Drafting Your Essay

• Hook - Draws your reader into and interests them in reading your paper.

• Book & author or topic - introduce the title and author in a literary anlysis or introduce your topic for a more general essay or research paper

• Summary

  • • Literary Analysis: Summarize in 2-5 sentences an overview of the story to introduce key elements of the story to your reader.

    • General Essay or Research - Summarize key ideas or background your reader may need.

• Transition to thesis

• Thesis statement - Always end your introduction with your thesis statement.

1. Topic sentence

   • Main idea sentence (think mini thesis statement) of the paragraph.

   • A main point related to proving your thesis statement

     1. • In a THEME essay, your topic sentence will often (meaning there are exceptions to this rule) be a general point related to your thesis. It is not specific to the book.

        • In a CHARACTER analysis essay, your topic sentence will be specific to the book.

2. Supporting ideas

   • This is where you develop your argument (like a lawyer laying out her case).

   • Key ideas that prove the point of the paragraph.

   • Examples from the story that prove the point of your paragraph.

   • Quotations that help to prove the point of your paragraph.

     1. • Most essays have only 1 (maybe 2) quotes per paragraph.

        • Quotes should drive home the main idea about the thesis that the paragraph is about.

        • Don't use quotes to tell what happened in the story or restate something you could just as well say yourself.

3. Concluding sentence

   • Summarizes the key point you were trying to make in the paragraph.

   • Relates back to the topic sentence idea.

Read the two examples below taken from student essays on the book Unbroken. 

• How are the two examples different? 

• Which does a better job of showing how Louie was resilient? 

• Which paints a clearer picture in your mind of his resilience?

Only one of these is an effective proof of the point the student was trying to make.

Example A:

Louie's great resilience saved him in some of the most discouraging and bleakest of times.  Louie was stranded on a life raft in the pacific ocean for 47 days when he was captured by the Japanese.  Louie “had lost about half of his body weight, or more” (180). One of Louie's friends had died on the raft, but Louie prevailed. 

Example B:

Louie’s resilience pushes him further towards his goals, so that he could get through difficult situations. While Louie is struggling to survive on the raft, he is able to push through. He was on the raft and he started to hear bomber planes, so he gets off the raft and hides under it to stay protected. While he is hiding under the raft to stay safe, sharks are trying to attack him and he has to fight them off. He continued to hit the sharks in the nose until they stopped attacking. When the planes left, he got back up on the raft. The plane comes again and again and again five more times, and Louie has to keep jumping off the raft to hide even though he was so exhausted. Louie pushed through, while Phil and Mac could not get themselves to do this. While Louie remained strong, the other two broke down.

1. Restate the thesis in a new way (1 sentence)

2. Summarize your main reasons (About 1 sentence for each body paragraph)

3. Provide some final insight/opinion (2-4 sentences) - Be sure these relate to your thesis and not, for example, your opinion of the book.

4. Link back to the hook and your thesis (1 sentence): Think about this question - What is the key thing you want your reader to remember/take away from your essay?