24houressay.co.uk | Essay Tips: Structure

Tips on Structure

by Peter Dodds.

Structure is one of the most important parts of any writing, and like punctuation is crucial in determining the rhythm of the essay. Imagine listening to someone who talks in a flat, monotonous voice with no ebbs and flows, no changes in tone or nuance; you'd find it hard to concentrate, hard to remain interested, and ultimately you would stop listening. It's the same with an essay. A bad structure can be a barrier, preventing you from fully engaging the reader. A good structure, on the other hand, can draw the reader into your argument in such a way as to transcend certain textual limitations you may face; in other words, a good structure can transform your essay. This page will teach you about structure, and hopefully you'll soon be able to structure your own essays in such a way as to really draw your readers into your argument.

Begin at the Beginning

Let's start by considering the way I'm writing this page. I started with an introductory paragraph outlining the basic topics and ideas I'm going to discuss. I didn't go into too much detail; I simply explained in fairly simple terms why it's important to learn how to use structure and what happens when you get it right and wrong. I summed up the aim of this whole page, letting you know what to expect (and whether or not you want to keep reading!). I didn't really tell you anything you don't already know, because all the new material is going in the main body of this page. As you've hopefully worked out by now, the broadest structure is the classical three-part model that I'm employing: beginning, middle and end. While this may seem absurdly simple, it's important to note that the number three is at the basis of almost all textual construction, whether fiction or non-fiction, and anything that goes against this tradition risks being labelled experimental or difficult; obviously there's nothing wrong with being experimental or difficult, and some of our greatest writers, from Joyce to Dickens to Beckett, have followed this course, but when you're writing an academic essay it's often best to stick to a more or less traditional structure so as to avoid confusing your reader.

Actually, the introduction is often the easiest part of any essay, because all you're doing is saying what you're going to say. It's perhaps easiest to think of the three-part structure like this: in the introduction, you say what you're going to say; in the main body, you say it; and in the conclusion, you say what you've said. The trick, as you'll see, is to try to make this interesting and engaging, and to avoid being repetitive.

Be Consistent

Did you notice something about the previous paragraph? It was much shorter than the others. This might seem trivial, but it can make the whole piece seem dis-jointed if there's absolutely no consistency. Obviously you don't need to start counting lines, but if you find you have long dense paragraphs that run on for 30 or 40 lines, and then some very short paragraphs, something is clearly wrong with your essay. A good rhythm in an essay is like a good rhythm in a piece of music: if there's a sudden change, it should be intentional and there should be some clear reason for it. You have to be aware that a sudden shift in rhythm will be picked up by your reader, and whether or not you've done it on purpose, it will have an effect. I think most people who looked at this page would see the lack of consistency and perhaps be a little deterred by it, and I'd never have such inconsistent formatting if I wasn't trying to make a very deliberate point.

This is particularly important in terms of the main body of the text that you're writing. Obviously the length of the overall piece dictates your structure somewhat, but the rule of three remains in place, and you'll find in any well-constructed essay that there are concentric levels of three all the way through the work. What does this mean? It means that the main body will be divided into three rough sections, and each of those sections will be divided into three. The longer the essay, the more room there is for more concentric (i.e. one inside the other) circles within the structure. This doesn't mean that you should start constructing your essay like a mathematical equation; rather, it's something you should watch out for and, with enough practice, it will simply become second nature. Try going through this page and looking for the three-part structures that I've deliberately used. I could have used individual section headings to make them stand out, and this can be a useful structural tool, but it's fairly crude and I wanted to make this more challenging.

The Main Body

The order of the three parts within your main body is important, because you want to make them flow into one another rather than be three entirely separate blocks with no apparent relationship to one another. You'll need to practice working out this kind of structural device, but keep doing so and eventually it will simply click into place and you'll know how to do it. It's one of the reasons the essay writers here at 24houressay.co.uk can write your essay so fast: they've all written so many essays, they have the structural rules hard-wired into their brains. It really is one of those classic cases where it's very hard to understand at first, but once you've got it everything suddenly seems easy. When you order your essay from this site, one of the unique things we do is give you a copy of the writer's notes and rough drafts; by doing this, we're giving you an invaluable chance to see how the writer established and developed the essay's structure. You'll see that he'll have moved sections around until they fit together in a more rhythmic way.

Did you notice that the previous paragraph ended rather abruptly? I did that on purpose, to prove another point. Each paragraph should have a subtle three-part structure of its own, and I deliberately left off the third, i.e. concluding, part of that paragraph. It would have been a simple one-line summation, something like "This kind of rhythm analysis might seem overly technical, but it sometimes helps to look at this kind of thing in such a way, as long as you don't go too far and abandon the creative, artistic element". Do you see how that final sentence would have closed up the paragraph while giving somewhere for me to go, i.e. I could have gone on to talk about the importance of inspiration and creativity, and about how inspiration isn't some magical mystery but rather something that comes to you when you've mastered the basics. This analogy might be stretching things a bit, but look at the case of Michael Jackson. One of the reasons he was such an innovative dancer was that he knew the basics so much better than anyone else. In other words, he was free to concentrate on the next stage, the more inventive moves, because he didn't have to think about the basics any more. Obviously this only goes a small way towards explaining great artistry such as that of Michael Jackson, but I think it's a valuable point to remember.

Structure Isn't Magic - Just Follow the Rules

Structure, then, is not something mystical and unexplainable. It's a very clear thing that can be added to almost continually without ever losing its essential shape. Of course, structure is highly dependent upon context. A scientific study is going to have shorter, more to-the-point paragraphs than an English Literature essay, for example, while content for the internet tends to have short, often one-sentence paragraphs. The only reason this page has relatively long paragraphs is that I'm deliberately writing in a kind of academic structure rather than traditional web copy, but you'll see that the remaining parts of this tips section are very differently structured. I could go on and on talking about structure, but I've covered the most important bases and because this is web-based I know that you're unlikely to read pages and pages of information about structure? See what I did there? I brought the piece back to one of the key ideas I raised in the first paragraph: consideration of the audience, i.e. you. This cyclical nature is present in almost all writing, and is perhaps most noticeable in comedy, where almost any comical list, for example, will have the funny item third. So I've brought this piece to a conclusion by re-stating certain key points from the introduction, but it's important to leave the audience or the reader with something to think about at the end, so I'll add the following line. Structure can make or break an essay, and poor structure can deter even readers who aren't able to dissect their response and understand why they're turning away; by practising structure, you can get a real head-start when it comes to writing your next essay.

Click here for the next part of this series of expert writing tips, looking at how to carry out effective and thorough research.

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