Writing Activity 2: The Outline

A Hoy!

So the last time I was here, we working on a practice piece, entitled 'A flower', and I had given you an activity to generate some details about some topics; see Writing Activity 1.

Now, we are going to continue this step of the process of planning our descriptive piece by writing an outline. Now this is a serious part. Here you will have to decide several things:

a). Who is your audience - who are you writing to?

b). What is your purpose for writing? - are you writing to inform, persuade, entertain etc. This will decide the details you chose to include and the type of genre you chose to communicate it in, (in this case it is a piece of description, but your genre could be a story, poem, play, essay etc).

c). Point of view - whose voice will you be using to commiunicate in - this influences your tone - whether it's reflective, angry, passionate, bitter, dreamy etc

d). Setting/event - these are the details that places your writing in a certain context - place, time, atmosphere etc, so your reader can follow the details and relate to their relevance, which brings some kind of realism to your writing.

e). Details - this would have been generated from the first activity.

f). arrangement or sequencing of details - could be spacial; place, chronological; time or cause and effect; reason and result. Choose the arrangement that best suits your subject and purpose.

Now that you are aware of these considerations, let's see what an outline would look like. And you can do this in several ways.

Sample Outline

Audience: Ages 13 unward, reading lovers, poetry lovers
Purpose: Entertain - invoke appreciation for flowers
Point of view - first person, garden lover, lonely wonderer
setting - inside a garden at home, early morning, misty, cool
details: what I know about flowers and one in particular, include details generated in brainstorm.

Plan (Chronological)

Introduction - speak facts about flowers - colours/colors, shapes, scent etc

Paragraph 2 - recount trip from dream into garden one morning - recount emotional state and how this was linked to the scenery that morning, remember descriptive details - create strong imagery.

Paragraph 3 - describe the paricular flower that is the subject of this piece; shape, colour/color or other distinct details, describe how you felt the first time you saw it.

Paragrapgh 4 - go into reflection about what the encounter with the flower has taught you about life, then end it with some profound saying.


And that's a sample plan. But you can organize your piece in your ownway; this is how I want mine to go. So whenever I am ready to write, I just follow this outline, and half of my work is done.

Next time, I will compose a sample description, and then we can revise it and edit it, until we are satisfied.

Until next time,
Cheers to Writing!