Learn the Key Steps to Writing a Compelling Speech Outline

Nothing happens without an idea and no idea can be fully developed without research that is in turn then used to develop an outline for a paper, presentation, speech, or even a video for your YouTube channel. Over the next few minutes, I’m going to show you how to go about developing a practical rough draft outline using a proven method that I’ve taught to over 1,000 college students as they had to develop and deliver over 2,000 outlines for speeches in the courses I’ve taught over the years.

This method worked for them, at least the ones who followed the plan, and I know this will work for you, too! Even if you’re not a student right now, think of an outline as the most efficient way to organize your ideas before finalizing a paper, presentation, a speech, or a video. There are two levels of outlines.

There are the rough draft and the formal finalized version.

Let’s start by looking at the final version first so you know what the ultimate goal of outlining looks like. The formal outline is an organized, preferably typed out plan that uses spacing, symbols, letters, and numbers to show the order and importance of your content that all support the central theme with supporting main points, and subpoints to add relevance and meaning, and evidence to show where the information came from. There are four sections to the formal outline. The introduction, the body, the conclusion, and the references.

The introduction is by far the most important section as it includes an attention getter to obviously gain your audience’s attention, a relevance statement of why your audience should listen to your presentation, a credibility statement that informs your audience that you know much about the topic, your thesis statement that contains the main message of what you’re about to tell your audience, and a preview of your main points that will draw your audience in deeper by teasing the information they’re about to hear.

In the body of the outline, there are generally at least three main points, with at least 2 supporting points for each main point. There are also transitions that are needed in between ideas and main points to maintain a smooth progression and flow of your work, and a conclusion that includes a review of your main points, and a final closing statement, the clincher. That may sound like a lot of pieces and work, and it can be, but skip any one of those ingredients to your outline and your presentation will just not be complete and could fall flat in delivery causing a loss of audience attention, a misunderstanding of what you want the audience to know or do, a lower grade, and possibly even causing you great embarrassment. And I’ve seen that happen and it’s not good!

And then finally, the last section that is easily overlooked are the references that not only appear in two places in your outline but they must also be stated out loud during the delivery of your presentation.

Instead of providing you more details on how to develop every section of the outline were only going to look at developing the main body of the rough draft outline, right now. I’ll link the video on how to develop a solid introduction, thesis statements, transitions, and conclusions at the end of this one to prevent any information overload. When it comes to the rough draft outline, its purpose is to start entering and organizing all of the information you collected from the research you performed on your topic. The rough draft outline should be started right after you’ve finalized your main idea and you know the intent and purpose of your speech meaning whether or not it is to inform, persuade, entertain or be one of the other 10 types of speeches that I’ll also cover in another video.

A good idea that I strongly recommend doing before you begin a rough draft outline, is to complete the majority if not all of your research for your three main points and collect the information and citations needed for your two supporting points for each of those main points. If you try to build the rough draft as you collect information, during your research, you might start to second guess the order of where the information should go that can then cause a dilemma in whether or not to keep the information or to go down a completely different path leading to more lost time and wasted energy.

Just like in brainstorming, use the idea of the green light thinking to research and collect all of the pieces of information you think you need before deciding where to place it in your rough draft outline. Remember that Green Light Thinking is all about going without the hesitation. Think of the rough draft outline as a puzzle that unfortunately, doesn’t come in a box with a picture of what the finished project looks like.

And, if you use a template that is proven to work you don’t have to question what to do or try to fix it, all you need to do is plug in the pieces to make it work. To make sure you’re off to a great start, I provided you with a premade template with plenty of instructions included that you’ll find more than helpful! You’ll find that link in the description, too! Let’s go through the steps of how to put together the basic rough draft outline but first a quick favor. I would truly appreciate it if you could take just two seconds to support what I do by smashing that thumbs up and consider tapping that subscribe button, so you don’t have to search around for my channel every week to learn more about the tips and advice I teach you to make your work easier and more efficient!

Thanks! The first step in creating a new rough draft outline is to create a new folder on your desktop for the project you’re working on then create a new document and save it with an appropriate title.

This way your files are nice and neat and there is no wasted time trying to remember what document you were working on and where it’s hiding in your computer. That may sound simple but if you’ve ever spent time trying to find a lost file, you’ll find out very quickly that this is the right way to do it.

Let’s name this folder Info speech.

Now with a new file open, I’m going to call this ‘Rough Draft Outline Info Speech’. There I’m all set and I’m ready to go and start filling in everything. An even more important reason to do this is that it makes it less likely that you accidentally send the wrong file in an email! You can’t imagine how many times my students “accidentally” turned in the wrong file. If you want to learn more about how to organize your electronic files.

I added to the many links in the description a video that walks you through a great way on how to fix your files to save you from unneeded stress and aggravation. Assuming you already have your main idea already chosen along with your 3 main points and at least 2 supporting points for each of those main points, along with citations, references, and have a blank template ready to go, you’re ready for the next step.

The second step is to start filling in your template. Begin by entering in the three main points like this. And then enter in all of your supporting points, like this.

Now, as you can see, I sped this up quite a bit but I’m adding everything in, just faster. And then immediately add in your citations where appropriate in two places. The first one is next to the associated information.

The second is on the reference page so you don’t forget to do this later! Now, a few quick tips that will improve the quality of your outlining skills.

There are three ways on how you can add your collected information into the outline template. You can use full sentences, short phrases, or keywords, or even a combination of all three for now. If you use full sentences, make sure they are grammatically correct. And make sure that each sentence contains only one thought or idea. If you use short phrases, will you be able to recall what the rest of the information is when you come back to work on it the next day or even a week later?

With keywords, the same question is true.

If you write a word down, will you know exactly what you meant when you come back to it later? If you’re preparing an outline as part of a graded assignment, for a class, you should be given the criteria for what is expected. Follow the rules and do the work to match the expectations you were given! If you’re preparing an outline for a presentation at work, that will be shared with others, go with full sentences to avoid any confusion and misinterpretation of the information.

Keep in mind that this a rough draft outline and will evolve and change as you work your way towards the final outline. If you don’t know the exact format you want to use, such as keywords, short phrases, or sentences, don’t worry about that yet. Nobody else is going to see your work unless you share it for critiquing, or if you have a teacher, who asks to see your work for grading or hopefully to just help you out.

Speaking of helping you out I still need to show you how to construct a thesis, how to develop a thorough and effective introduction that includes how to properly greet your audience, how to develop a good attention getter, and how to preview your main points. We’ll go over that in this video, that you can watch next where I also show you how to use transitions to smooth out the flow of your delivery and how to develop a solid conclusion that includes a review of your main points, a final closing statement, and how to add in your references.

Remember, that my goal is that your success is the goal! I’ll see you online soon!