Planning and writing the Body of the essay

As a result of your reading/ thinking/ talking, you now need to develop an outline for the body of the essay. Decide on headings and sub-headings as a way of organising your essay by using:

the main categories in your initial plan
the issues/ideas/factors that you identified in your reading and noting.

Use each heading/ sub-heading to develop paragraphs. For each paragraph decide:

what is the main point you want to make?
what is the evidence/ theory/ research supporting this point?
write a topic sentence for each point.

Once you have developed these paragraphs, think about how the main points relate to each other. How are the ideas linked? For example, is the link one of the following:

a sequence of first, second and third?
contrasting ideas eg 'on the one hand..., but on the other hand...?
an addition
a similar point
an example or analogy
a consequence
a time sequence
a problem-solution
a summary

There is a list of connecting/linking words that may help you in this process of linking.

Next step: Completing the first draft.

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