How to Plan an Essay by Aemin Becker

By Aemin Becker

Good essays involve planning. An essay that is not planned will lack comprehensiveness, organization and effectiveness. A well planned essay will have all three of these things and more. But how do you plan an essay? This is something you might be worrying about as you read this. Well, have no fear – this guide is here to help!

What is the question asking?

The first step towards planning your essay is understanding what the question is asking. No question being asked? In that case, you need to understand the prompt.

Understanding A Prompt

There are many things to consider when looking at a prompt. What is the prompt giving you? What information have you learned from reading it? Typically, the prompt will pose a question through indirect means, though sometimes you may have to come up with your own question to answer. In situations where the question is being posed through indirect means, it is important to divine what that question is.

In situations where you must come up with your own question to answer, think of what information is given to you. What is the situation being posed? What are the specifics of that situation? What type of question are you expected to fashion? Once you have a question in mind, evaluate the question within the context of what is being asked. If you are unsure whether your question fits the situation, ask your professor – they will likely be more than happy to help you out!

I figured out the question!

Excellent. Let’s move on!

Is the question open or closed?

An open-ended question will need an answer that is narrowed down; a closed-ended question must have an answer that stays within the question’s limitations ^[1].

This is a closed-ended question. Your answer needs to stay within the question’s limitations. In this case, you need to stay within the 1920s. If the prompt had asked you to use three words to describe any time period in history, it would become an open-ended question; you would need to narrow your answer down to a time-period in order to proceed. Make sense?

Can you see why it is a closed-ended question? It’s because your answer has to stay within the limitations of the question, in other words the 1920s and with answers regarding the First Red Scare and American national security.

How about an open-ended question?

Notice how there are few, if any, limitations on the question; all you need to do is describe an experience that impacted you. This experience could be anything from any time period, meaning you have to narrow down your list of potential answer choices.

Why is question identification important?

Question identification helps you identify which of your ideas will adequately answer what is being asked. You want to avoid veering off track from what the question is asking. After all, you don’t want to write an off-topic essay!

Another Way to Understand – Sub-Questions

Another good way to understand what the question is asking is to break it down into sub-questions. There are a series of questions to consider – What is the question asking? Why is it important? How should it be answered? What do I need to know in order to answer the question ^[2]? This is a great way of not only organizing your potential answers to the question, but of coming up with a preliminary structure for your essay.

Let’s take one of the questions from before and break it down into sub-questions.

Notice how these sub-questions focus on understanding the components of the question – what the first Red Scare was and why it was important – before attempting to understand how it relates to national security. Sub-questions are a great way to focus your thoughts and stay on topic at the same time!

Let’s try another question!

Do you see how sub-questions can help with understanding a question? Excellent.

So what’s your point?

Regardless of the method used, understanding the question is a seemingly obvious but often neglected aspect of writing a successful essay. It should definitely be the first step in your essay planning process.

I’ve understood the question! What’s next?

After you have understood the question and know what the essay should be about, it is time to brainstorm ideas! If you need to do research, now is a good time to note exactly what you need to find in order to answer the question or questions posed. For research papers, this may involve forming an initial opinion and noting down what kind of sources you should find. Let’s look at an example.

Let’s begin with understanding the question. This may include looking up what the “war on drugs” is and its effects on America. Moving on, you are now able to form an opinion. If you believe that the war is justified, make a note of that. If you do not believe it is justified, make a note of that too.

I have an opinion, but how do I prove it?

In order to explain why or why not, you’re going to need to do some extra research. In order to prove your point, brainstorm about what kind of sources you’re going to need. For example, maybe you want to look at some statistics and use those statistics to defend your position. You’re going to want to write that down so you know to look up some statistics later. Other research sources that come to mind – potential databases your college has access to, perhaps? – are also great things to write down so you know to consult them later.

For other papers, this could be as simple as writing down your initial impressions. For example, let’s look at the question from before regarding personal experiences.

This is obviously not a research paper question. What are your initial thoughts on how to answer this question? Write those down. Even if you think some of your ideas are not good, write them down anyway; you might change your mind later.

I feel disorganized! Am I along the right path?

It is not important at this stage to organize your ideas; that comes next. Writing them down gets you thinking more deeply about the question and what direction your answer might take.

A key part of the brainstorming process is completing any readings as well as research necessary to write your essay. As you read or re-read, make sure you take notes on potential areas in the reading that might help you write your essay later on. For example, perhaps you are trying to argue that a certain character is indecisive for your English literature essay. If you come across a passage in your reading that seems to support this, you’ll want to make a note of where to find it so you can reference it in your essay.

You want to make sure you have as much knowledge in your arsenal as possible before moving on. If you find yourself lacking in a key area later on, or decide that you actually want to replace a point with something else you found during this stage, it is very beneficial to already have all the potential information you need fresh in your memory or at your fingertips.

Arranging Your Ideas

As you near the end of the brainstorming process, it could be a good idea to arrange your ideas in three or four groups ^[3]. Not everything can be included in your essay; doing this step helps you keep only those points that you have the most ideas for. More often than not, the ideas you have the most points for are the most strongly supportive of your argument and should be included in your essay as a result.

I’ve finished brainstorming!

Awesome! Once you are done brainstorming, it is a great idea to organize your ideas into a format that you understand. I will mention two methods here, though of course there are many others out there. These serve only as examples that you have a choice to adapt when writing your essay.

Organization Method 1 – Mind Map

One great way of organizing your ideas is through creating a mind map. This helps you organize your main ideas to create an initial structure of your essay ^[4]. If you completed the idea organization step mentioned in the last paragraph, this should be easy. Simply take each main idea, write them down on a piece of paper, draw a circle around each idea and then begin to write evidence or page numbers leading to evidence around these circles. This helps you visually form the content of your body paragraphs. Use the mind map to decide the order of your topics and devise a finalized thesis statement, if you have not done so already ^[5].

Organization Method 2 – Bullet Points

Another way of organizing your ideas is through using bullet points/linear plans ^[6]. You may be very familiar with this type of plan if your English professors asked for essay outlines in the past and you handed in something with a format such as this:

This outline can be organized paragraph-by-paragraph or thematically. It can be as general or as specific as you desire. A great way to use this method is to take your main ideas, make them the body paragraph headers (in the example, “Safeguarding the Future”), write down the reasons why you support this idea (in the example, “Supporting Point One”) and then, in an additional bullet, write down the specific quotation or citation leading to evidence that supports your idea. This is a great method for people with more word-sense rather than visual-sense to use when organizing their essays ^[7].

 My outline is complete!

Congratulations! You have effectively organized your essay. You should have a very strong idea of what you are arguing and how you are supporting it. You will have guaranteed that your essay will have very strong structure by planning it in advance. By taking the time to understand the question before writing about it, you will also have guaranteed that your essay will be on topic.

Overall, your essay will be very strong structurally and content-wise if you take the time to plan it properly. As I hope I have demonstrated here, this step is perhaps the most important in the essay writing process.

I know that you’ve got this – good luck writing your essay!