Parts of an Essay

Below is a general guide that you should read and follow. Afterwards, read a more specific guide.

In the color-coded sections below, the various parts of an essay are laid out for you. Use this as a guide for crafting effective essays. There are many ways to put an essay together, but the suggestions I make here are applicable to writing in many subjects. Students in the past have appreciated this guide because it offers structure without stifling creativity.

Beginning: (Generate interest, orient the audience) [2 paragraphs]

Reach out to your audience Because your essay is about someone else's writing, not yourself, start with a specific detail from the work you are writing about: an example of an artistic or story-telling strategy that is relevant to your thesis or a particular example that shows an interesting technique that makes the author's style interesting. Your audience needs something real to feel involved. Writing general or opinionated ideas will only give the impression that you are not a thinking person. "Reach out to your audience" should be the first paragraph of your paper. Prepare your audience In your second paragraph, start setting up your paper by bringing focus to your actual topic. Imagine your reader asking, "Okay, interesting beginning, but what is THIS paper going to be about?" Give background information that your audience needs to know and create the impression that you have a serious purpose. Convince the audience to feel that you are leading them to an important insight, an insight that matters, that will change how they think. This part of the paper should naturally follow the concrete detail you discussed for "reaching out." Preview your argument In the same paragraph as "Prepare your audience," give a short version of your stages of thought for the paper. These stages should NOT be IN your thesis, like a list of different ideas, but can be mentioned BEFORE your thesis. The stages are the logic that will explain the main idea you want to get across to the reader. The middle section of the paper (see below) will contain the actual stages--they should work TOGETHER in SEQUENCE to develop ONE argument, which is your thesis. Laying out your stages in the beginning will keep your thesis statement from sounding like it comes out of nowhere. State your thesis, the MAIN argument of your paper Immediately following your preview, make a statement that you think is both true and persuasive. It should direct the audience toward a way of thinking that you imagine they might not already understand or agree with. So your thesis cannot be a statement of fact or an obvious truth. A great thesis will be a single idea--it brings the topic to focus and tells the reader your position. To get a thesis that works with your stages, you will have to go through some trial and error. Avoid the most common temptation: to state a conclusion instead of a persuasive claim. Conclusions are thoughts for an ending, not the beginning.

Middle: (Present stages, at least 1 paragraph per stage) [3-4 paragraphs]

For EACH middle paragraph: Transition and topic sentence The topic sentence starts the paragraph and represents one (or part of one) of your stages. If you need a transitional hook, ask yourself, "what is the relationship of THIS stage to the PREVIOUS one?" The answer is your transition. Of course, if your mental transitions are solid and true, you won't need to write a hook. Details to support topic sentence Illustrate using quotations and examples from the text(s) you are analyzing, describe details that help the reader see how you are thinking, use logical deduction to lead your reading to understanding, etc. Closing statement to explain your support Giving evidence is not enough. Every paragraph should have a closing sentence or two to show that the topic sentence has actually been proven. No claim is self-evident, so proof must be demonstrated AFTER evidence is given. The question to ask yourself is "How is this stage tied to your thesis?" Sometimes, one of your middle paragraphs can acknowledge a different point of view that questions your thesis or one of your stages. First, you state the other point of view and explain how it is reasonable. Then disagree, offering NEW evidence in response to this opposing point. But mentioning a counter-point at the beginning of your essay is counter-productive.

Ending: (Answer the crucial question "so what?") [1-2 paragraphs]

Explain importance of proving your thesis Begin explaining why the point of your essay is important. In other words, discuss the significance of your thesis. Why is it relevant? Why does it matter? What does it apply to? The WORTH of your thesis is not self-evident. When analyzing other people's writing, the importance of your thesis will have something to do with how your ideas help the audience interpret the author's ideas more effectively. But do NOT just repeat your thesis. New information to help apply the thesis Save some elements of the writer's techniques or content from the text to add content to your ending. Keep the attention of your reader with real details instead of rehashing what you've already said. Using general conclusion cliches to finish your essay will leave your audience with an empty feeling. Instead, apply the relevance of your thesis by extending your attention to a new but related idea. Apply what you have already said to an idea beyond your thesis. Satisfy reader with a closing statement Discuss the benefits of taking your position on the text you analyzed; offer a warning or call for action that can help your audience read that text better; suggest a solution or another problem related to interpreting that text. Or you can raise issues that leave your audience thinking and wondering. But remember the purpose of your essay: to highlight a technique the author used to convey an idea in the text you analyzed. At the same time, do not address your audience directly (this is true for the whole paper). Imagine that they are listening to you think. They stand to gain from your thinking, but this is less likely to happen if you write directly AT them.

Sharpening Your Paper Topic

The best way to sharpen your own topic is to help your classmates sharpen theirs. For this in-class workshop, I would like you to read the topic of one other student, writing comments in the margin according to the guidelines for paper topics. Be sure that each person in your group has a student reviewer.

Comment on your classmate's document with elaborate and detailed suggestions. Avoid commenting about style or grammar; focus only on the FIVE criteria below. After you have evaluated the topic of another student, please look at your own topic again and revise it by applying what you have learned.

Outline and Write

The Outlining Stage

Save this outlining template to your computer and use it to fill in all the parts of your essay before you begin writing your rough draft.

Or you can download this PowerPoint outlining tool to help you organize your paper (but first you'll have to put the slides in the right order!)

A few points to remember:

• This template is NOT an exact structure for your paper. You might not have THREE stages—-you could have four. Also, sometimes you can dedicate more than one middle paragraph to a particular stage, when more elaboration is needed, so their number might vary as well.
• Sometimes one of your middle paragraphs might not correspond to a stage in your argument. You might include a paragraph acknowledging a counter-argument to your thesis. But you will not include this counter-argument in your preview in the beginning section.
• When you fill in this outline template, abbreviate the CONTENT of what you actually plan to write in your paragraphs; each part of this outline should be in your paper.

The Writing Stage

For some, writing the paper is the easiest stage of all, but for others it is the most intimidating.

Here are some pointers to help you compose your paper with less stress:

• Write in your natural voice instead of forcing yourself into "essay" mode and trying to sound smart. If your natural voice leads to grammatical errors, you can deal with them during the editing stage.
• Use your outline as a guide for writing your paragraphs. Free yourself from holding all of your ideas in your head at once by referring to the ideas you have already laid out in your outline. If you feel more comfortable writing your draft before you compose your outline, you should write your draft first. But then come back and write an outline afterward and make adjustments to your draft if you discover gaps or find that your ideas need to be in a different order.
• Try not to overwhelm yourself with grammatical concerns at this stage. Over-monitoring yourself can lead to a robotic style of writing, which will be more harmful to your paper in the long run than grammar errors, which you can fix later on anyway.
• Focus on writing complete paragraphs and making your paragraphs connect to each other logically.

The Writing Process

Most importantly, find a method that works best for your learning style. Here are some suggests for different stages of writing:

1. Pre-Writing: Discover valuable ideas by opening your mind to ALL ideas. Ask thought-provoking questions about your topic.
2. Thesis Statement: As the main idea of your entire essay, this statement should be truthful and persuasive.
3. Organization / Outline: Arrange your stages and details into the beginning, middle, and end of the paper.
4. Rough Draft: Focus on content, organization, and style. As you write, ask yourself, "who is my audience, and how should I write for them?"
5. Revising: Fix Logical mistakes, missing steps, clumsy transitions, confusing organization before fixing grammar and formatting. Use this guide.
6. Proofreading: Using a list of your common mistakes, read the paper BACKWARDS one sentence at a time and LOOK FOR ONE ERROR AT A TIME. Then read the paper OUT LOUD while following the text with your pen. Use this guide.
7. MLA Formatting: Now make your essay PERFECT. Make sure the essay is formatted correctly and meets the MLA style requirements.

All of the steps are important, but you do not HAVE to do them in this order. In fact, you might go back to certain steps several times. You can write your rough draft and then reverse outline, for instance. Or what if you have writer's block? Most important is making sure that you include all the parts of an essay in your final draft.

A note on timed writing: You will follow an abbreviated version of this process for the Final Exam Essay Option, but you should not re-copy a rough draft when writing under time restraints. Instead, you should (a) skip lines as you go and (b) start each new paragraph at the top of a new sheet of paper. Both methods leave room for corrections. If you make a mistake, cross it out with a single line and write the correction above it. If you want to add sentences, use labels like a star or triangle to indicate where an insertion should go. THERE IS NO NEED to recopy an in-class composition simply to make it look neat. Your grade will not be higher simply because your essay looks good.