Structuring an Essay An overview of essay craft The ideas here are guidelines for ways to improve the structure, clarity and persuasiveness of your essay. You can use them as indicators of one possible route through the minefield of essay writing.

Planning First you should formulate your central thesis – your response to the title. Then you should organise your ideas into the main points you’ll be making. The main points are the arguments you will use to establish your thesis. I wouldn't recommend starting writing the essay till you've done the above. At some point, you'll also need to think how you will support each argument. You should use examples to do this.

Introduction Brief and straightforward sentence to introduce the topic. A focused sentence/question establishing exactly what this essay will be dealing with. Finally, you could do one or both of the following (they help with the structure and clarity of your essay): – Briefly describe how you’ll answer the question – Give some sort of preview of your central thesis Keep the introduction as brief as possible.

Main Body I – Main Points The main body of your essay should clearly establish your thesis by introducing a logically constructed and clearly presented argument. Use paragraphs to separate each main point. At the beginning (and possibly the end) of each paragraph you need a sentence to introduce your new point AND link that point to the title and/or the preceding paragraph. These topic sentences are what establish the clarity of your essay’s argument. You need to pay special attention to these.

Main Body II – Examples You need to use examples to justify and establish your main points (i.e. the arguments that establish your central thesis) Examples may or may not need their own paragraph, that's a judgement call When introducing an example, you should try to link it in with the development of your main point Examples should be analysed: explain why they are relevant and how they contribute to your argument

Main Body III – Structure of each main point Topic sentence: a statement of the new main point, explicit reference to title to demonstrate relevance possibly all introduced by a link to what you've said previously Explanation and analysis of new main point – (link) example 1 – (link) example 2 (new paragraph?)‏ – etc. (new paragraphs?)‏ A final sentence to sum up your main point, and possibly to indicate what direction the essay will now take

Conclusion Your thesis should already be established by this stage, thanks to the clear development of your argument in the main body. Reiterate that thesis, phrased in a way that explicitly demonstrates its relevance to the essay title. If you want, you can wrap up the essay with a final flourish: a final insight, a personal comment or a question for further research (don’t force this one).