Eve of the Backwards Outline
“Have you ever tried outlining your draft?” I slowly shook my head no. This tactic for solving logical errors within an argument may seem ridiculously obvious, but I had never tried it. The dust had not yet settled from my recent battle with the assumption that research and drafting tools happen once, therefore, the idea of outlines as a process never occurred to me. I credit this suggestion along with the discovery of Rappaport’s paper as the reasons I was able to make the argumentative leap from my first draft to my second draft. I filled page after page with outlines, breaking down and reshuffling my arguments. Affectionately dubbed the “backwards outline,” this tool found a happy home in both the second and third WR150 essays.