(Slightly off-topic:) Outlining and the Academic Writing Process

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Posted by Lucas
Apr 28, 2010 at 09:01 PM

I hope it’s okay that this post isn’t primarily about software, but for those interested in outlining and the academic writing process, I thought I would share this essay that I recently came across:

“Design: The Key to Writing (and Advising) a One-Draft Ph.D Dissertation”

http://www.me.umn.edu/education/grad/pdfs/one-draft.pdf

The author, John Carlis, presents a strategy for outlining one’s writing all the way down to the level of paragraph topic sentences before beginning the process of drafting. Of course there are some who prefer the technique of (semi-intuitive) drafting and revising, but I find myself increasingly drawn to the sort of approach Carlis advocates.

Carlis also describes some interesting techniques for indicating topic relationships within one’s detailed outline. (This would in turn raise the question of which software would work best for implementing these techniques—- Carlis seems to find Latex useful, but he suggests that anything could work.)

Anyway, I think his essay makes for an interesting read, and if anyone else has thoughts on it, I would be interested to hear. (If I remember correctly, Manfred has argued that it may not be wise to impose hierarchy early in the writing process, so I wonder, for instance, how his approach might relate to Carlis’s.)

Lucas

Posted by JasonE
Apr 28, 2010 at 10:14 PM

This article hits close to home. In the writing that resulted from my PhD research (papers and dissertation), I was very frustrated by my advisors refusal to look at outlines.

He would invariably want major structural changes. I wanted to show him outlines, so that he could do all his slicing and dicing BEFORE I had spent hour upon hour writing the text. I wanted to save actually writing the paper for when I knew what information was going into it.

He just wouldn’t go along with it. So I would write a complete manuscript, he would call for a major reworking, I would write a new complete manuscript…repeat again and again, month after month.

He was actually my second advisor. My first was even worse. He would literally call for a poster to be changed AFTER it had came back from the printer, while the airplane taking me to the conference was leaving in 18 hours.

I do not miss being a graduate student….

JasonE

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