← Written text essay: respond critically to written texts
6 Planning the essay before writing it
A few minutes of planning is what keeps an essay answering the actual statement all the way to the final paragraph, rather than drifting into a prepared but unfocused response.A workable planning sequence
- Read all eight statements, choose one, and underline its exact key terms.
- Write a one-sentence THESIS: your position on the statement, stated as a full claim, not a topic.
- List 3-4 techniques/moments from the text that support that thesis, each with a short quotation already in mind.
- For each, note in one phrase what WIDER idea it will connect to at the end of the paragraph.
- Only then start writing the introduction.
Write the thesis before the introduction, not as part of it
Drafting the thesis sentence separately, before starting to write the introduction itself, forces it to exist as a genuine claim you can test each paragraph against — rather than emerging vaguely somewhere in the first paragraph's prose.A test to run on your thesis before writing further
- Could someone disagree with this sentence? If not, it is a topic, not a claim — rewrite it as an arguable position.