A Comprehensive Guide on Essay Outlines

Did you ever try to find out why the student in the first bench gets an A+ for his essay, while you need to settle for an average grade for the same essay? If you did, you might have found that their essay is more organized, structured and well-crafted. In fact, you can also secure an A+ for your essay, if you prepare an essay outline first and then start writing the paper.

An essay outline is basically a blueprint for your due essay, where you scrutinize the structure and organize the main points into paragraphs to make the essay writing process a lot easier. Unfortunately, a majority of the students don’t even know how to write an essay outline. And even if they do, a lot of them choose to directly get into the essay writing part; due to time crunch.

To help you get a better understanding of an essay outline, we have assembled all the essential information regarding writing an essay outline in the blog. So, check it out.

What is an essay outline?

An essay outline is a short plan of your essay paper. In an outline, you need to write down the main idea of the essay and evaluate all the arguments into paragraphs, making sure you don't miss any crucial element. It's not like you cannot write an essay without an outline, but when you have an essay outline in hand, it serves as a roadmap for the essay.

Why do you need an essay outline?

If you are wondering whether preparing an outline for an essay is worth all the efforts or not, here are a few things you should know:

• You receive a significant amount of data when you conduct research on the essay topic. An essay outline allows you to organize your thoughts and the tons of information which often becomes hard to remember.
• An outline lets you understand the flow of information and allows you to evaluate it accordingly.
• An outline also keeps you from missing any crucial aspect of the essay while writing as it serves as the manuscript for paper.

Moreover, having an essay outline helps you stay on-track while drafting the essay, saving you a significant amount of time. Thus, writing an essay outline is very much worthwhile. Hence, without further ado, let’s learn about how to write an essay outline.

How to write an essay outline?

Interestingly, there are several types of essays that you may need to write in your academic career. And most of them follow a five-paragraph structure. The general essay outline format will have the following components:

1. Introduction:

In the first section of the essay outline, you need to mention the topic of the essay and its thesis. Putting the thesis statement in the outline reminds of the main point of the essay while writing the outline of the essay’s body.

2. Body paragraphs:

The body of an essay usually consists of a minimum of three paragraphs. While preparing the essay outline, make sure to write down a topic sentence with an argument relating to the thesis you have chosen and mention the supporting elements (data, facts, and examples) to establish it.

3. Conclusion:

In this segment, you need to wrap up the essay. Simply restate your thesis and summarize the goal of your essay. Like the essay, the outline also ends with a conclusion.

If you need an essay outline template, here’s how a general essay outline should look like

I. Introduction
a. Introduce the topic
b. State the thesis
II. Body Paragraph I
a.Write an argument for your thesis
b. Support the argument with data, facts, and examples
c. Explain how the supporting evidence relates to your thesis
III. Body Paragraph II
a. Write an argument for your thesis
b. Support the argument with data, facts, and examples
c. Explain how the supporting evidence relates to your thesis
IV.Body Paragraph III
a. Write an argument for your thesis (Or a counterargument)
b.Support the argument, or explain why the counterargument is ineffective with data, facts, and examples
c. Explain how the supporting evidence relates to your thesis
V.Conclusion
a. Summarize the main points of the essay
b. Restate your thesis
c. Add a call to action to tell the readers what you want them to do after reading the essay

While the general outline for an essay follows the same template as mentioned above, the approach towards building the outline of an essay differs, depending on the type of essay.

Essay outline example

To help you understand the application of an essay outline in structuring the researched information, our experts at Allessaywriter.com have prepared the following essay outline example.

Topic: Why do kids need more time to play outside?

Introduction:

Thesis: Kids need more time to play outdoors

Body paragraph I

Topic sentence: Playing outside helps kids with health benefits

• Detail 1: Kids can develop physical strength.
• Detail 2: It promotes teamwork and cooperation.

Body paragraph 2

Topic sentence: Video games can have an adverse effect on a kids' wellbeing

• Detail 1: Video games encourage a sedentary lifestyle, leading to health conditions, like obesity and diabetes.
• Detail 2: Staying indoors cuts the kids off from the outside world.
• Detail 3: Researchers believe video games can promote violations among kids.

There are plenty of reasons to promote outdoor playtime for kids. It is most likely to have a positive impact on their development.

Hopefully, you now have a better idea of how to utilize the researched information in the essay outline. However, if you still need some more assistance, here are a few writing tips assembled by the brilliant essay writers at Allessaywriter.com.

Tips for essay outline writing

Essay outlines are prepared to ensure you do not have any problem while drafting the essay. So, you need to be very careful with the planning part – which is, of course, writing the essay outline. Here's what you need to do:

1. Understand the essay requirements:

Read the essay requirements thoroughly to understand what kind of essay you need to write, how many arguments to use and how long the essay needs to be,

2. Determine the purpose of the essay:

It is important to understand the purpose of the essay before you start preparing the essay outline. See whether you want the readers to inform, persuade or just entertain them. Depending on the goal, you can choose the thesis for the paper, as well as decide on what writing technique to use and how to visualize the research.

3. Identify the audience:

In most cases, the teachers are your primary audience who will also evaluate the work. But it is also important to decide who do you want to read your essay. Is it your classmates, or some strangers? Do they know about the topic? Based on these questions, you need to decide what approaches you must take in presenting the essay.

In conclusion,

Writing an essay outline not only helps you have a well-organized paper but also saves your precious time by keeping you on the track. So, even if it may seem like extra work, it is actually saving you from unnecessary addition of information and other obstacles.

Why choose Allessaywriter.com for essay writing services?

Even after learning about essay outlines, if you still require some expert assistance, you can rely on the expertise of our team at Allessaywriter.com. We have a wide range of essay writing services, covering more than 20 different types of essays across 100+ subject areas.

Our services are quite pocket-friendly, and you can expect timely delivery of the solution from us. Talking about the quality, we take several measures to ensure your solution is error-free and plagiarism-free. Moreover, our team prepares an effective essay outline first before writing the actual essay to ensure they don't miss any crucial aspect.