Saturday, October 5, 2024

Fall 2024 Post 06: Fat Outlines and Gemini

I assign outlines for my composition students. I suspect they don't like it, so why do I do it? Because outlines can help students become better readers and writers. And reading does come first.

And now that I'm using Gemini in the classroom, I find it even easier and more instructive to use outlines. Gemini is really good at generating an outline for almost any kind of writing, usually in under sixty seconds, and if you don't like the first outline Gemini generates, then you can prompt it to generate countless more until you are comfortable. I know from experience that outlines work for many people. Even experienced writers write better documents.

In his post entitled "On fat outlines and shitty first drafts," my favorite professional writer and blogger Josh Bernoff explodes the myth that professional writers (by professional he means people who get paid for their writing, including people who write emails to business customers and colleagues) can simply sit down at the computer and knock out perfect prose at will. He says pointedly: "The idea that you would just sit down and write a beautiful draft is deluded. The best writers do this on the best days; you, on the other hand, have to work even when you are not the best writer and it is not the best day."

As an example of his point, I'll share a personal anecdote. I took a graduate course at the University of Miami with Isaac Bashevis Singer, winner of the 1978 Nobel Prize for Literature, and he claimed that he wrote every morning from 7:00 until lunch, and that four out of five days, he threw it in the trash. (Being a cheeky grad student, I asked him if I could take out his trash for him. He declined my offer.) So accept it: if a Nobel prize winning author seldom writes a perfect first draft, chances are that you and I never will.

Of course, all my students want to be one-draft wonders. They want to sit down and knock out a perfect A+ essay off the top of their heads on any topic on demand. In forty years of teaching writing, I have had one student who could do that: a 14-year-old Jewish teenager in Miami who was already in college. She knew more about writing than I ever will, and I taught her nothing. Sadly, students, you and I are not that gifted young Jewish woman. We have to work at writing. I know that I do, and I know that most of you do, too.

Fortunately, Bernoff suggests two main strategies for working your way through to polished writing:

  • fat outlines
  • shitty first drafts

Start writing by moving through your shitty first draft as quickly as possible. You can't turn that in, so write it and move on quickly. Gemini can help you do that, so use it.

I'll tell you a story to illustrate (teaching moment: note that I'm using another personal anecdote to illustrate a claim that I am making about first drafts being shitty. Personal anecdotes are effective in blog posts and magazine articles, but they are not often used in academic writing.): When I was earning my master's degree at Arkansas State University, I thought I was going to be a poet. One morning in 1977, I dashed off a poem, ripped it out of my typewriter (this was BPC, Before Personal Computers), and took it down to my major professor for a review. Prof Harwell looked at it cursorily, dropped it onto a stack of papers to grade, and said, "I'll get back to you." I waited expectantly for weeks for him to tell me that I was clearly a future Nobel prize winning author, but I heard nothing. About two months later, the poem was in my office mailbox, and Prof. Harwell had scrawled in angry red ink a simple message: A first draft is almost always an imposition. Don't do this again.

Harwell was right, and I have avoided ever submitting a first draft again. You shouldn't do it either. Your first draft is always an imposition. Don't submit it. Yeah, I know: you've struggled until you're sick of it to write 800 words, and you want to move on. Forget it. You've just started writing.

So if first drafts are usually no good, what works?

Fat outlines, Bernoff says. He says outlines work if they are complete, or fat. He is dismissive of the bare outline: "A regular outline includes just the heads and subheads of what you intend to write. It is useless. It is easy to create, but does not help you much when you sit down to write." I see his point, but I think he overstates it. A regular, bare outline at least gets you started, and it is easier than a fat outline — though I suspect you will agree with me that it is not always "easy to create." However, Gemini can create twenty outlines for every one outline that you can create. Use Gemini. For me, the biggest benefit of the bare outline is that it lets you see the large main ideas that you want to write about without all the details. This is especially helpful for moving those big ideas around as you try to find a suitable organizational pattern for your document. And you can use Gemini to rearrange outlines almost instantly. Try it.

So what is a fat outline? Bernoff says:

A fat outline is everything you intend to put in a chapter. It includes quotes, graphics, insights, statistics, tossed off paragraphs, and anything else you can think of. You arrange those items into a logical order and put some heads in. A fat outline takes work, although it is a different kind of work from writing. It is the work of research and organization. And it is easy to create, because there are no constraints whatsoever. (You can write the whole thing in repetitive passive jargon-filled run-on sentences and fragments if that makes it easier.) 
Unlike the traditional outline, the fat outline is very helpful when you sit down to write. With the fat outline in front of you, you have all the ingredients at hand, and the recipe is laid out in order. All that’s left is the cooking. Cooking is still hard, but if you hadn’t collected the ingredients and the recipe, it would be much harder.

I think he's nailed it as I often use both strategies for the same document.

As Singer taught me, four out of five times, your first draft is not good enough, even if you are a Nobel prize winner. It certainly is not good enough to turn in to your instructor. It is useful only for getting some ideas down so that you can keep the good ones and delete or fix the bad ones. I know – I write tons of shitty first drafts. But I don't turn them in or submit them for publication. I fix them or discard them. That's the biggest difference between experienced writers and novice writers. Novice writers think their first draft is good enough, experienced writers know that the first draft is never good enough. My job in this class is to turn you into an experienced writer – or at least, a more experienced writer.

Chances are that the writer of the essays that I ask you to read in this class used something like a fat outline. I did a fat outline for this post I'm writing, though I cheated a bit. I did write this post all in one sitting, though I have now revised it a few times for my different classes, but I can do that because I have been writing and studying writing for 50 years — I started college in 1969, and I read Bernoff's post about fat outlines a year before I wrote this post. I've read thousands of academic essays about writing and rhetoric (I had to read 200 essays just for my doctoral comprehensive examination in 1982). I've put in my 10,000 hours of gathering quotes, graphics, insights, statistics, and more so that I can write a post about writing in one sitting. Most of you will have to read and write for the next 50 years to catch up with me. You will certainly have to write more than one draft to earn a good grade in my class.

And by the way, none of us will catch up with the reading that Gemini has done. Gemini has come very close to reading every text and viewing every image on the Net. How much is that? An unimaginable amount. Google Search says:

In 2023, Statista estimates that there were 120 zettabytes (ZB) of data on the internet. A zettabyte is equal to 1,000 exabytes, or 1 trillion gigabytes. 
The amount of data on the internet is constantly growing. In 2017, there were 2.7 ZB of data. In 2019, there were 4.4 ZB of data. In 2025, IDC predicts that there will be 175 ZB of data. 
The amount of data being produced every day is also growing exponentially. Estimates suggest that at least 2.5 quintillion bytes of data are produced every day. 
The big four online storage and service companies, Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and Facebook, store at least 1,200 petabytes between them. That's 1.2 million terabytes.

If the Internet stopped today, and if everyone in the world – if everyone who ever lived – started reading today, we would never read all the stuff on the Net. We couldn't even read all the stuff that is going to be added tomorrow. Only computers come close to doing that, and that's one reason why I'm teaching you to use Gemini. Good writing starts with good reading, and you can't read enough. I'm not sure that Gemini can read it all, but I know it can read a hell of a lot more than you and I can.

So get to it. Learn to throw away your first draft and do a fat outline. Run your stuff by Gemini several times to get feedback on your first draft. And probably your second and third drafts. Though Gemini can help you to write more quickly, good writing is hard work, and I wouldn't have it any other way. If it was easy, everybody would do it. Even Gemini.

16 comments:

  1. “A first draft is almost always an imposition. Don’t do this again.” Is a statement I’ve been told before in one of my high school English classes. Overtime it’s become easier to accept the fact that while yes I don’t fully enjoy writing, taking the time to write the first draft and making edits can greatly improve your writing. And as stated before by you and myself in previous blog posts and comments and other class mates, Gemini has made this entire process SO much easier. The writing process has become far less of a dread than it used to be.

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    1. I agree about Gemini, and other AI tools. You have to get through the shitty first draft, anyway, so why not use AI to get through it faster. Gemini can produce 100 shitty first drafts for you to choose from in about the same time that you can produce one.

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  2. I appreciate your forthright approach and embracement of using Gemini. I have used it in this class and now in my communications outside of this class. Great resources. I also appreciate your naming of outlines, the fat and the shitty. This helps me better understand how to keep working towards improving my writing.

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    1. I am so pleased that you are finding applications for Gemini outside of class, and I encourage you to explore some of the other AIs out there. They each have certain advantages and disadvantages. The big advantage of Gemini in this class is that we already use many other Google tools, most of which now have Gemini built-in – so convenience, basically.

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  3. I agree that the first draft is never the best no matter how much I want it to be, and I agree that gemini does help alot because it can help make the "shitty first draft" easier and faster to get out of the way. I might try the fat outline method on one of these assignments to see if it works for me.

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  4. First drafts are always a stepping stone to what you really want to write, and the use of Gemini and AI tools allows you to get a general idea of the type of writing you want, as the time it'd take for you to formulate, plan, and write one draft, the AI prompt has already written hundreds. Your post helps bridge the gap of using AI responsibly and effectively when it comes to the writing process.

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  5. First drafts lay the foundation for the writing assignment. I know in my personal experience I've never really liked the process of writing. Although Gemini has helped me with writing, I'm still trying to find what works best for me. Writing is very complex and sometimes can be draining but outlines have definitely made writing better.

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  6. It sounds like you're really emphasizing the importance of outlines to your students, which is fantastic. Outlines can indeed be a crucial tool for organizing thoughts and structuring writing, making the process smoother and more coherent. Your use of Gemini to generate outlines is a great way to show students the practical benefits of this technique.Your anecdote about Isaac Bashevis Singer is particularly powerful. It illustrates that even the most accomplished writers don't produce perfect drafts on the first try. This can be very reassuring for students who may feel discouraged by initial drafts that don't meet their expectations. Encouraging them to see the value in revising and refining their work can help them become more resilient and effective writers. By sharing your experiences and the insights of professionals like Josh Bernoff, you're providing your students with valuable perspectives on the writing process. This can help them understand that writing is a skill that requires practice, patience, and perseverance.

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  7. I have always dreaded writing, but with the use of Gemini it is made it bearable, haha. Using Gemini to write the first draft cut my writing time in half and generated a lot more ideas than what I would have came up with on my own to write about.

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  8. It is an underappreciated but essential aspect of writing: the process. By stressing the value of outlines, whether “bare” or “fat,” and the necessity of revision, this post clarifies what professional writing entails. I especially appreciate your use of personal anecdotes and references to experts like Josh Bernoff and Isaac Bashevis Singer, which add credibility and relatability to your message. Your integration of Gemini into the classroom as a tool for generating and refining outlines is a great example of leveraging technology to enhance learning. By showing how Gemini can support iterative processes, you give us a practical and accessible way to engage with writing as a craft rather than a one-and-done task. The clear distinction made between novice and experienced writers is a needed reality check for those of us who might underestimate the time and effort behind polished writing. Encouraging the use of tools like Gemini for both outlines and drafts not only teaches writing skills but also introduces us to collaborative and iterative workflows common in professional environments. I enjoy a lot of humor, particularly when recounting personal stories about first drafts, making this an approachable read. It’s a powerful reminder that even the most experienced writers fight with their craft, and that the secret to success lies in embracing the messy, iterative process of creation.

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  9. Thank you for sharing your own personal stories on the topic. I also heavily emphasize myself that the first draft doesn't need to be perfect. I feel like outlining on what to write gives a proper view of what I have to include and talk about so I don't talk myself outside of the topic. With the help of Gemini, I don't need to spend an hour getting a rough sketch of the outline for the essay drafts. I want to thank you for that personally as I feel no necessity in spending such amount of time when I could do the same task under a minute with the help of technology.

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  10. Writing has never entirely been my strong suit, but Gemini has made gathering research and writing essays significantly more manageable and more enjoyable than before. I've enjoyed making outlines because, for myself, it's the best way to organize my thoughts and information, and I believe creating "fat outlines" will be a game-changer for me.

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  11. As you mentioned, even the finest writers understand that writing is a process that involves drafting and revising, but I feel that many students seek to produce immaculate manuscripts on their first try. Your personal graduate school experiences, as well as the stories you shared about Isaac Bashevis Singer, serve as powerful reminders that writing is a process of trial and error.

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  12. The idea of writing anything with one draft only seems like bliss, but, like most things, it is not something to instantly do; rather, it takes years of writing practice to even think about being able to do. However, with the use of Gemini in this class, we all come just a little bit closer to doing.

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  13. I know in the back of my head, a student should never submit a first draft. I learned that in high school, though we all did it anyways. This class can be a good way to stop doing it, because I know I am capable of better writing, but when you finish a draft, you're ready to be done. You said it best yourself, "Yeah, I know: you've struggled until you're sick of it to write 800 words, and you want to move on. Forget it. You've just started writing." You being able to write this amazing blog post, and it not even being an academic essay is enough motivation for me. Also, I will look more into Bernoff because he seems to be a great inspiration.

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  14. Thank you for sharing this with us, along with your personal story. Personally, I get a lot of anxiety about writing because I want it to be perfect and acceptable. But now, the use of AI, such as Gemini, has helped me tremendously with words that I can think of because my brain is going 1000 miles a minute.

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