Writing Fundamentals: Part 9

Office of Graduate Studies Author

12/19/2016 Added

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Part 9 of a 10-part Research Writing Fundamentals workshop presented by Dr. Rick Lombardo

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[00:00:00.000]Let's go through the outline.
[00:00:03.158]I wanna say this one time to you.
[00:00:06.609]If you don't outline what it is you're going to write,
[00:00:09.866]it's gonna take you four to five times longer to write.
[00:00:14.581]Four to five times longer, because you're holding
[00:00:19.427]onto that myth that logic comes out of my head into the pen.
[00:00:24.528]And it does not.
[00:00:27.111]That's why the outline is so important.
[00:00:31.573]So,
[00:00:34.796]let's take a look at a typical outline,
[00:00:36.299]engineering and the sciences.
[00:00:38.009]Each disciple has it's own,
[00:00:40.125]but it looks something like that.
[00:00:43.298]But I think I put this here for one reason.
[00:00:46.170]Notice the levels of generality here,
[00:00:49.265]like we saw in that one paragraph about food.
[00:00:54.161]So it gets,
[00:00:56.269]it gets more specific.
[00:00:59.023]You can draw arrows from here to here,
[00:01:01.164]an arrow from here to here, right?
[00:01:03.898]Just like we did with that paragraph pattern.
[00:01:08.687]But look, once you start filling that in, each section,
[00:01:14.646]it's gonna be so much easier for you to write.
[00:01:17.092]Now there's one problem with outlining, you know when
[00:01:18.810]I grew up with outlines in elementary school I was so
[00:01:23.112]concerned with
[00:01:26.256]all of this:
[00:01:28.849]Roman numeral one,
[00:01:29.964]Roman numeral two, to use capital A.
[00:01:31.763]That I forgot to look at what's the content
[00:01:33.912]I'm putting in this.
[00:01:35.465]The emphasis was on the skeleton.
[00:01:38.738]They never taught us to emphasize the content
[00:01:41.348]of what I put in the skeleton,
[00:01:43.593]and that's what I want you to do.
[00:01:50.249]The important thing, different disciplines aren't
[00:01:52.056]going to be any different.
[00:01:53.387]But you need to coordinate and subordinate your
[00:01:56.096]thoughts and ideas logically.
[00:02:00.146](paper shuffling)
[00:02:04.635]Let's
[00:02:09.222]translate this into a simple example.
[00:02:12.927]I like this very much.
[00:02:15.214]Let's say you were doing a section.
[00:02:17.358]And the purpose of this section, let's just
[00:02:19.458]do it more practically.
[00:02:21.741]Let's say you're an architect and a company says:
[00:02:24.854]We wanna build a new building, would you send me an email
[00:02:29.450]giving me a visual description of the building,
[00:02:32.589]just a general idea.
[00:02:34.808]Your first thoughts.
[00:02:37.263]And you sit down and you go, I gotta write an outline.
[00:02:40.665]Here are my main parts.
[00:02:43.241]My main parts are the grounds outside,
[00:02:46.103]the architecture, and uses.
[00:02:49.088]That logic came right to my pen and I wrote them down,
[00:02:52.599]or on my typewriter, computer.
[00:02:56.100]Will this help you write?
[00:02:58.651]This outline.
[00:02:59.484]Will that help you write what your reader wants to read?
[00:03:04.098]Yes or no, is this a good outline?
[00:03:06.326]How many think this is a good outline?
[00:03:09.842]How many think it's not a good outline?
[00:03:13.642]And many of you don't care.
[00:03:16.523]The point is it's not.
[00:03:17.869]Here's the question, can I draw arrows from A, B, and C
[00:03:22.851]to the topic?
[00:03:23.894]You can't draw your line from C to the topic sentence.
[00:03:29.021]From uses?
[00:03:30.779]So he's saying this doesn't fit.
[00:03:34.843]'Cause it doesn't.
[00:03:37.000]Now if you change this to a visual description,
[00:03:38.889]of a building and it's uses.
[00:03:41.260]Now you have two things.
[00:03:42.765]What's the only one thing that you wrote down here
[00:03:45.247]really fits with the thesis?
[00:03:49.707]Huh?
[00:03:51.187]The architecture.
[00:03:53.541]Wait a minute, but you thought you were being so logical.
[00:03:59.033]So, that's the only one that works.
[00:04:04.737]The rest of them, you need to impose logic on your thinking.
[00:04:07.630]Once you put an outline down you gotta step back and say,
[00:04:12.070]Rick, are you being logical?
[00:04:16.236]Lin Yu are you being logical?
[00:04:21.020]It looks like I'm being logical on first blush.
[00:04:25.545]But you really have to start to develop a critical eye.
[00:04:29.776]Here's another example, the reasons the BMW
[00:04:32.731]is popular in America.
[00:04:38.872]I'm going to write first about it's manufacture in Germany,
[00:04:42.365](coughing), then the economy, and then it's a good buy.
[00:04:47.899]Will this simple outline help me write this?
[00:04:52.057]Yes or no?
[00:04:52.893]No.
[00:04:54.130]Why?
[00:04:55.236]There is no, you need a reason.
[00:04:57.642]There's no transparent logic here.
[00:05:02.011]It says manufactured in Germany.
[00:05:06.763]I could talk about the German countryside,
[00:05:09.136]German beer, German women.
[00:05:11.354](laughing)
[00:05:14.123]It doesn't give me direction.
[00:05:15.718]All of these have dotted lines, but then you can't see
[00:05:18.960]the exact connection logically to the topic.
[00:05:23.371]So here's what you need to do, you need to
[00:05:25.096]crystallize your logic,
[00:05:30.829]high-quality German engineering.
[00:05:33.464]Now you can write that paragraph much more easily.
[00:05:41.065]Right?
[00:05:42.449]You're in charge of doing this.
[00:05:43.877]There's no book that tells you this.
[00:05:46.384]You're in charge of this, and every one of you can do this,
[00:05:49.323]as long as you're self-critical
[00:05:51.566]and you keep the reader in mind.
[00:05:53.404]But the point is for outlining, it's to help you
[00:05:56.337]not spend so much time writing.
[00:06:00.494]So the first example, you impose logic.
[00:06:02.841]Here you need to crystallize.
[00:06:04.261]How about economy?
[00:06:05.765]What are they talking about, German economy?
[00:06:07.981]What am I talking about, German economy?
[00:06:11.481]Economy, what do you mean?
[00:06:13.577]Well let's make it something so it's easier for me to write.
[00:06:19.153]Good gas mileage, could be a hundred things.
[00:06:24.280]How about good buy?
[00:06:26.369]Why is it a good buy?
[00:06:28.273]Make it something.
[00:06:30.186]High resale value.
[00:06:32.167]Now it's gonna be easier for you to write this,
[00:06:36.015]because you've not only imposed logic,
[00:06:38.236]you've crystallized it, your own logic.
[00:06:47.602]Now we've got straight curved arrows, full arrows,
[00:06:51.992]they're not dotted lines, kind of unsure
[00:06:53.618]as to how they connect.
[00:06:56.337]You need to crystallize your logic.
[00:06:58.402]This came from Pan Am Flight 103.
[00:07:01.600]The people who had to investigate the crash scene
[00:07:05.453]had to put together a progress report.
[00:07:10.704]It's not real clear.
[00:07:12.991]Now watch.
[00:07:15.788]Look at the three coordinate headings, completed work,
[00:07:20.529]preliminary results of work, and future work.
[00:07:25.199]Look what's under, subordinate under, completed work.
[00:07:27.663]Recovering debris, cataloging debris, interpreting debris.
[00:07:32.768]Preliminary result of work.
[00:07:34.803]Where was the bomb placed and how was it constructed.
[00:07:39.385]What are we gonna do next?
[00:07:41.932]This is both imposing logic and crystallizing logic.
[00:07:45.684]This is transparent to anybody in this room.
[00:07:49.637]You don't have to be an expert on it.
[00:07:52.067]Everybody can see this as a very logically organized,
[00:07:58.791]transparently logical outline.
[00:08:03.534]That's up to you.
[00:08:06.722]There's no book.
[00:08:07.788]There's nobody outside you who's gonna tell you to do this.
[00:08:10.462]Only you.

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Writing Fundamentals: Part 9

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