Organizing an Essay

Getting started

To get thinking about your thesis—basically, your point—and the reasons and evidence you will use to support it, consider the following:

Walking away: do something else for a while and come back to it later.

Brainstorming: talk with friends about your topic and take notes as you go. I find this is a fantastic way to get ideas flowing.

Sleeping on it: Go to bed with a few ideas dancing around your head and a pad of paper next to your bed. This has helped me write a few really good essays actually.

Freewriting: Start writing and don’t take your pen off the page for about ten minutes. See what
comes out. Chances are you’ll have some great ideas left in the wreckage.

Some basic guidelines

Start thinking about organization immediately. The best time to think about how to organize your paper is during the pre-writing stage, not the writing or revising stage. A well-thought-out plan can save you from having to do a lot of reorganizing when the first draft is completed. Moreover, it allows you to pay more attention to sentence-level issues when you sit down to write your paper.

When you begin planning, ask the following questions: What type of essay am I going to be writing? Does it belong to a specific genre? In university, you may be asked to write, say, a book review, a lab report, a document study, or a compare-and-contrast essay. Knowing the patterns of reasoning associated with a genre can help you to structure your essay.

For example, book reviews typically begin with a summary of the book you're reviewing. They then often move on to a critical discussion of the book's strengths and weaknesses. They may conclude with an overall assessment of the value of the book. These typical features of a book review lead you to consider dividing your outline into three parts: (1) summary; (2) discussion of strengths and weaknesses; (3) overall evaluation. The second and most substantial part will likely break down into two sub-parts. It is up to you to decide the order of the two subparts-whether to analyze strengths or weaknesses first. And of course it will be up to you to come up with actual strengths and weaknesses.

Be aware that genres are not fixed. Read the assignment question carefully for guidance.

Avoiding a common pitfall

Though there are no easy formulas for generating an outline, you can avoid one of the most common pitfalls in student papers by remembering this simple principle: the structure of an essay should not be determined by the structure of its source material. For example, an essay on an historical period should not necessarily follow the chronology of events from that period. Similarly, a well-constructed essay about a literary work does not usually progress in parallel with the plot. Your obligation is to advance your argument, not to reproduce the plot.

When should I begin putting together a plan?

The earlier you begin planning, the better. It is usually a mistake to do all of your research and note-taking before beginning to draw up an outline. Of course, you will have to do some reading and weighing of evidence before you start to plan. But as a potential argument begins to take shape in your mind, you may start to formalize your thoughts in the form of a tentative plan. You will be much more efficient in your reading and your research if you have some idea of where your argument is headed. You can then search for evidence for the points in your tentative plan while you are reading and researching. As you gather evidence, those points that still lack evidence should guide you in your research. Remember, though, that your plan may need to be modified as you critically evaluate your evidence.

Some techniques for integrating note-taking and planning

Though convenient, the common method of jotting down your notes consecutively on paper is far from ideal. The problem is that your points remain fixed on paper. Here are three alternatives that provide greater flexibility:

method 1: index cards

When you are researching, write down every idea, fact, quotation, or paraphrase on a separate index card. Small (5" by 3") cards are easiest to work with. When you've collected all your cards, reshuffle them into the best possible order, and you have an outline, though you will undoubtedly want to reduce this outline to the essential points should you transcribe it to paper.

A useful alternative involves using both white and colored cards. When you come up with a point that you think may be one of the main points in your outline, write it at the top of a colored card. Put each supporting note on a separate white card, using as much of the card as necessary. When you feel ready, arrange the colored cards into a workable plan. Some of the points may not fit in. If so, either modify the plan or leave these points out. You may need to fill gaps by creating new cards. You can shuffle your supporting material into the plan by placing each of the white cards behind the point it helps support.

method 2: the circle method

This method is designed to get your ideas onto a single page, where you can see them all at once. When you have an idea, write it down on paper and draw a circle around it. When you have an idea which supports another idea, do the same, but connect the two circles with a line. Supporting source material can be represented concisely by a page reference inside a circle. The advantage of the circle method is that you can see at a glance how things tie together; the disadvantage is that there is a limit to how much material you can cram onto a page.

Here is part of a circle diagram:

What does an essay outline look like?

Most essays outlines will never be handed in. They are meant to serve you and no one else. Nevertheless, when you produce your outline, you should follow certain basic principles. Here is an example of an outline for an essay on Hamlet:

thesis: Despite Hamlet's highly developed moral nature, he becomes morally compromised while delaying his revenge.
I.	Introduction: Hamlet's father asks Hamlet not only to seek vengeance but also to keep his mind untainted.
II.	Hamlet has a highly developed moral nature.
	A.	Hamlet is idealistic.
	B.	Hamlet is aware of his own faults, whereas others are self-satisfied.
	C.	Hamlet does not want to take revenge without grounds for acting.
III.	Hamlet becomes morally compromised while delaying.
	A.	The turning point in Hamlet's moral decline is his killing of Polonius.
	B.	Hamlet's moral decline continues when he sends Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to their death.
	C.	Hamlet already began his moral decline before the turning point in the play, the killing of Polonius.
		1.	Hamlet treats women badly.
		2.	Hamlet criticizes others in the play for acting falsely to get ahead, but in adopting the disguise of madness he, too, is presenting a false face to the world.
IV.	Though Hamlet becomes more compromised the longer he delays, killing the king would have been a morally questionable act.
V.	Conclusion: The play Hamlet questions the adequacy of a system of ethics based on honour and revenge.

This is an example of a sentence outline. Another kind of outline is the topic outline. It consists of fragments rather than full sentences. Topic outlines are more open-ended than sentence outlines: they leave much of the working out of the argument for the writing stage.

What is a reverse outline?

When you have completed your first draft, and you think your paper can be better organized, consider using a reverse outline. Reverse outlines are simple to create. Just read through your essay, and every time you make a new point, summarize it in the margin. If the essay is reasonably well-organized, you should have one point in the margin for each paragraph, and your points read out in order should form a coherent argument. You might, however, discover that some of your points are repeated at various places in your essay. Other points may be out of place, and still other key points may not appear at all. Think of all these points as the ingredients of an improved outline which you now must create. Use this new outline to cut and paste the sentences into a revised version of your essay, consolidating points that appear in several parts of your essay while eliminating repetition and creating smooth transitions where necessary.

You can improve even the most carefully planned essay by creating a reverse outline after completing your first draft. The process of revision should be as much about organization as it is about style.

Adapted from Jerry Plotnick, Director, University College Writing Workshop, University of Toronto, 2005.