Brainstorming:

The preliminary steps have been taken, and you probably have ended up with a paper full of random notes. The next step is to carefully classify these notes, i.e. decide the kind of information that should go in each of the sections. It is not difficult: ask yourself some cue questions to help you organize your ideas.

As you can see, these cue questions may help you arrange your ideas according to the ISCC classification principle, and eventually come up with a first outline of your review. Note, also, that these are open questions which might be used virtually with any book to be reviewed!

Order:

Thus, after brainstorming, arrange the points in your outline in the order that will be easier for the reader to follow. Think of them as a series of steps; you have to prove one point before you can claim another.

Make sure that each paragraph covers only one topic. Paragraphs are the basic unit of your paper's structure. Every point in your outline should have at least one paragraph to itself.

Your paragraphs should never be interchangeable: you should be able to give your paragraphs on separate pieces of paper to someone who has never read it before, and that person should be able to arrange the paragraphs in the correct order.

As you have seen, the position of each paragraph is quite fixed. It is important to make abundant use of transitions to help the reader go through every step of your review easily. You may find further information on transitions in the following web pages:

• University of Illinois writer's workshop
• Monash University: Chart of Transitions signals