Outlining an Essay

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ESSAYS AREN'T EASY

Essays in high school - and certainly in university - can be daunting! You look at a 1000-word assignment and wonder how on Earth you'll make the word count.

Then you somehow reach it and massively surpass the word count with everything you've researched, so you spend hours trying to cut it all back down.

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THE ESSAY OUTLINE

Outlining your essay is going to drastically reduce the time and effort you put into its completion, and it's going to dramatically increase its readability and credibility, especially if you are arguing for or against a particular point.

The following outline can be used for almost any essay.

Click to download our two-part essay and a three-part essay outline wordcount calculators.

Essay Outline Wordcount Calculator.xlsx

Download XLSX • 79KB

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TWO-PART ESSAY

A 2-Part essay example would be:

What is the problem? What is the solution?

Part One - Write about what the problem is to resolve.

Part Two - Write about the possible solutions to the problem.

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THREE-PART ESSAY

A 3-Part essay example would be:

Read two stories, then compare.

Part One - Write about the first story.

Part Two - Write about the second story.

Part Three - Compare the two stories.

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HOW DO I START?

HOW DO I FINISH?

Start your essay knowing you actually don't have much to write at all for each section.

PARTS

Choose your three 'Points' to make within for each 'Part'.

You can see using the essay calculator that, for a 2-Part essay of 1000 words, each Point is only 101 words; and for a 3-Part essay, each Point is only 68 words.

Realising how small each Point needs to be, you now don't need to spend hours and hours researching.

Spend enough time that you can fill 60-100 words to cover the entire Point. That's it.

Then move onto the next Point and only research enough to cover then next 60-100 words. That's it.

LINKING SENTENCES

After you complete all your short Points, then fill in all the Linking Sentences.

CONCLUSION

Once the Linking Sentences are done, that's your Main Body completed. Now, you work on your Conclusion. Here, you tell readers both what you have written about and what you have concluded.

INTRODUCTION

The very last thing to do is your Introduction. Because your Main Body and your Conclusion have been completed, you can now write the beginning; tell the reader what you are going to write about and what you will potentially conclude in the end.

Now, you're completely done!

You'll find that you'll have completed a 1000-word essay pretty damn quickly, and the next one will be written just as fast!