Organize your source materials into major and minor topics. You may wish to create piles of your printed articles, books or magazines or to write the titles of each work, so that you have a general idea of which works you will cite and where in the research paper. Write the titles of each work on a piece of paper. Underneath each title, write major and minor topics for your paper that align with each work. For example, if one of your sources is "The History of Poaching in Africa," you might write "historical figures," "poaching trade locations" and "early animals poached" below this source.
Identify your major argument points in your thesis statement, and continue your informal outline with a simple section explaining your topic. For example, a thesis statement for a research paper on poaching in Africa might begin by stating, "Poaching in Africa is a preventable problem, but one that remains due to cultural and economic customs that the international community must understand in order to resolve." With this statement, you know that your research paper (and therefore your outline) should first discuss what poaching is, then how it is preventable and, finally, the hindrances to stopping poaching in Africa. Write the thesis statement on a sheet of paper separate from the list of major and minor topics you have written.
Label each section in your outline with brief phrases or simple words that identify concepts and subheadings. Write these phrases or words underneath the thesis statement. A more formal outline would have letters and numbers, perhaps Roman numerals and lower case letters. An informal outline just needs to have main ideas and some refining of these ideas for the sake of organization.
Indent each subheading, so that you can differentiate between the major and minor ideas to be discussed within your research paper. You may choose bullet points, dashes or no mark at all to separate the ideas. The key is to organize your thoughts and stay away from repetition as much as possible. Informal outlines do not need to be comprehensible for anyone other than the author, so what matters is whether your organization makes sense to you. Work from your list of works and major ideas from those works, so that you will be sure to include all sources in your informal outline.
Complete the outline by writing a short statement, two or three sentences, that revisits your initial thesis or addresses the other side of your argument. Your research should have been thoroughly covered in the body of the research paper, so make sure that your outline is complete and that the conclusion wraps up the paper in a satisfactory manner, leaving no questions unanswered. After you have completed your informal outline, you may choose to create a formal outline if you wish. Regardless of whether you write a formal outline, the informal outline serves as the foundation of your paper, and you are ready to begin building the walls.