The importance of thorough planning cannot be overestimated because a good plan makes any process more effective and faster. Once you decide what you want to include in your essay beforehand, you put your ideas in order, thus guaranteeing proper organization and coherence of the final piece. With an essay plan, you also make sure that your writing answers all the questions from an essay prompt. Whether you plan an essay from scratch or use a planning worksheet designed by someone else, you save your future paper from redundancies, repetitions, and rambling thoughts.
Try to complete the steps 1-6 as soon as you receive the assignment. This way you will be more likely to come up with some good ideas for your essay as you work on other things.
Analyze the essay prompt.
Break down the prompt into several questions and write them out.
Dedicate 15-30 minutes to brainstorming.
Make a quick draft of the thoughts you have on the topic, paying attention to its scope and implications.
Put down any terms and key words that you think have to be included in a research paper outline.
Note any other thoughts you think might be valuable.
Creating such a plan early is useful because you will have enough time to think about the prompt and ask your tutor for clarifications if necessary. After you make sure you understand the assignment, you can begin your research:
Look through the course material (lectures, handouts, assigned readings, and the textbook) and put down any relevant ideas in your outline. Similarly, mention in your outline which ideas require more research. Make these notes clear because you will come back to the readings in the process of writing the essay.
List the sources you can use for further research, such as scholarly articles, books, and other academic publications. At this point, it is important to avoid redundancies. Stick to the point not to make your outline overly complicated.
Having completed the outline, pay attention to the proportions. Make sure the structure is balanced.
Even if your time is strictly limited, you will write your essay faster if you have an essay plan. Although you might be familiar with a typical structure of an academic essay, your mind may go blank during exam, and a plan will help you organize the thoughts. Besides, if you panic into writing too soon, you might either exhaust all good thoughts before the essay is finished or forget to answer some part of the prompt. We recommend finding an outline template during essay exam preparation so you do not experience stress when planning your essay at an exam.
Planning is useful because it stimulates your sub consciousness. With an essay plan, you will not end up recalling all good arguments, pieces of evidence, and convincing examples only after the exam, because you will include most of them at the planning stage. Planning stimulates your brain in a way that it starts ‘digging up’ good thoughts just in time for you to be able to add them into your academic essay.
A Quick Guide on Planning Your Essay in 5 Minutes (with a Template)
You can use the following academic paper outline during exams or when working on your written home assignments.
Essay Title____________________
Introduction
Paragraph1
Topic Sentence: ______________
Explanation:____________________
Examples:__________________
Important: ______________
Paragraph2
Topic Sentence: ______________
Explanation:____________________
Examples:__________________
Important: ______________
Paragraph 3
Topic Sentence: ______________
Explanation:____________________
Examples:__________________
Important: ______________
Paragraph 4
Topic Sentence: ______________
Explanation:____________________
Examples:__________________
Important: ______________
Conclusion