Strategies for Writing with AI: 04 Entry: Rhetorical-Move Reverse Outlines

This blog recaps and explores the creation and development of a new class I created called Strategies for Writing with AI, which I am teaching to Cornell University international graduate students. As far as I know, there is no other course like it, which is why I thought it might be worth blogging about.

Starting to write in a new genre can be challenging, particularly when trying to determine a suitable structure. How are ideas organized to make a coherent narrative, particularly with research articles, which often have common structures.

What if a writer could get some authentic and trustworthy examples of structure that could be used as options or ideas for how they might structure their own paper?

Such examples can be created by making an outline of a successful paper that comes from the same genre (e.g., a published article in a target journal). Since this outline is created after a text is finished, it’s called a reverse outline. (See my previous blog.) Essentially, it reduces a paper to its main ideas, which can be analyzed and studied in a small, manageable space.

Here’s an example of a reverse outline for the introduction of a research paper. The “P” stands for paragraph:

P1: the background of Industry 4.0

P2: the development and advantages of Cobots

P3: The status of Vietnamese garment manufacturing and Cobots in Vietnam

P4: The integration of Industry 5.0

P5: The technical challenges in the implementation of Cobots

P6: The labor challenges in the implementation of Cobots

P7: The cost challenges in the implementation of Cobots

P8: The gap in the literature review of Cobots

P9: The purpose of study

The problem with using this reverse outline is that it’s focused on content and not easily transferred to a different study.

What if instead the reverse outline was focused on purpose, such as P9 above: “The purpose of this study”? Such a point is called a rhetorical move. When the purpose changes, a new rhetorical move is created.

Here’s an example of a rhetorical-move, paragraph-level reverse outline of a research article introduction:

P1: broad view of subject and background

P2: problem (gap) of current studies

P3: methods used

P4: findings overview

This one is made on the paragraph level, but it could also just be a series of rhetorical moves, which could be anywhere from a phrase to multiple paragraphs.

If the writer has several of these rhetorical-move reverse outlines, they could compare structures and get a better understanding of acceptable options in a genre.

The problem is that making a rhetorical-move reverse outline can be a long, arduous process.

Fortunately, AI can really speed things up.

AI can make really good rhetorical-move reverse outlines, but the AI systems I’ve used (ChatGPT 4.o, Copilot, Claude) tend to start by including too much content, and I’ve had to fight them to focus on purpose.

After some experimenting, my students and I came up with this prompt to make a paragraph-level, rhetorical-move reverse outline of an introduction:

I will upload an introduction, Make a reverse outline of it. Summarize each of the [number of] paragraphs. Be terse. Focus on rhetorical moves, not content. Avoid including content. Be general. For example, you might write “introduces topic”, “narrows to specific topic,” or "summarizes findings”. Here is my introduction:

Some back and forth still might be necessary, but eventually you’ll get there.  

IMPORTANT: When submitting others’ texts to AI, it is crucial to make sure that the system you are using does not add the texts to its database. Otherwise, part of that text could be given to other users without citation. To keep files out of ChatGPT 4.o’s database, go to settings, select “data controls”, and turn off the feature called “improve the model for everyone”. I’m not sure how to change this setting in other systems. Anyone know how?

Once you train AI to make rhetorical-move reverse outlines, you might try to make multiple ones at once and even compare and contrast them.

Here’s a prompt that’s given pretty decent results:

(1) I am going to attach five research articles. (2) Make a rhetorical-move reverse outline for each of the five [name of section, e.g., abstracts, introductions]. (3) Now note similarities and differences.

This prompt is done in three stages, which sometimes has better results than trying to do everything all at once. The files are attached, which seems to work better for larger files. Note “paragraphs” is not stated, so AI will interpret moves no matter how short or long they are.

In minutes, a student can see patterns to gain an understanding of a genre and options they might use.

Next week: What happens if AI rewrites text for you? Then what? Honestly, I’m not sure, but we’re going to find out.