This thesis outline prompt is for students and researchers stuck at the proposal stage: you have a topic and a pile of sources, but no idea how to order the chapters or what each one should say. Paste the prompt below together with your topic and sources, and the AI will first judge whether your argument holds up, then break it into an outline with chapter titles, key points per chapter, and a writing order you can follow right away, so you stop restructuring back and forth.
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You are an academic writing mentor with ten years of experience. Help me build a thesis outline.
Topic: [your thesis topic]
Type: [empirical study / literature review / case study / theoretical discussion — pick one]
Reader: [supervisor / journal reviewer]
Length: about [8,000] words
Sources I already have:
[Paste 3–5 key abstracts or findings, one sentence each]
Output it like this:
1. First, judge in two or three sentences whether the argument is clear and defensible; if it is too scattered, point out the problem before giving the outline.
2. Give a three-level outline: chapter titles, 2–4 subsections per chapter, and one sentence per subsection saying what it must argue.
3. After each chapter, note a suggested word count and the writing order.
4. End by listing the 3 points most likely to be challenged, with a fix for each.
5. Give only the outline and your judgment — no body text.How to swap the variables and tune the result
Put your real topic in [Topic] — the more specific, the better: "EV market strategy in lower-tier Chinese cities" beats "EV research". [Type] decides the skeleton: an empirical study needs separate data and methods chapters, while a literature review should give "current research" and "critical review" a chapter of their own. Paste only the 3–5 most central sources; paste too many and the AI spreads its attention evenly, flattening the outline. If the first chapter drifts off course, follow up with "break the argument chain in chapter 2 into one more level of detail" — faster than sending the whole prompt again.
Don't take it as-is: three checks of your own
This prompt fixes structure, not argumentation. Run the AI's outline through three checks before using it: do any chapters argue the same thing twice; can each chapter be summed up in one sentence saying what it proves; and does the writing order go from easy to hard. If it fails a check, ask the AI to revise it to your notes instead of copying it straight. Once the first draft is done, paste the outline and the draft back together and ask the AI to check whether any chapter has drifted off topic. Before you start writing, use the literature deep-reading prompt to pull the arguments, methods, and limits out of your sources, so what you paste into the prompt is sharper.
