How to Plan an Essay: From a Question to an Argument

The first task is to work out what is actually being asked, because marks are awarded for answering the question set rather than the adjacent one. Underline the instruction word and take it seriously: discuss, assess, evaluate, compare and account for demand different things, and to what extent is an invitation to argue a degree rather than to pick a side. Identify the limits, since a question about the causes of a war in a particular decade is not a question about the war. Note any assumption smuggled into the wording, because a question phrased as why did a policy fail can often be answered best by disputing that it did. A useful test is to write the question out in your own words and check that the rewrite still means the same thing; if it does not, the misreading has been caught before three days were spent on it.

An essay needs a single contestable claim that the whole piece supports, and the word contestable is doing the work: if no informed person could disagree, it is a summary rather than an argument. This is the thesis, and it should be expressible in one sentence that could be written on the back of a hand. Getting to it usually means reading first and deciding afterwards, so the sequence is to gather material, notice what you actually think, and then state it, rather than picking a position and hunting for support. A good test is whether the opposite claim could be argued by a competent person. Another is whether the thesis answers the question directly: if the question asks how important something was and the thesis says it was important, the essay has a topic and no argument, whereas saying it mattered less than a rival factor and only in a particular phase gives every paragraph a job.

The plan is a list of paragraphs, each with one job, in an order that a reader could not rearrange without loss. Write it as sentences rather than headings, because a heading hides whether you have anything to say:

• •One sentence per paragraph stating the point that paragraph will prove, not the topic it will cover
• •Under each, the evidence that will support it, named specifically, so gaps are visible now rather than at midnight
• •An order with a reason, usually from the strongest supporting line to the most qualified, or chronological only if the argument is genuinely about change over time
• •At least one paragraph engaging the strongest opposing case honestly, since an essay that never meets a counterargument reads as though it has not looked
• •A note of what each paragraph adds to the thesis, which catches the paragraph that is interesting and irrelevant

Introductions are usually too long and too general, opening with a sentence about the dawn of human history that could precede any essay on any subject. An introduction needs three things: what the question is really about, what you will argue, and the route you will take, in that order, and it can be written last. Conclusions should not summarise, since the reader has just read it; they should say what follows from the argument, what it implies, and where its limits are. Topic sentences are the most valuable single habit, because an essay whose first sentences, read alone in sequence, lay out a coherent argument is nearly always a good essay, and this is a check you can run on your own plan in two minutes. Evidence needs to be worked rather than displayed, so every quotation or statistic should be followed by a sentence saying what it shows, and the paragraph that ends on a quotation has stopped one sentence early.

Planning scales with the format. For a timed exam essay, five minutes on a rough thesis and four or five paragraph points is enough, and it is the single highest-return five minutes available, since it prevents the answer that drifts and the one that runs out of time halfway through the best material. For a coursework essay of a few thousand words, the reading, note-taking and planning should take most of the elapsed time and the drafting comparatively little. Work out the word budget in advance by dividing the count between the paragraphs, which exposes immediately whether the plan has nine points for a piece with room for four. And leave time between the draft and the edit, ideally a night, because the errors that matter, an unsupported claim, a paragraph in the wrong place, an argument that quietly changes halfway, are invisible while the text is still warm.

The difference between a summary and a good essay is made in planning: read the question closely enough to catch its instruction word and its hidden assumptions, then find one contestable claim that a competent person could dispute, and state it in a sentence. Build a skeleton of paragraphs, each expressed as the point it proves rather than the topic it covers, with the evidence named and one paragraph meeting the strongest objection. Write introductions last, make conclusions say what follows, and check that the topic sentences alone make the argument.