EmpoWord: A Student-Centered Anthology & Handbook for College Writers

Appendix A: Strategies and Concepts for Revision 455 Once you have identified the idea(s) and purpose(s) of each paragraph, you can start revising according to your observations. From the completed reverse outline, create a new outline with a different sequence, organization, focus, or balance. You can reorganize by • combining or dividing paragraphs, • re-arranging ideas, and • adding or subtracting content. Reverse outlining can also be helpful in identifying gaps and redundancies: now that you have a new outline, do any of your ideas seem too brief? Do you need more evidence for a certain argument? Do you see ideas repeated more than necessary? After completing the reverse outline above, the student proposed this new organizatio n: 2 Proposed changes based on reverse outline: 1 4a 4b Combine 2 and 5a Combine 3 and 6 5b Write new paragraph on other solutions 7 You might note that this strategy can also be applied on the sentence and section level. Additionally, if you are a kinesthetic or visual learner, you might cut your paper into smaller pieces that you can physically manipulate. Be sure to read aloud after reverse outlining to look for abrupt transitions. You can see a simplified version of this technique demonstrated i n this video .