E1 - Step 2

DUE DATE: SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 2 (By 6:00 pm)

E1 - Step 2 OUTLINING By now, you should have brainstormed the best idea for your Essay #1. You should have a topic (which person's character), a thesis statement (the person and their specific character point), the aspects (the possible topic sentences), and the stories (examples). You should have already:

• Brainstormed a dozen or more stories • Made certain that all the stories can be told in detail • Grouped the stories into aspects • Made sure that the aspects do not overlap • Revised the stories, aspects, and/or thesis statement so they all match • Confirmed that all of your stories and aspects directly support the thesis statement

If you have done all that, then you have an excellent reason to believe that your essay will be highly successful! You might ask: "Why can't I do all these things while I write the essay?" You might believe that you can simply start writing and everything will fall into place. That is extremely risky, and most often leads to bad results: essays which are not united, weak evidence, overlapping ideas, essay elements which are too vague, and much more. If you plan ahead, then you solve most of your problems before you start writing anything. Also, if the idea doesn't work, then you can fix the problem or start over again before you have written an entire essay draft!

Before you begin writing your essay draft, you must organize your ideas into an outline. The outline allows you to see the whole form of the essay before you start writing anything.

The outline may be single-spaced. The final, full outline should follow MLA rules for outline format. I will explain this in the last two pages. Step 2a: Create a Mini-Outline Now you have 12 or more stories about that person based on their central character point. You have created several (hopefully at least 4 or 5) aspects. Now we will turn them into a short, basic outline.

Before you do this, however, you have to do two things: 1. You must choose which three aspects will be the best to use in your essay 2. You must choose which two examples for each aspect will be the most detailed,

interesting, and supportive examples for the topic sentence and the thesis statement

A good way to choose the best stories and aspects would be to start with the stories. ACTION: Read through all the stories you listed. Think about each story. Think about

writing 6 to 8 sentences to describe each one. Remember that the 6~8 sentences may not include introductory information or general commentary; the 6~8 sentences must be a specific telling of each story, from beginning to end, in great detail.

DUE DATE: SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 2 (By 6:00 pm)

If any story in the list does not sound like this is possible, or if the story seems less interesting or persuasive than others, then put a red "X" next to it.

At the end of this process, you should have crossed out the less effective stories. You must still have at least two stories for three different aspects. If not, you have to come up with more stores, or go back to Step 1 and start over again!

At this point, you must have at least three aspects with two good stories each. If you have more, then decide which three aspects are best, and which two stories per aspect are best. The next step would be to organize the aspects in an order that best serves the flow of your essay. You must think about why the paragraphs are ordered the way that they are. Do not just put the paragraphs in a random order, or the order which you encountered them. Instead, ask:

• What type of ordering works best—time order, order of importance, etc. • How do the paragraphs flow together? How would the end of one paragraph affect the

impact of the next paragraph? Once you have finished that: ACTION 2A: In the Essay #1 folder in your Google Drive, create a new Google Docs file.

Create a header and the top-left information. Make the document single-spaced. Give it the filename Yourname - E1 Mini Outline. Give the outline an Essay Title (e.g., The Criminal Theater Boss), and then write an outline like the one below:

I. Introduction.

A. Introduction techniques (I will give you more info on these later) B. Thesis statement: Bob, my boss at a movie theater, was

extremely unprofessional II. He cheated business partners

A. Bob allowed debts to a food supplier to climb, and then told me that he never intended to pay them

B. Bob cheated the Orion Pictures movie studio by under-reporting ticket sales to the movie Amadeus

III. He abused workers B. Bob promised all employees great benefits in the future if they

would take low pay immediately, then broke his promise A. Bob harassed and insulted a worker named Tom for two weeks

after Tom announced that he would quit IV. He committed crimes

B. He broke labor laws by hiring a 14-year-old girl named Debbie, and had her work late evenings and overtime

A. He stole the film Rumble Fish, buying a copy for $5000 from a film thief

Note that every example is of a specific event at one point in time, and not a general action repeated over time. Also note the format:

• The outline is single-spaced • The elements are numbered along the I - A - 1 - a system • Each line has a tab and a hanging indent of 0.5 inches

DUE DATE: SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 2 (By 6:00 pm)

GOOGLE DOCS: CREATE A HANGING INDENT FOR AN OUTLINE The hanging indent is important. On the previous page, look at the line for the thesis statement, I-B. Notice that it runs over two lines. Normally, the second line would wrap back to the beginning at the left; here, it is indented the same as the beginning of the text on the first line. How to create the hanging indent for the outline: 1. Go to Google Drive and create a new Google Docs file. 2. Put your top-left information, single space because this is an outline 3. After a blank line, put the proposed essay title, center-spaced 4. Then, after another blank line, type I. and then type "tab," then the word "Text" 5. Hit the "Enter" key several times after that to add unformatted space 6. Select the line with the "I." and text only. It should look like this:

7. Go to the ruler. You will see two buttons: a "minus" button on top, and a down-arrow

button just below it. The top "minus" button is the "First-line Indent," and the down-arrow button on the bottom is the "Left Indent."

8. Click on the bottom (down-arrow) button and move it 0.5" to the right:

9. Next, move the top first-line indent back to zero:

DUE DATE: SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 2 (By 6:00 pm)

10. That's it: you now have a hanging indent. Now, select the whole line of text, copy it, and paste it 3 times:

11. Select the last two of those three, and then move the lower down-arrow ruler button

over to the right by 0.5 inches:

12. Rename the last two lines so they begin with A and B:

13. Copy those three lines, and paste them four times. Rename the "I" in them to "II,"

"III," and "IV." Now you have the exact formatting for a 2-level outline! You can use this to create a 3-level outline (your next assignment) by doing steps 10-12 again to add the next indented series, based on normal numbering. See the image at right for an example. Using this technique, you should be able to create your Mini Outline with the correct formatting.