​Strong Bones: Creating an Effective Structure
The structure of your essay is the way you organize and order the different ideas needed to argue for your thesis. A good structure involves ordering ideas in a logical way, allowing the reader to easily understand what you are saying. A good structure will also help your paper be cohesive! By ordering ideas such that every idea builds off the previous one and leads into the next one, you will show the deeper connections between them – and you will avoid writing a paper that reads like a list of bullet points!
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When first planning a paper, do NOT think in terms of individual paragraphs; think in terms of the MAJOR TASKS you need to accomplish in order to prove your thesis. On the broadest level, what are the basic things you will need to do?
For example: Do you need to explain a particular concept? Do you need to give historical context? Do you need to explain how something works?
2. Once you have determined the major tasks of your essay, you will need to decide how to order them. Choose the order than makes the most sense and which will make it easiest for the reader to understand your ideas and how they contribute to the main point.
3. Once you have determined and ordered the major tasks of your essay, then you can think about individual paragraphs! See guidelines 4 - 6.
Sometimes the order will be obvious (for example, if you are giving a counter argument, you’ll need to explain the original argument first!). Other times, there will not be an obvious "right answer", and you will need to think more deeply.
4. For each major task, ask yourself: what Big Ideas do you need to explain in order to accomplish the task?
5. Once you have determined the Big Ideas you will need to discuss, ask yourself: in what order should I discuss these Big ideas? Choose the order than makes the most sense and which will make it easiest for the reader to understand your main point. For the most part, each Big Idea = one paragraph. However, . . .
6. Sometimes you might have a Big Idea which is so big, it requires multiple paragraphs! In this case, you will need to break this “Super Big Idea” into smaller Big Ideas. Once again, ask yourself: in what order should I explain each of these smaller Big Ideas?
Once you have gone through the process detailed in guidelines 1-6, you can combine the results into a single plan for your paper. Viola! You have created an outline.