Reverse Outlining

If you have a Draft Report that does not GOSP readers well, it is worth the time and concentrated effort to do Reverse Outlining:

Work systematically through your Draft Report, paragraph by paragraph, writing down the topic(s) or claim(s) of each paragraph.

Put the draft to the side and examine the list of topics on its own. Consider how the topics could be rearranged, streamlined, discarded, combined, split, so that the resulting paragraphs would each have a single, unified topic.

The topic of each paragraph should, moreover, follow from the previous paragraph's topic and make a distinct contribution to the topic of the section as a whole.

In a similar fashion, you may also need to revise or refine the topic of the sections so that a definite GOSP-ing path is evident in the sequence of topics as they contribute to the topic of the report as a whole.

If you skipped the Narrative Outline before your Draft Report, you should consider going back and doing this before or after the Reverse Outlining.

(See Phase H)