As a student, you can have the best content, but a poor organization can turn off your professor from going through your work. You need to follow a clear structure whenever writing any paper to give the tutors an easy time. When you need to organize your work, you must brainstorm ideas first before you write them down. Your brain needs to have a copy of what you need to put down on paper.
How to organize your paper before drafting
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Thesis
The thesis statement is the first thing you need to know when writing an essay. The thesis gives you the basics of how your paper will be. A good thesis also provides the reader with a humble time going through your work and understanding the flow.
When writing the thesis statement, you need to include information that holds the main topic. You can start the thesis statement with a phrase like, “I believe that.” Then have words related to your subject.
However, the phrase “I believe that.” It won’t appear in your final essay because it will be removed. The purpose of the words is to help you organize your content in good order.
- Supporting Paragraphs
After the thesis statement, there will be some paragraphs that support the thesis statement. Do not start to write an essay immediately after the thesis statement. Instead, you need to have an outline of how the body of the paper will look like.
Have another paper and highlight strong points that support your thesis. The points you highlight represents how you will organize your paragraphs. Again, you can highlight the points starting with the phrase “because.” The term simply gives you a good guideline on how you will arrange your points and content.
When you have enough points that support your thesis statement, now remove the phrase “because.”
At this point, you have a rough outline for your essay.
- Topic Outline
Again, you will feel like the rough outline is good enough to start writing the essay. Well, DO not begin writing your paper at this point. There is a final step; the topic outline.
You use a rough outline to create the topic outline. The rough outline gives your essay a good flow of ideas paragraph after paragraph.
To create a topic outline, you need to re-list the points again and number them with roman numerals. After you have numbered all the points, make about two sub-points, and number them with A, B, and C. The sub-points should support the main point.
How to Organize your Paper after Drafting
Now that you have a rough outline with ideas to write about, you can now create a clear essay structure after drafting.
- Thesis
Since you already have a rough outline, use it to write the final thesis statement you will use throughout your essay. Follow the previous explanation to create the best thesis that reflects your topic.
When writing the thesis, ensure it answers the question of the main topic
- Supporting Paragraphs
The process is similar to the previous one, only that at this point, you polish up your facts ready to generate content for your essay. Arrange main points with sub-headings to give the paper an organized structure.
- Topic Outline
Have a clear topic outline, whereby each main topic has sub-topics to give the tutor a smooth reading experience.
Finally, you have everything in order, and at this point, you can start writing your essay without any difficulty.