The Writing Brain
University of Exeter

Planning

What follows assumes that you will be given a topic or question.

There are so many kinds of essay plans that if I guided you through them, it would take a book.  Instead, I will simply say that there are loose essay plans (spider plans, grouping, brainstorming, treeing), and there are more controlling essay plans (outlines of varying lengths and subclauses).  You will have to choose the one that works best for you.

Remember, too, that you don’t have to make an essay plan (I don’t, for example).  But you will probably waste a lot of time and write a significantly less effective essay if you don’t at least make a list of what topics you want to cover and the order in which you think you can most logically cover them.

The goal of an essay plan is to prepare you to write an essay.  Do not spend more time on the plan than you do on the essay.

To start, read the question very carefully, to be sure you know what it’s asking you.  Then take a few moments to think.  If the question asks you to describe or explain (often the case in the hard sciences), think about what you know:  that is, what you can describe or explain. If the question asks you to “discuss,” “defend,” or any similar word, consider your own opinion on the matter, as well as what you know. By doing this, you are taking a little time to settle your mind, and you are making yourself feel more capable.

I will now skip a few steps, simply because those steps will vary depending on the type of plan you make.  In these varying steps, you will pick those topics you want to cover in the essay.  You should cover:

  • points/evidence/arguments/occurrences that must be
  • points/evidence/arguments/occurrences that you feel must be mentioned
  • points, etc. that clearly enhance or support your thesis

When you are in the initial thinking stage, and when you are researching, you can mull over every single thing important to the topic. When you come to make your plan, though, you are not listing everything that’s important to the topic; you are listing what you will put in your essay. You don’t have to include everything that matters, or even everything that’s important.  You only have to include everything that’s clearly relevant.

Think of your thoughts as cows.  If you don’t fence cows in, they wander all over the place, and they get mixed up with other people’s cows; if you fence them in, they are easy to follow, and you know they’re yours.  Your essay plan is your fence: it keeps your thought-cows corralled, and it ensures that ones that don’t belong don’t get mixed in.

A WORD ABOUT RELEVANCE:  The trouble is that can be difficult to know what’s relevant: how much do you need to explain? In order to answer that question, you must decide what you will assume your readers know (that is, what is axiomatic), and what you will explain to them. Doing this successfully takes practice, but as a broad rule of thumb, this may help:

If you are being asked to explain a process (a disaster, blood circulation, building a bridge), the goal of the essay is not to tell the supervisor only those things she may not know: the goal of the essay is to show how much you know.  If you are being asked to consider or discuss a topic, however, the goal is more to think, not so much to give basic facts.

This means that if you are writing about the formation of icebergs, you may want to remind readers of the freezing point of water.  But if you are discussing why so many died on the Titanic, you do not have to stop the proceedings to remind readers of the freezing point of water.

Practical Solutions:

Think of your “prewriting” (the phases before writing the essay, or the writing you do before you write the essay) as having three stages: researching, thinking, and planning. The first two should blend together, but the last should be separate.

If you have difficulty making a plan in a short time, give yourself a time limit and practise sticking to it.

If you have difficulty making a plan at all, consider simply writing down a list of the points you know you want to cover, then indicating in what order you want to cover them (e.g., connecting by arrows)

Be Aware of These:

There comes a point when a plan is so detailed that you are essentially writing your essay twice (once in the plan, once in the essay).  Stop planning before you reach that point (remember that in an exam situation, you will not have time to make an elaborate plan).

Conversely, a plan can be too simple: keywords written down in no order and with no clear connection, for example, are not a plan. If you do decide to make a plan, be sure that it is shaped and orderly enough to be of actual help.

If it takes you more than half an hour to write out your plan, it is taking you too long.

Remember, you do not have to write a plan before you write an essay.

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