Create an outline that will organize your profile effectively for your readers.

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For more on clustering and outlining, see Chapter 11.

Outlining what you have can help you organize the profile effectively for your audience. Compare the following possible outlines to see how you might organize your essay, depending on whether you prefer a narrative or a topical plan. Even if you wish to blend features of both outlines, seeing how each basic plan works can help you combine them.

If you plan to arrange your material narratively as a tour, plot the key events on a timeline. The following suggests one way to organize a narrative profile of a place:
  1. Begin by describing the place from the outside.
  2. Present background information.
  3. Describe what you see as you enter.
  4. Introduce the people and activities.
  5. Tour the place, describing what you see as you move from one part to the next.
  6. Fill in information wherever you can, and comment about the place or the people.
  7. Conclude with reflections on what you have learned about the place.
If you plan to arrange your material topically, use clustering or outlining to help you divide and group related information. Here is a suggested outline for a topical profile about a person:
  1. Begin with a vivid image of the person in action.
  2. Present the first topic. (A topic could be a characteristic of the person or one aspect of his or her work.) Use dialogue, description, narration, process description, evaluation, or interpretation to illustrate this topic.
  3. Present the second topic. Use dialogue, description, narration, process description, evaluation, or interpretation to illustrate this topic.
  4. Present the third topic (and continue as above until you have presented all topics).
  5. Conclude with a bit of action or dialogue.
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The tentative plan you choose should reflect the possibilities in your material as well as your purpose and your understanding of your audience. As you begin drafting, you will almost certainly discover new ways of organizing parts of your material.