Have No Fear, Essay Structure is Here

For many students, the worst thing about writing an essay is not knowing how to structure it.  "My teacher said 'write a 5 paragraph essay'...what on earth am I going to talk about for 5 whole paragraphs?"

Knowing a good formula for essay structure is a lifesaver.  Once one of my college professors taught me this, my whole life changed!  (Well, maybe not my whole life, but writing essays got a heck of a lot easier.)  Take a look:

In choosing a topic to write about, you should be able to identify 3 pieces of evidence to back up your thesis. (For help on writing a killer thesis statement, see my previous blog post here.) Your three body paragraphs are used to further discuss those 3 pieces of evidence.  One paragraph for each piece of evidence. The 5th paragraph is simply a conclusion, where you restate your thesis, briefly address other opinions, and wrap it all up.  (Read about how to write an award winning conclusion here.)

For example, if I was writing a paper on the film Twilight, my basic outline might look something like this:

No offense to the Twilight franchise.  This is just an easy example to use.  

So there you go, 5 paragraph essay structure.

But some of you might be thinking, "What if I have to write a paper that's LONGER than 5 paragraphs?"  Longer than 5 paragraphs?  No sweat.  The structure remains very much the same, it just lengthens out a bit.  Like so:

For a 5 paragraph essay, your thesis has three pieces of evidence backing it up.  That is still the case for a 15 paragraph essay, but now each piece of evidence for your thesis also has three pieces of evidence (supporting ideas) of their own.  I know, I know, that's a lot of writing, but when you have it all structured out like this, you'd be amazed at how easy actually writing it is.  Here's an example:

Wow...I outlined that as a joke example, but now I actually kind of want to write this essay.  I'd need to include more references to the triforce throughout...but it's actually not a bad thesis.  Huh.

Anyway...you can modify this model for however many paragraphs you need.  You can take it to a whole other level where each of the supporting ideas has three pieces of evidence of their own, or you can dial it down a bit, where each piece of evidence has only one or two supporting ideas.  It's up to you!  That's the beauty of writing: it's your creation, so you can figure out how to best apply the rules to your masterpiece.

Comment below with any questions you have or with suggestions for future blog posts.

Until next time, I remain your humble Online Writing Tutor,
-Mrs. B