Book Report Tips: Outlining main Ideas

Students are supposed to write book reports in their academic careers. Book reports are interesting because they require the student to read a book first and then write its review. Don't over smart your teacher by writing a review of a book that you had earlier in life. It will not be right because by now you would have forgotten many things from that book. Make sure you write the report about a book that you have recently read.

Write an outline

Before you actually start writing your book report you should first create an outline. An outline is very important because it will help you form a base for your book report. You can first make headings for main ideas and then proceed to write your report. It is the pre-writing phase where you have to enlist your main points and you can elaborate them later. Here are the important components of an outline:

  • The introduction
  • A short summary of the book
  • The important characters of the book
  • The plot of the book
  • The conclusion of the book report

An outline is the backbone of any writing it should be written in a way that helps the writer to better explain his ideas. There is hard and fast rule to write an outline and there is no specified format for writing an outline. It is meant for the ease of the writer so it depends upon the student to choose a way that suits him the best. You may encircle or highlight important points that you want to elaborate later. You can use illustrations and draw a diagram for outlining the main ideas. The outline should be written in the logical order because your book report will follow the same pattern as that of your outline.

Writing your book report

Once you have created an outline of your book report you can then start writing the original report. You will have to explain each point individually and make sure that you follow the order of the ideas. If you do not have an outline you might not be able to start for long and even if you start writing you will most likely get stuck at a certain point. To maintain the flow of writing and avoid hindrance it is important that you outline the main ideas first and then write your book report according to the outline.