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Planning Your Draft

When you have decided how to order your primary support points, it is time to make a more detailed plan for your paragraph or essay. A good, visual way to plan a draft is to arrange your ideas in an outline. An outline lists the topic sentence (for a paragraph) or thesis statement (for an essay), the primary support points for the topic sentence or thesis statement, and secondary supporting details for each of the support points. It provides a map of your ideas that you can follow as you write.

The examples below are in “formal” outline form, with letters and numbers to distinguish between primary supporting and secondary supporting details. Some instructors require this format. If you are making an outline just for yourself, you might choose to write a less formal outline, simply indenting the secondary supporting details under the primary support rather than using numbers and letters.

SAMPLE OUTLINE FOR A PARAGRAPH

Topic sentence
1. Primary support sentence 1
  1. Supporting detail sentence 1
  2. Supporting detail sentence 2 (optional)
2. Primary support sentence 2
  1. Supporting detail sentence 1
  2. Supporting detail sentence 2 (optional)
3. Primary support sentence 3
  1. Supporting detail sentence 1
  2. Supporting detail sentence 2 (optional)
Concluding sentence

SAMPLE OUTLINE FOR A FIVE-PARAGRAPH ESSAY

Thesis statement (part of introductory paragraph 1)
1. Topic sentence for support point 1 (paragraph 2)
  1. Supporting detail 1 for support point 1
  2. Supporting detail 2 for support point 1 (and so on)
2. Topic sentence for support point 2 (paragraph 3)
  1. Supporting detail 1 for support point 2
  2. Supporting detail 2 for support point 2 (and so on)
3. Topic sentence for support point 3 (paragraph 4)
  1. Supporting detail 1 for support point 3
  2. Supporting detail 2 for support point 3 (and so on)
Concluding paragraph (paragraph 5)