking simply "What do I need to refer to when I talk about this?" Building on facts, you can then raise questions and answer them. Or if the answers are ambiguous, the ambiguity may lead you to a more interesting conclusion than a dead-certain approach might have done.

Writing a paper with this method is like measuring a quantity of water by pouring it into several buckets. Since the whole argument depends on how much goes into each bucket, each part will help you see, figuratively, if the whole argument will hold water. If one bucket proves leaky, then you'll have to scarp it, but that is not as discouraging as redrafting an entire paper from the beginning. A solid "three-bucket paper" might work better than a "four-bucket paper" with a hole in it, which leaves the writer looking - you guessed it - all wet.

   Using The Paper Topic
   Rough Magic
   Grocery Lists
   Up Against The Wall
   Paragraph Outline
   Building On Evidence
   Traditional Outlines
   Starting With Last Paragraph