Create an outline that will organize your causal analysis effectively for your readers.

Printed Page 445

Whether you have rough notes or a complete draft, making an outline of what you have written can help you organize the essay effectively for your audience. A causal analysis may contain as many as four basic parts:

  1. A presentation of the subject
  2. Plausible causes, logically sequenced
  3. Convincing support for each cause
  4. A consideration of readers’ questions, objections, and alternative causes

Compare the possible outlines that follow to see how you might organize your essay depending on whether your readers primarily agree with you—or not.

If your readers are not likely to favor any alternative causes, you may want to anticipate and respond to their possible objections to your causes.
  1. Presentation of the subject: Demonstrate that the subject exists and that its causes are uncertain
  2. Thesis and forecasting statement: Announce the causes you will offer.
  3. First cause with supporting evidence and refutation of objection
  4. Second cause with supporting evidence and refutation of objection
  5. Conclusion: Reassertion of judgment
 If you expect readers are likely to favor alternative causes, you may want to concede or refute them before offering your own cause.
  1. Presentation of the subject: Demonstrate that the subject exists and that its causes are uncertain
  2. Thesis statement: Acknowledge alternative causes readers are likely to know about
  3. Concession of first alternative cause to set it aside
  4. Refutation of second alternative cause with supporting evidence
  5. Writer’s preferred cause with supporting evidence
  6. Refutation of objection(s)
  7. Conclusion: Reassertion of judgment based on shared criteria

For more on outlining, see Chapter 11.

Whatever organizational strategy you adopt, do not hesitate to change your outline as necessary while drafting and revising. For instance, you might find it more effective to begin with your own preferred cause and to hold back on presenting unacceptable alternatives until you’ve made the case for the cause you think is most plausible and interesting. The purpose of an outline is to identify the basic components of your analysis and to help you organize them effectively, not to lock you into a particular structure.