A well-planned and organised essay indicates that you have your ideas in order; it makes points clearly and logically. In this way, a well-planned and structured essay enables the reader, or marker, to follow the points being made easily.
Essay assignments are usually formulated in one of the following ways:
As a question
A statement is given and you are asked to comment on it
An invitation to ‘outline’, ‘discuss’ or ‘critically assess’ a particular argument or point of view
Remember always write your essay based on the question that is set and not on another aspect of the subject. Although this may sound obvious, many students do not fully answer the essay question and include irrelevant information. The primary aim of an academic essay is to answer the task set, in some detail.
The essay plan below contains ten steps. It is often useful to complete the first six steps soon after receiving your essay question. That way information will be fresh and you are more likely to be thinking about your essay plan as you do other things.
1. Study the essay question intently.
2. Write the essay question out in full.
3. Spend some time, at least half an hour, brainstorming the subject area.
4. Write down your thoughts on the question subject, its scope and various aspects.
5. List words or phrases that you think need to be included.
6. Note the main points you should include to answer the question.
If, at this point, you feel unsure of what to include, talk to your tutor or a peer to clarify that you are on the right track. Once you have finished the first six steps and you feel sure you know how to proceed, continue to expand on your initial thoughts and build a more in-depth essay outline.
7. Skim through any course material or lecture handouts and start to build up a more detailed outline. Scan through your own lecture notes, and if anything strikes you as relevant to the assignment task, write where to find it on your detailed outline
8. Write down where you will find the necessary information on each of the points in your detailed outline (lecture notes, course handouts etc.). Indicate on the outline where you feel that some further research is necessary.
9. Note down sources of further information, books, journals, webpages and media sources as appropriate.
Be careful not to allow your outline to become too complicated; stick to main points and keep it relevant to the question. If you have been given a reading list or a core text book then check the relevant sections of that.
10. Once your plan is complete, stop and think about the proportions – how many words in total you need to write and how many words to allocate to each section of your essay.
Academic essays usually have a word limit and writing within the word limit is an important consideration. Many institutions will penalise students for not writing the correct amount of words – for example, the essay question may call for a 2,000 word essay, there may be a 10% grace, so anything between 1,800 and 2,200 is acceptable. Think about the main elements that need to be covered in the essay. Make sure you allocate the greatest number of words to the 'main body of the essay' and not to a subsidiary point.
Decide how much space you can devote to each section of your outline. For example, a third of a page for the introduction, half a page for point 1 which has two sub-points, one and a half pages for point 2 which has five sub-points etc. Although you will not follow such a space scheme rigidly, it does enable you to keep things under control and to know how much detail to put in, keeping the balance of the essay as you originally planned.