The Descriptive Outline
Adapted from A Community of Writers by Peter Elbow
Is it difficult for you to organize your essays in a clear cut and logical way? Do you find yourself
being told that you have repeated yourself in your writing, but can’t tell where you did so? Do
you have trouble seeing where transitions should go? The Descriptive Outline is your answer.
The Purpose:
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It allows you to see a diagram of the ideas embedded within you draft more easily.
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It allows you to analyze your essay’s organizational structure and to identify and correct any
problems with organization early on.
It allows you to see if you repeated any ideas, and where that repetition is.
It allows you to see if any of the ideas or paragraphs are unrelated to the main focus of the
draft.
It allows you to see where transitions between paragraphs and ideas need to be developed.
It allows you to see if you have any paragraphs with more than one main idea.
It allows you to see if your introduction “matches” the body of your essay (or vice versa)
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Instructions:
• You must have a completed rough draft in order to make a useful Descriptive Outline.
• Number each separate paragraph.
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Make your outline on a separate piece of paper or separate document if you’re working on
computer.
For each paragraph, write a says statement. A says statement is a newly written
sentence that is a summary sentence of what the paragraph actually says.
When writing a says statement, it is important that you create a whole new sentence
rather than copying a sentence you’ve already written or writing what you wish you had said.
This is important because if a writer can’t write a new summary sentence that encompasses
the whole paragraph, then the writer may not fully understand what she or he has written-even through it’s the writer’s own essay.
For each paragraph, write a does statement. The does statement is a description of the
purpose of the paragraph; what it does in the paper. For example, the introductory
paragraph introduces the subject. A body paragraph might provide examples that illustrate
the main idea, etc.
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What an outline might look like:
1. Says: _____________________________________________________
1. Does: _____________________________________________________
2. Says: _____________________________________________________
2. Does: _____________________________________________________
3. Says: _____________________________________________________
3. Does: _____________________________________________________
4. Says: _____________________________________________________
4. Does: _____________________________________________________
and so on for as many paragraphs as you have.
So, what’s the point?
Let’s say that in your six paragraph essay, you see that paragraph 2 says the same thing as
paragraph 4. By doing this outline, you’ll see this and make a decision about moving or deleting
one of the paragraphs. Let’s say that for paragraph 4, you were unable to write a says
statement for the paragraph in only one sentence. You had to write two or three. That might
indicate to you that there is more than one main idea in that paragraph. Maybe paragraph 5 is
unrelated to the rest of the essay or the introduction doesn’t “match” the rest of the essay. This
diagram will point that out to you.
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