x

Folder Sign In:

Incorrect Username / Password

Email Address:

 

Password:

 

Create New Account      Password Reminder

x

Folder Sign In:

You've Successfully Logged In!

x

Create New Account:

You do not need to sign in to use this database. However, signing in gains you access to a personal folder that you can use to save items. These items will be archived and made available to you during future database sessions.

Email Address:

 

Password:

 

Already Have Account      Password Reminder

x

Folder Sign In:

You've Successfully Created a New Account!

x

Password Reminder:

Enter your email address and we will send you your password for your Saved Items Folder Account Sign In.

E-mail Address:

 

x

Password Reminder:

Reminder Email sent!

x

E-mail Article:

Send this article to the following E-mail address. Use commas to separate multiple addresses.

E-mail Address:

 

x

E-mail Article:

Article sent!

x
Citation Information
How to Cite
Manser, Martin H. "Planning." Writer's Reference Center. Facts On File, Inc. Web. 18 Apr. 2025. <http://fofweb.infobase.com/wrc/Detail.aspx?iPin=GTGW006>.
x
Record URL
To refer to this page or share this page with others, copy and paste this link:
http://fofweb.infobase.com/wrc/Detail.aspx?iPin=GTGW006

Planning


Why Make a Plan?

There are few pieces of writing that do not benefit from being planned, at least informally, in advance. The more complex the writing task you have in hand, the more useful it is to have a plan and the more detailed that plan is likely to be. But even if you simply have to write a letter—a business or official letter, in particular—then a plan will help ensure that you have covered all the necessary points. Planning will help you as a writer. It will give shape to your task; it will break it down into separate stages so that you do not feel you are setting out toward some impossibly distant final goal; it will enable you to measure your progress. Planning will also help your reader. If your piece has a planned and coherent structure, in which one point leads logically to the next, it will be much easier for your reader to follow. Indeed, in any piece of writing that involves your reader in following an argument, it is often advisable to let your plan be a visible, rather than invisible, structure—a set of explicit pointers to show the reader where you intend to take him or her next.

It is true that by planning you are likely to forfeit a certain amount of spontaneity. But spontaneity in writing is not perhaps as desirable a quality as it might seem. It might be wonderfully exciting and invigorating for a writer at the desk to be seized suddenly by a brilliant idea and to feel impelled to follow it wherever it leads. But the reader may not share the excitement of the chase. The reader may simply think "What's this all about?" or "Where is the author leading me?" or "What has all this got do with what the author was saying on the previous page?" A brilliant idea is a wonderful thing, but it is usually a more effective element if it does not appear out of nowhere but rather seems to arise naturally from what preceded it.

Paradoxically, the effect of naturalness is more often than not achieved by careful planning. Think of the dramatic appearance or reappearance of a character in a play or movie. Did it suddenly come into the writer's head to bring in that character at that particular moment? Possibly, but it is more likely that the writer had been planning from the outset to give the audience a pleasant or unpleasant surprise. Novelists, dramatists, and screenwriters plan. Poets probably plan long poems. Planning is a creative activity. When you plan, you are, among other things, organizing your material for the best aesthetic effect.

Spontaneity, to take this point further, is not necessarily the same thing as liveliness. Liveliness is always a welcome quality, but it will come more from your own mind and personality as these are expressed in the way you write. Spontaneity, the sense that something is done on the spur of the moment, is fine in a personal letter or e-mail, for the best personal communications give the impression that the writer is speaking to you via the paper or screen. But even some personal letters would benefit from planning. We have probably all at some time received a lengthy "Dear Friends" letter at Christmas or the New Year, in which the writer proceeds to tell us—and the rest of his or her acquaintances—everything that has happened to the family in the course of the previous 12 months with little regard for logic or chronology or for whether we are familiar with all the dramatis personae. A little organization, and a little empathy with the reader, would often not go amiss. Not planning more often results in rambling and repetition than in a "fine careless rapture."

Finally, when you make a plan, you are not forging a set of manacles that you will have to wear for the duration of your writing task. A plan can be altered at any time to accommodate new insights that emerge in the course of composition. As soon as you have a brilliant new idea, it is probably best to record it in written form, as notes or text, and then go back and adjust your plan. Do not chance it, hoping that everything will magically come together. You will get to your directions sooner and with fewer detours if you have an accurate map updated to take account of the newest circumstances.

Preparing a Plan

When you have completed your thinking and research, you will probably have accumulated a mass of data. Unless you have been meticulously operating a card file system or some computer-based equivalent, the chances are that your material will be spread over a number of sheets of paper or a number of computer files. You now need to bring all that material together and begin seriously to organize it.

In theory, it may seem difficult to organize your data if you do not have a plan and difficult to make a plan if you have not organized your data. In practice, we multitask. You may have conducted your research on the basis of a rough plan that you sketched out when you first identified your main areas of interest in the topic, in which case you can adapt that plan in light of any new insights you have gained. It may be that you prefer to draw a line under the first stage in the process and start afresh. In either case, your first requirement is a precise statement of the topic you are going to write about—a title, if what you are writing happens to be an academic assignment, a journal article, or a report—followed by a list of the main points you intend to address—a list that could possibly become a list of main headings in a formal piece.

Defining the Topic

Defining, redefining, or reaffirming the precise nature of the task ahead of you is important at this stage. Several of the topics that were used for example purposes in the previous section were very large scale. You could easily write a book about Charles Dickens and America or about wine making in California. In the course of investigating such a subject, you will probably have realized how much there is to write about and that if you endeavor to cover the whole of it when you have only limited time and space available, the results will inevitably be superficial. Do not bite off more than you can chew. Be realistic about what you can achieve, and if necessary, scale down your ambitions.

It may be that in the course of doing your research, you have realized that your main interest lies in—or that the most interesting material that you have been able to collect relates to—a particular area of the subject. If that happens to be the case, consider defining your topic around that particular area. You might, for example, concentrate on the history of wine making in California, the economics of California wine making, or a typical day at a California winery. If you are writing on a broad topic, it is possible and desirable to deal with some specific instances, but it is just as possible, if you are writing on a more narrowly defined subject, to include a section that covers broader issues. If, say, you choose to write about Charles Dickens in Boston—where he enjoyed himself most and where the impressions on both sides were most positive—nothing prevents you from alluding to the fact that relations were less rosy elsewhere, for instance, by comparing what made Boston congenial to Dickens with what was lacking when he visited other parts of the country in 1842.

Organizing the Material

To illustrate the planning of a writing task, from the point at which the topic is finally defined onward, we shall use a fresh example.

Let us assume that you have decided to write on the subject of tourism. Let us further assume that while collecting material on this vast topic you have become aware that while tourism provides a vital source of revenue in many areas of the world, the attitude of local people toward tourists is often ambivalent. You have also come across a comment by, let's say, a local hotelier or politician at some prime tourist destination who is on record as saying "Here, the tourist is always a welcome guest." You are struck by this comment and decide to take it as your title. How do you set about planning a piece of writing on this subject under this heading?

The usual method is similar to the one adopted when making a summary. First make a list of your main points. If, as was suggested above, you are inclined to think that there are two sides to this particular issue and that an influx of tourists has both advantages and disadvantages to local residents, then these points are likely to fall into two distinct categories:

Advantages
Tourists bring money into the area
Jobs are created for the local community
New facilities are built that also benefit the local community
Locals benefit from contact with people from other countries
The area is "put on the map"
Disadvantages
The needs of local people become subordinate to those of the visitors
Local industries or agriculture may suffer as funds are diverted to setting up a tourist industry
Tourism can damage the environment
The tourist trade is subject to outside influences
Local residents can become "a human zoo"
If your main points are outlined as above, the next stage is to list subpoints under each of them with the eventual aim of producing a plan that will correspond roughly to the order of paragraphs in your full version, each subpoint indicating an amount of material that will fill one paragraph, or possibly more than one. But you should also be beginning to think about the overall scheme of your piece. Are you going to deal with all the advantageous aspects as a block and then deal with all the disadvantageous ones? Or are you going to mingle the two, perhaps citing an advantage, but then showing that there is also a downside to it?

Assuming for the moment that you adopt the first alternative, keeping advantages and disadvantages separate, a more detailed plan might look like the following:

Advantages
Tourists bring money into the area
–Scenically attractive areas are often poor areas
–The country may need hard currency
Jobs are created for the local community
–In hotels
–In transportation
–Existing industries expand to supply goods and services to visitors
New facilities are built that also benefit the local community
–Roads, airports, and other transportation links
–Utilities
–Entertainments
Locals benefit from contact with people from other countries
–Learning languages
–Finding out how other people live
The area is "put on the map"
–All sorts of benefits can flow from the fact that people from outside the area get to know it and like it
Disadvantages
The needs of local people become subordinate to those of the visitors
–First-world needs are not the same as third-world needs
–"He who pays the piper calls the tune"
Local industries or agriculture may suffer as funds are diverted to setting up a tourist industry
–Land used for building hotels, etc.
Tourism can damage the environment
–Specific examples
The tourist trade is subject to outside influences
–Different areas compete with one another
–Fashions change
–Terrorist threat, etc.
Local residents can become "a human zoo"
–Local culture becomes tourist entertainment and loses meaning
A further level of detail would introduce examples to illustrate particular points, which you would perhaps expect to deal with in less than a paragraph, always depending on the scale of the piece and the material you have available. Let's use the following point, listed under disadvantages, to go into greater detail:

Tourism can damage the environment
–Natural features are eroded or polluted
The Great Barrier Reef
The Dolomites
Trails in national parks
–Historic towns suffer increased traffic and air pollution
Bath, England
Salzburg, Austria
If you feel that it might not work to present the whole case for one side and follow it with the whole case for the other side, you could try the second option of interspersing advantages and disadvantages. You might need to select slightly different material in this instance, so that you provided an appropriate negative aspect for each positive aspect you put forward. If the piece were planned in this way, the resulting outline might look something like this:

Tourists bring money into the area
Scenically attractive areas are often poor areas
The country may need hard currency
But: Does the money go to local people or mainly to, e.g., large, possibly multinational hotel chains?
Tourist money cannot be solely relied on for area's economic well-being
Jobs are created for the local community
In, e.g., hotels and transportation
But: These are mainly low-level service jobs Existing industries may expand to supply goods and services to visitors
But: If there are no existing industries, will they be set up locally or will materials and labor be shipped in from elsewhere?
New facilities are built that also benefit the local community
Roads, airports and other transportation links
Utilities
Entertainments
But: Do local communities really benefit, as is often claimed?
Example—Olympic Games in Atlanta, Barcelona Former Olympic Villages become luxury housing too expensive for local residents
Locals benefit from contact with people from other countries
Learning languages
Finding out how other people live
But: Their customs and culture can become curiosities for patronizing tourists
The area is "put on the map"
All sorts of benefits can flow from the fact that people from outside the area get to know it and like it
But: The way of life of local people may be changed forever; there is no going back
For the purposes of this particular example, neither of the two plans is superior to the other. What is important is that the plan should embody all the material you have chosen to write about and that it is organized according to the principles that suit you and your intended purpose best.

Formal Plans

What we have been drawing up is an informal plan insofar as it is intended for your own use and guidance. There may be occasions when you have to submit a formal plan or outline. In such a case, the basic principle remains the same, but each level of detail has to be marked by a different rank in a notation. One common hierarchy of symbols is as follows:

  • First level—Roman numerals followed by a period—I.
  • Second level—capital letters followed by a period—A.
  • Third level—Arabic numerals followed by a period—1.
  • Fourth level—lowercase letters followed by a period—a.
  • Fifth level—Arabic numerals in parentheses—(1)
  • Sixth level—lowercase letters in parentheses—(a)
If we were to set out the original informal plan for the tourism project in this way, the formal outline would look like this:

I. Advantages

     A. Tourists bring money into the area
  1. Scenically attractive areas are often poor areas
  2. The country may need hard currency
     B. Jobs are created for the local community
  1. In hotels
  2. In transportation
  3. Existing industries expand to supply goods and services to visitors
     C. New facilities are built that also benefit the local community
  1. Roads, airports, and other transportation links
  2. Utilities
  3. Entertainments
     D. Locals benefit from contact with people from other countries
  1. Learning languages
  2. Finding out how other people live
     E. The area is "put on the map"
  1. All sorts of benefits can flow from the fact that people from outside the area get to know it and like it
II. Disadvantages

A. The needs of local people become subordinate to those of the visitors
  1. First-world needs are not the same as third-world needs
  2. "He who pays the piper calls the tune"
B. Local industries or agriculture may suffer as funds are diverted to setting up a tourist industry
  1. Land used for building hotels, etc.
C. Tourism can damage the environment
  1. Natural features are eroded or polluted
    a. The Great Barrier Reef
    b. The Dolomites
    c. Trails in national parks
  2. Historic towns suffer increased traffic and air pollution
    a. Bath, England
    b. Salzburg, Austria
     D. The tourist trade is subject to outside influences
  1. Different areas compete with one another
  2. Fashions change
  3. Terrorist threat, etc.
E. Local residents can become "a human zoo"
  1. Local culture becomes tourist entertainment and loses meaning
Only comparatively rarely will you need to use all six levels in a plan.

One different style that is becoming increasingly used is 1., 1.1, 1.1.1, etc., for the different levels:

1. Advantages

     1.1 Tourists bring money into the area
          1.1.1 Scenically attractive areas are often poor areas
          1.1.2 The country may need hard currency
     1.2 Jobs are created for the local community
          1.2.1 In hotels
          1.2.2 In transportation
          1.2.3 Existing industries expand to supply goods and services to visitors
     1.3 New facilities are built that also benefit the local community
          1.3.1 Roads, airports, and other transportation links
          1.3.2 Utilities
          1.3.3 Entertainments
     1.4 Locals benefit from contact with people from other countries
          1.4.1 Learning languages
          1.4.2 Finding out how other people live
     1.5 The area is "put on the map"
          1.5.1 All sorts of benefits can flow from the fact that people from outside the area get to know it and like it
2. Disadvantages

     2.1 The needs of local people become subordinate to those of the visitors
          2.1.1 First-world needs are not the same as third-world needs
          2.1.2 "He who pays the piper calls the tune"
     2.2 Local industries or agriculture may suffer as funds are diverted to setting up a tourist industry
          2.2.1 Land used for building hotels, etc.
     2.3 Tourism can damage the environment and so on.
          2.3.1 Natural features are eroded or polluted
          2.3.1.1 The Great Barrier Reef
          2.3.1.2 The Dolomites
          2.3.1.3 Trails in national parks

Dialoguing with the Reader

In the discussion of the preparatory and planning processes so far, the reader has been left on the sidelines somewhat, but being aware of whom you are writing for is just as important as being aware of what you are writing and what you are writing about. As the writer, you are the prime mover in any writing task—you are saying what you want to say—but saying it has little purpose if your message is not understood by and does not resonate with the reader.

An awareness of the reader can be particularly helpful when making a plan, especially if what you are writing is aimed at a very specific audience. If you are unsure of the most effective way to arrange your material, it may assist you to enter into an imaginary dialogue or question-and-answer session with the sort of person to whom you are addressing your remarks.

If you are arguing a case, for instance, this method can be especially useful.

If I said this, what would you naturally say in reply?
If you made that objection, how would I counter it?
I say this, but you remain unconvinced. What further evidence can I offer to help change your mind?
You do not, however, have to imagine the reader as an adversary.

I know that you are interested in this. I want to call your attention to that. What can I say about that, which will link it to your main area of interest?
You could, if it is helpful, draw up a rough plan in dialogue form:

I say: Tourism creates jobs. The X hotel in Y employs 400 people.
You say: Waiting tables and changing bedclothes, what kind of a job is that?
I say: A good job, if the alternative is living in a shantytown and begging.
Continue the dialogue until it reaches a logical conclusion, then by removing the speech prefixes and tidying up the wording, you will have a workable plan.

Introduction and Conclusion

The plans that have been drawn up by way of example so far cover only the body of the piece; the introduction and the conclusion have been left out of the account. The plan is not complete until you have decided how you are going to begin and end. In some respects, the beginning and the ending are the most important parts of the piece, especially the beginning. When starting, you have to arouse the reader's interest and persuade him or her that what follows is worth reading. When finishing, you have to repay the reader's attention by showing that everything that he or she has read has been to some purpose and has led to a valuable conclusion. All this said, it is easier to plan an introduction and conclusion once you have a firm idea of what you are going to say and in what order, so it often helps to plan these last.

There is a simple and traditional model for a speech to an audience that runs as follows:

  • Say what you're going to say
  • Say it
  • Say that you've said it
If you are writing something that you intend to read aloud, then you should beware of straying too far from these guidelines. Listeners, especially note-taking listeners, require a certain amount of repetition if they are to receive and understand your message.

Even if you are writing to be read rather than heard, there is a good deal of merit in this prescription. Readers generally appreciate being told what to expect and then being led to a more or less predetermined goal along a clear route. The standard introduction, then, provides a concise statement of what your intention is, how the piece is to be structured, what the main points are to be, and what the conclusion is to be. For a comparatively brief piece of writing, there may be no need to draw up a plan for a standard introduction, because it is unlikely to be more than a paragraph in length and in planning it you will more or less have written it, as shown in the example below.

Here the Tourist Is Always a Welcome Guest
Many areas of the world now depend on tourism for a substantial part of their income. My aim in this essay is to discuss both the immediate financial gains and the other benefits that tourism can bring to such an area and its local community. But creating the large-scale infrastructure necessary to cater to tourists' needs can bring enormous changes to the area and its people. Not all these changes are likely to be welcome to the inhabitants, and I shall also be discussing the disadvantages that tourism brings with it. Nonetheless, on balance, I conclude that the disadvantages are outweighed by the advantages and that, consequently, in most parts of the world the tourist is, indeed, always a welcome guest.
This example is an exceedingly safe and straightforward way of beginning a piece of writing. It may "arouse the reader's interest"—assuming that the reader is predisposed to be interested in matters relating to the tourist trade—but it will not capture his or her attention. There must be more striking and imaginative ways of starting.

Indeed there are. You could begin with some more dramatic fact, if you have one at your disposal, such as, "The world over, some 500 million people now make their living directly or indirectly from the tourist trade." You could begin with a significant question: "Have you ever considered, as you lie by the pool in a swanky hotel in some exotic location, precisely what the person you have just sent off to bring you a glass of iced tea thinks of tourists like you?" You could begin with a little piece of action or dialogue (this is a journalistic favorite): "Mr. Schwenk, the hotel manager, was having a busy day. The lady from Michigan was having problems with her dog; the gentleman from Munich had just dropped his cell phone in the pool; the bus had broken down on the way to collect a party of visitors from the airport. Was Mr. Schwenk troubled? Not at all, it seemed. He handed me my key with his usual gleaming smile. 'Here,' he said, 'the tourist is always a welcome guest.'"

Any such introduction would work if it suited your purpose, your material, and your reader. Nevertheless, whatever kind of sentence or paragraph you use as a launchpad, it will have implications for the way you treat your material, and you may have to adjust your plan accordingly. Bringing in Mr. Schwenk may seem like a brilliant idea, but you then have to decide whether to use him further or dismiss him. In any event, you would be well advised to ensure that the basic material that is included in the standard introduction features in your more imaginative introduction as well. The reader needs to know pretty soon that Mr. Schwenk has only a minor role in a larger-scale production.

It is possible to construct an "imaginative" conclusion, too. Experienced writers know, however, that if it is sometimes difficult to find a beginning, finding an ending is often the hardest part of all. The simplest type of conclusion is usually the best. Sum up your argument as briefly as possible and state as clearly as you can the idea or impression that you wish to leave with your reader.

No one could argue that tourism is an unalloyed blessing for the host community. There are costs, above all environmental and cultural costs. But for most areas and most communities, as I have shown, the economic benefits are undeniable, and opening themselves up to the tourist trade can mean the difference between survival and inevitable decline. In my view, then, the tourist ought to be treated as a valued customer and encouraged to come again.

Return to Top Return to Top