69 Organically Structured Essays

Unlike the five-paragraph essay (or 5PE), an organically structured essay is one that doesn’t follow a predetermined or prescribed organizational pattern, but instead incorporates transitions among paragraphs that feel natural and build connections between paragraphs. At times, the paragraphs and transitions may meander or wind around differing or oppositional viewpoints, but a sense of connection among ideas always exists and the organization is developed to build reader interest.

What does it mean to establish a sense of connection among the ideas you’re writing about? One way to understand connection in writing is to imagine you’re watching a group photo session at a local park. Maybe the group is dressed up and ready to go to prom or maybe it’s a family photo session. In either scenario, the people being photographed can choose to arrange themselves in relation to other people in ways that feel natural or unnatural. We’ve all seen the cringe-worthy prom pose pics where two people are standing uncomfortably close or far apart, or most of us have witnessed the awkward family photos that, despite good intentions, are almost uncomfortable to look at because the physical positioning of some family members in relation to others feels rigid and forced. Good photographers know that the trick to making the subjects of a photo look relaxed and natural is to have the people on camera gather close, reach out to one another—maybe by placing a relaxed hand on another person’s shoulder—and laugh or chat casually amongst themselves in order to feel at ease. These small ways of socially connecting with other people are reflected in the overall composition of the photograph. In much the same way, an organically structured essay conscientiously builds natural connections among paragraphs so that the overall composition feels cohesive and genuine.

For anyone dreading the loss of the 5PE, the authors of “Organically Structured Essays” offer sage advice: “A good starting place is to recharacterize writing as thinking. Experienced writers don’t figure out what they want to say and then write it. They write in order to figure out what they want to say.” Journaling or freewriting is one way to determine exactly what you want to say and how many points might naturally structure a piece if you weren’t limited by a 5PE.

So, how do we build a sense of connection among our paragraphs? We must think about the paragraphs like we would people in a picture. How will the paragraphs reach out to one another? First, we’ll define what exactly a paragraph is, and then we’ll get into some of the nuts-and-bolts techniques for using paragraphs as units of meaning that forge connections among ideas.