Just like theses, outlines create a Ben Franklin-Ralph Emerson debate. We have probably heard students say about former high school teachers, “My God! She said we had to have 50 3×5 index cards and a two-page outline. The outline had to have five divisions and each division had to have at least two subheads and they had to have two subheads and they…” However, you can heard other voices: “My teacher said not to worry about an outline: Just write what we feel and it’ll be true. Just be loose. Well I’m real loose—I’m totally disorganized. I need help.” In these instances, it is better to go for the middle ground. Here’s why:

The detailed outline on multiply levels looks like this in the abstract:
I.

II.

A.

1.

2.

B.

1.

a.

b.

III.

A.

B.

1.

a.

b.

c.

Its relentless order seems as inevitable as fate. It gives a writer who molds ideas and details to it a false sense of security—just because you are organized doesn’t mean you’ve said anything worthwhile. It may also paralyze many writers who assume their ideas are bad because they don’t easily adapt to the outline.

This can also kill spontaneity in the draft. Advocates of this system want to eliminate the dangers of spontaneity—disorganization, uncertainty about what to say in the next sentence, redundancy. But they also kill spontaneity’s virtues, too—coherence of mood, surprise, discovery. Over-outlining often creates dead, lifeless drafts. The writer simply colors inside lines already drawn.

Lastly, ruthlessly outlines create unnecessary labor because they are seldom used in practice. Most advocates of intricate outlines don’t use them themselves. They instead write from slumber humbler shack outlines. We get hung up on detailed outlines because humans like abstract order and want to believe that creativity can be planned perfectly. It can’t. Actual writing based on a minutely detailed outline is usually dull. Most good writing by scientists, businesspeople, and essayists fail to meet the standards of multi-division outline.

The other extreme, meanwhile may work for some people, but it is also flawed. Without any plan, you are going to stumble and repeat your self while in the middle of the process. If you want to do a good job, you will do heavy rewriting to separate the brilliant tidbits from the garbage and simply to see what you have said. This path, of course, is the one writers must take when composing at the last minute.