The number one thing I struggle with and a question I always encounter is how to organize your essay. There are lots of ways to manage organization, but this method works best for me. The method I use requires most of the essay to be written or to be fairly far along, so do this towards the end of writing, after you think you’ve gotten most of what you want to say down. Then follow these next few steps!
- Read your own essay (aloud for even better results!), one paragraph by one, excluding the intro and conclusion. BUT make sure you read every paragraph out of order. Completely out of order! You can make a little star once you read one so you don’t end up rereading your entire essay, but it must be out of order. By reading your essay out of order, will help you analyze it on its own and break you away from what you think your essay should be doing, into what it is actually doing.
- Once you have finished reading one paragraph, write one word, one phrase, or a one-sentence summary of paragraph to see what you said in it. Don’t worry at this point if it fits in with the other paragraphs or matches your thesis, just summarize yourself! Also pay attention if it’s about two (or more) different concepts as well, note those and where that transition occurs.
- Once you’ve read your body paragraphs put all the words, or phrases, or sentences you’ve used to summarize your paragraphs onto a new piece of paper (or on the back of your sheet).
- Look into how the words relate to one another. Do any link? If they do, organize them into a new group (color code, draw arrows, cut them out, put them on notecards, whatever works best for you!). Do any need to be paired with another in order to make sense? In other words, are there two things that need to stick together? If so, then put them together! Do you see any of your words (or phrases or sentences) that seem completely unrelated? This is your time to evaluate.
- Determine if all unrelated words/phrases/sentences, need to be in your essay. Chances are that they don’t or if they do, this is a great opportunity for you to figure out where you need to add an additional paragraph of content.
- Finally, look at your introduction. Does your introduction properly inform the audience of all the information that they need in order to understand the concepts of your paper? Spend extra time on your thesis and readjust if necessary.
- Now look into your conclusion. Does it bring all your ideas properly together? Does it help remind the readers of what they need to take away from your paper? Does it urge action (not necessarily applicable in all essays)?
Hopefully this helps you get more organized without having to spend too much time dwelling over re-reading your own essay!
Happy Writing!
July 31, 2014
