Reverse outlining

“I really like the tactic of reverse-outlining: getting your ideas out first and then see which of these work, which don’t, and then make an outline from there. Once you’ve written out some core arguments or ideas that you want to make, not even in any order necessarily.

I think this has just always been difficult for me. And I’ve noticed that other people can find it difficult to do an outline without having written anything. You just don’t necessarily know what a good logical order for the ideas would be. You don’t always know from the start which points you want to make.

For example, when you’re writing a literature review, you don’t need to cite every single study or paper that’s ever been done on the topic. You just need to cite the ones that are most relevant to what you’re writing about. And that can be difficult to know until you’ve written some reviews out and see.”

(Matt Farmer)