Drafting 1: Setting Up Your Structure
At some point in your writing, you will need to think about the order of your ideas. There is no “right” time to do structural work on your writing, but it must be done.
For some writers and some projects, organization happens very early in the process. For example, I tend to write out a kind of rough outline of any long project (like this text) before I generate the content for those sections. For other writers and other projects, this happens later, after some text has been written. I know writers who spend a lot of time freewriting their ideas first and then organizing those ideas afterward.
There are two parts to the organization of academic writing: overall organization and the thesis statement. This section talks about both. I discuss the overall organization first because we frequently don’t have a good handle on what our thesis is going to be until we’ve started to organize our ideas. However, there’s nothing wrong with developing your working thesis at any point in the process.
Creating a Logical Organization
You are almost certainly familiar with the five-paragraph theme. In your opening paragraph, you introduce your topic, and your thesis makes three points about that topic. In the body of your paper, you explain those three points, each in its own paragraph. In the conclusion, you sum up what you just wrote.
This format has probably served you well on exams and standardized tests, and it still can—sometimes. This ready-made structure focuses on clarity and simplicity, which is why it works in testing situations, for example. However, most of the writing you will do in college is more complex, asking you to make more sophisticated connections among ideas. The five-paragraph theme isn’t up to this kind of complexity.
So, if you aren’t using a five-paragraph theme, what do you do instead?
Focusing on Your Reader
Most importantly, think about your reader. What does your reader need to understand first? What do they need to understand after that? And after that? If you focus on what your reader needs to know and when they need to know it, you are likely to end up with an essay that works logically.
When you focus on your reader, your organization tends to grow organically out of your topic. Put yourself in your audience’s shoes and imagine their experience reading your work. Try anticipating their questions and challenges. Ideally, you want to address those as close as possible to the moment they would occur during the reading experience.
Something else to keep in mind: We remember best what we read last. This means that, most of the time, your most important point should occur late in your essay. You’ll definitely want to highlight this point in your conclusion, but you’ll also want to try to put the details of that point late in your paper, perhaps just before your conclusion, if you can.
Using Standard Structures, as Needed
Some common organizational approaches can also help you think about ways to