How to Organise an Essay – A Comprehensive Guide & Examples

Steps to Organise an Essay

• Start with a clear thesis statement.
• Choose the essay organisation method that fits your essay type.
• Create an outline or guiding map of main points.
• Arrange your ideas into logical paragraphs, one complementing another.
• Add transition words or phrases to connect ideas smoothly.
• Proofread and edit to check flow and sentence organisation.

What’s the Basic Essay Organisation?

The first things to organise are what you are going to say and in what order you are going to say those things. After this, it is a case of refining those things. You can start by separating all your text into three sections: introduction, main body, and conclusion. 

Can it really be so simple? Yes, and of course, no. There are several ways to organise an essay depending on different factors.

What are the Different Essay Organisation Methods?

There is no specific way of organising an essay. Multiple styles and methods are utilised by writers based on the academic subject, academic level, and expectations of the audience. Below, we have discussed some of the most common ways to organise an essay.

• Chronological Essay Organisation

Organising an essay chronologically – sometimes called the cause-and-effect approach – is one of the simpler ways to organise your essay. This way of organisation tends to discuss the events in the specific order in which they occurred. The chronological organisation method is especially important for narrative and reflective essays.

The writer will be expected to recognise the sequence of events and structure the essay accordingly, i.e. what happens in the beginning, middle, and end. Use this approach if it allows for the clearest and most logical presentation of your information.

Where is Chronological Organisation Used?

• Scientific processes – Where a process has many steps, it is likely that the order of these steps is vital.
• Historical events – Things are clearer for the reader when events in the past are relayed in the order in which they happened. This can also apply to political progress.
• Biographies – Events that occurred in someone’s lifetime or examining events covering just a short time in one person’s life, such as JFK’s final day.

What Kind of Specific Language is Needed in Chronological Essays?

Essays that describe a succession of events following each other will require good use of prepositions of time. These are words, often pairs, such as next, after this/that, following on from that, later… Be careful not to overuse the same word, as this can become repetitive and tedious for the reader.

• Spatial Organisation in Essays

The spatial organisation refers to describing items based on their physical locations or relation to other items. It often involves describing things as and when they appear. It makes it easier for the writer to give a vivid picture through the essay. This method tends to discuss comparisons in descriptive and narrative essay styles,

When using this technique, make sure to organise the information pertaining to comparisons, narrations, and descriptions from either top to bottom or left to right. Note that while location and position are very important in this method, time is largely ignored.

Where is Spatial Organisation Used?

• Descriptive essays – It is excellent for describing objects, people, and places. It is also useful for showing social or physical phenomena – the arrangement of a rainforest.
• Narrating events – You can take the reader through a visual processor to describe events that occurred, showing them everything on the way.
• Medical – Those who need to describe the workings of bodies, medicines, operations on bodies, and anatomy might choose this approach.
• Technical construction – You can describe how a physical mechanism or building works or is constructed.

If you do not have a picture to show, you need to describe it.

What Kind of Specific Language is Needed in Spatial Organisation?

From the example above, you can see that an essay using spatial organisation will require you to talk about where things are. 

This needs quite extensive and careful use of a group of words called prepositions, such as next to, attached to, near, behind, under, alongside… If you are describing movement, then there are prepositions that indicate movement, such as through, into, out of, toward, away from, and past.

You need to be specific in your use of prepositions, as the reader might be imagining events with no image to refer to other than what you have described.

• Climactic Essay Structure

This method is also known as organising by importance or ascending order. Following this technique, the writer starts the essay with the least important information and gradually moves towards the most important – the climax. The idea is to save the best till the last.

The introduction and conclusion are unaffected by this organisational style. The main body of the essay is where the structure is used. This type of organisation is applicable where there is no need for logical ordering. 

For example, in a scientific process, each step logically follows the previous one. Steps will vary in how eventful they are; you cannot write about such a process by saving the most eventful for the end.

When to Use Climactic Order in an Essay?

This method is sometimes used as a way of keeping readers interested, even in suspense. If written in the opposite direction, anticlimactic, you might lose readers after they have learned about the most exciting part.

In narrating a story or sequence of events that culminate in something serious or important, this is a good style to use.

Interested in ordering an essay?

• Topical Organisation

As the name itself suggests, this form of organisation explains different features and aspects of the topic with no specific order. Unlike climactic order, this type of essay organisation treats different aspects of one topic with the same importance. The best way to achieve this is to divide the whole topic into its subtopics and then define each one.

Where is Topical Organisation Used?

• Scientific essays – This could be an exploratory essay, especially where an organism or something consisting of multiple parts has to be described.
• Compare-and-contrast essays – Where things have to be compared against each other for their similarities and differences. This could be when comparing two pieces of art or literature; the works’ various aspects could be examined separately.
• Descriptive essays – If, for example, you have to write an essay about yourself, you can describe the different aspects of your body and personality in their own sections.
• Expository essays – Where something is explained with facts, not opinions, the subject can be broken down and looked at piece by piece.

Key Differences Between Essay Organisation Methods

Comparing and Contrasting: Alternating and Block Methods

It is worth noting that compare-and-contrast essays can be structured in two distinct ways. They are the alternating method, where each part is compared in turn, and the block method, where each thing is considered in its entirety.

Using the alternating method to compare two cars, you might compare the bodywork of both, then move on to their interiors, and then the engines. The other way is the block method; here, you would write a full block discussing all aspects of one car and then a block discussing the same aspects of the other car.

Also Read: How to Develop Essay Topic Ideas?

Key Tips for Organising Your Essay

Planning and organising your essay not only benefits the reader, but the writer also gets great help from the whole process. Following organisational patterns helps the writer by saving time without having to go through the same content repeatedly.

Also Read: Organisational Templates for Essays

• Start your Essay with Simple Arguments

A good tactic in producing an organised essay is to start your essay by providing simple arguments. It does not mean that only simple arguments should be part of the essay. Relatively complex or difficult arguments should also be placed later in the main body of the essay.

• Get the Readers on Your Side

As an example, by presenting a simple, well-understood scientific argument early on, you start to get your readers on board. Then present another argument that can be seen as a logical progression from the first. 

When you raise a more complex and possibly contentious argument, it helps if you can apply principles from your initial example. If the readers agreed with the basic argument, logically, they would agree with the more complex version.

• Know your Audience

In this era of technological advancement, people tend to make quick decisions as they have to look at multiple platforms to find content. Understandably, the essay needs to be well structured and well formalised, yet it should be organised in a user-friendly way. 

• Define Technical Terms

While providing information in the essay, make sure that you define all the technical terms that the readers may not be aware of. This needs to be done as the first step before you alienate and confuse your reader, and they decide to avert.

Checklist to Organise an Essay

Frequently Asked Questions