How to Write an Essay How to Write an Essay Or How to Build a Big Mac

Big Mac Cheeseburger What are the ingredients of a Big Mac Cheeseburger? Top Bun Meat Pickles Cheese Lettuce Tomato Bottom Bun

A good Essay is like a Big Mac.  The top and bottom bun hold the stuff inside together.  “Proverbial’ bun is the TOP BUN  Top Bun must contain a proverb- use handout

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The top bun includes the thesis statement. It should  have awesome lead or attention grabber  include a proverb  The thesis sentence is the “ROADMAP”  Usually, the thesis is the last sentence of your introductory paragraph - TOP BUN  How many sentences should a paragraph contain?

Let’s review thesis The thesis statement is that sentence in your text that contains the focus of your essay and tells your reader what the essay is going to be about. The lack of a thesis statement may well be a symptom of an essay beset by a lack of focus. Many writers think of a thesis statement as an umbrella: everything that you carry along in your essay has to fit under this umbrella, and if you try to take on packages that don't fit, you will either have to get a bigger umbrella or something's going to get wet. A thesis statement is a strong statement that you can prove with evidence

A thesis statement is a statement in an essay that you plan to support, discuss or prove. Not all thesis statements can be empirically proven, but many of them represent an argument. A thesis statement should also stand out as an indicator of the clear direction in which you will take your essay. It should be strongly worded, impossible to miss, and in shorter essays of a few pages, it should show up in the first paragraph or introduction of your paper.

Would you like a cheeseburger without a top bun?

An essay without a thesis sentence is like warm milk –you don’t know if you want to swallow it.

Not having a thesis sentence is like a...  A ship without its rudder.  An army without its general.  A vacation trip without a map.

The Body - ingredients to make a great essay  THE MEAT  the heart of the story  could be a narration in 1st person  it all depends on essay prompt and audience

More body - ingredients  PICKELS  parallel structure  listing

parallel sentence structure. Good sentences attempt to form parallel patterns. Without this parallel structure, they can sound stilted and awkward. For instance, which sentence sounds better below? (1) King Alfred tried to make the law clear, precise, and equitable. (2) King Alfred tried to make clear laws that had precision and were equitable. Most people would argue that the first sentence somehow "sounds better" than the second. The first sentence uses parallel structure in its adjectives. The second doesn't. If we label the parts of speech, the first sentence has this grammatical structure after the word law : [Adjective--Adjective--Adjective]. The second sentence has this grammatical structure after the word laws : [Relative Pronoun--Verb-- Direct Object--Conjunction--Verb--Adjective]. The first sentence has a clear pattern of adjective, adjective, adjective. The second sentence has no pattern at all !

To hear the difference between a parallel and non-parallel sentence, read aloud the sentences below. The red sentences are examples of "bad" or faulty parallelism. The blue sentences use parallel structure. faulty parallelism: She revels in chocolate, walking under the moonlight, and songs from the 1930s jazz period. good parallelism: She revels in sweet chocolate eclairs, long moonlit walks, and classic jazz music. more good parallelism: She loves eating chocolate eclairs, taking moonlit walks, and singing classic jazz. Do you hear the difference? What causes that distinction between "good" and "bad" sentences? Again, the difference appears in the pattern of grammar. If we dissect the sentence, the faulty sentence on top has a grammatical pattern that looks like this:

"She revels in... " "chocolate," [Object of Preposition,] "walking under the moonlight," [Gerund--Preposition--Definite Article-- Object of Preposition] "and songs from the 1930s jazz period." [Conjunction--Direct Object-- Preposition--Definite Article--Adjective --Adjective--Object of Preposition]

It's all a jumbled mess of different parts of speech being used in different ways. On the other hand, the second sentence has a clear parallel pattern: "She revels in" "sweet chocolate eclairs," [Adjective--Adjective--Object] "long moonlit walks," [Adjective--Adjective--Object] "and classic jazz music." [Adjective--Adjective--Object] The same pattern (adjective, adjective object) reoccurs in the same way. It is parallel in its structure, and thus musical and rhythmical to read and to hear spoken aloud. The second example is also parallel, just in a different pattern. "She revels in" "eating chocolate eclairs" [Gerund--Adjective--Object of Gerund] "taking moonlit walks" [Gerund--Adjective--Object of Gerund] "and singing classic jazz." [Gerund--Adjective--Object of Gerund ]

Good writers attempt to form these good sentences. Here are some more examples culled from Karen Gordon's The Transitive Vampire :  faulty parallelism: I like to eat rich deserts, playing fast card-games, and riddles.  good parallelism: I like eating rich deserts, playing fast card-games, and solving difficult riddles.  more good parallelism: I like to eat rich desserts, to play fast card-games, and to solve difficult riddles.  more good parallelism: I like rich desserts, fast card-games, and difficult riddles.  bad : She is unfathomable, with a head of strawberry blond hair, and has a seductive manner.  good: She is an unfathomable, seductive strawberry blond.  bad: He is cute, wears a pinstriped suit, and has a dashing way about him.  good: He is cute and dashing in his pinstriped suit.  bad: The faun has shyness, with rough hooves, and behaves in a sylvan fashion.  good: The faun is shy, rough-footed, and sylvan.  good: The rough-hoofed faun is shy and sylvan.

MORE BODY - ingredients  CHEESE  “cheesy” figurative language  1. Simile  2. Metaphor  3. Allusion

MORE BODY -  LETTUCE  “loud” punctuation  1. All caps  2. Hyphens/parentheses  3. Underlining

MORE BODY-  TOMATO  “Terrific” verbs  The use of thesaurus for synonyms of common verbs

BOTTOM BUN - Conclusion -Reiterate thesis -bring topic to full understanding

After we create our essay - we will “depth charge” You must choose 3 of the 4  LETTUCE-loud punctuation - apply all caps to an emphasized word  CHEESE- add a simile, metaphor or allusion  TOMATO-change a common verb using thesaurus  PICKELS-check for parallel structure