Crafting the Essay

You have surely put in a lot of work researching, reading, and thinking to get to the point at which you will write your essay. You have a clear and insightful thesis and good supporting ideas from a variety of sources and perspectives. But, the fun doesn't stop here! Now it's time to write! But first, let's do a bit more organizing.

Before you write, you need to outline your ideas. An introduction should first grab the reader's attention by illustrating the issue in a scene or by sharing a startling statistic. Then the introduction should give some background on the controversy or key terms necessary to understanding the issue. You introduction should end with a clear argument or thesis statement. A conclusion should remind the reader of the thesis idea and then go beyond to discuss lingering questions, how the issue will continue to be unresolved, or suggest a clever way the issue could be resolved.

The body paragraphs are a bit more complicated. The body paragraphs should be organized in a logical manner, meaning the ideas in one body paragraph should logically lead to the ideas in the next paragraph. It's not okay to have a body paragraph with a main idea about how bananas are a great source of potassium before another body paragraph about how Hummers are the best all-terrain vehicle. Those ideas do not logically make sense together! Your reader will be lost, your essay will not be cohesive, and by gosh by golly, all that research work will be left to the hounds! Check out the following structure ideas and organize your body paragraphs so that your argument unfolds in a logical sequence.

View some possible body paragraph structures that will work for a research essay.