Pro-Tips for Outlining (and Actually Writing) an Essay
When we read a paper, we start at the beginning and finish at the end. It would make sense, then, to write the same way: start with the introduction, plod through the body, end with the conclusion.
That’s usually the least efficient way to write.
To see why, we have to remember what an essay actually is.
What an Essay Is For
In its broadest terms, an essay is the communication of ideas from a writer to a reader.
To do this efficiently, we rely on shared rules, expectations, and conventions between writer and reader. This is where genres, essay structure, and prescriptive rules come from: they’re not there to torture you; they exist so writer and reader can understand each other.
All of this ties into what we call writer’s voice:
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what you say (content)
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how you say it (format)
But before we worry about voice, we have to understand purpose:
What are you trying to get your reader to do with your idea?
An essay has one main purpose: to communicate an idea to a reader. Different types of essays tweak that purpose:
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to inform
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to persuade
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to entertain
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to analyse
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to evaluate
What many novice writers don’t realise is that there are also purposes inside the essay structure. Each part of the essay does a different job. Once you master those jobs, you gain much more control over how your ideas are presented and received.
The Three Main Parts of an Essay
A standard essay has three parts:
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Introduction
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Body section
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Conclusion
The body section is the largest and most important. It contains your ideas—your data, logic, and arguments that support the thesis or main purpose of the essay.
Each body paragraph should focus on one main idea. (One paragraph = one idea.)
So if the body is where all the essential information lives, what do the introduction and conclusion actually do?
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The introduction prepares the reader:
It gives context, shows your perspective, and previews the logical order of ideas.
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The conclusion synthesises:
It pulls together the context, perspective, and logic of the body and shows the reader what it all adds up to.
In other words, the intro and conclusion frame the thesis. They apply and wrap the ideas developed in the body.
Once we see it this way, writing straight from introduction → body → conclusion makes less sense. Reading works in that order. Writing doesn’t have to.
When you write, you should:
Start with your ideas, then build the language and structure around them.
Why You Should Start with the Body
If the body section is where your main ideas live, it makes sense to begin there. But “write the body” can still sound too big and vague. So let’s zoom in further.
You can think of each body paragraph as a mini–essay. It, too, can be broken down into smaller units with specific purposes.
Those units are sentences.
Inside a body paragraph, we can roughly identify four types of sentence “sections”:
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Topic section (TS)
- Not just a “topic sentence,” but a small section that prepares the reader for the main idea of the paragraph.
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It establishes what this paragraph is about and how it connects to your thesis.
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Concrete detail (CD)
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A fact, statistic, example, quote, or statement that you can back up.
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It’s something verifiable that anchors your idea.
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A fact, statistic, example, quote, or statement that you can back up.
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Commentary (CM)
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Your own analysis, explanation, or interpretation of the CD.
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This is your voice telling the reader why the CD matters, what it shows, how it connects to the topic section.
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As a rule of thumb: include at least twice as much commentary as concrete detail. The essay is about your ideas, not just your ability to copy facts.
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Your own analysis, explanation, or interpretation of the CD.
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Closing section (CS)
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The “so what?” of the paragraph.
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It shows how the main idea of the paragraph (TS + CD + CM) relates back to the thesis or purpose of the essay.
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It can also gently prepare the reader for the next paragraph.
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The “so what?” of the paragraph.
So a well-structured body paragraph might look like this:
TS → CD → CM → CM → CS
Not as a rigid formula, but as a functional pattern.
What Outlining Actually Looks Like
Here’s a practical way to outline and draft using this logic.
1. Pre-write according to the task
- Clarify what the task is asking you to do (analyse, compare, evaluate, etc.).
- Brainstorm freely about the topic.
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From this, extract:
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a working thesis (your main idea)
- 2–4 supporting ideas (these will become body paragraphs)
2. Start with the body section. Do not start with the introduction.
Write your main ideas as headings for the body paragraphs. For example:
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Why poetry doesn’t exist
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Why poetry shouldn’t exist
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What we would gain if poetry was always reinventing itself
Each heading will become one body paragraph.
3. Build each body paragraph from the inside out
For each paragraph:
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CD (Concrete Detail)
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Choose a fact, quote, example, or statement that supports your main idea.
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Write it down first.
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Choose a fact, quote, example, or statement that supports your main idea.
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CM (Commentary)
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Write 2+ sentences explaining why that CD is important.
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Talk directly to the reader:
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What does this show?
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How does it relate to the main idea of the paragraph?
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How does it help prove your thesis?
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What does this show?
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Write 2+ sentences explaining why that CD is important.
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CS (Closing Section)
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Summarise how the CD + CM support the paragraph’s main idea.
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Answer the “so what?”:
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Why does this idea matter in terms of your thesis?
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Why does this idea matter in terms of your thesis?
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Optionally, lightly hint at what’s coming in the next paragraph.
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Summarise how the CD + CM support the paragraph’s main idea.
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TS (Topic Section)
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Now go back up and write 1–2 sentences at the top.
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Introduce the main idea of the paragraph in a broader way.
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Make sure it clearly connects back to your thesis.
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Now go back up and write 1–2 sentences at the top.
Repeat this process for each body paragraph.
4. Write the Conclusion Next
Once all your body paragraphs are complete, you actually know what your paper does. Now you can write a conclusion that isn’t fluff.
The conclusion has two jobs:
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Synthesize the body paragraphs
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Restate the big ideas from your CS sections in a cohesive way.
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Do not repeat all your CDs and CMs—just the larger takeaways.
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Restate the big ideas from your CS sections in a cohesive way.
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Explain the importance of the thesis
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Why does your main idea matter for this specific audience and context?
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Speak directly to the reader:
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Why should they care?
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What should they think about differently?
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Why should they care?
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Why does your main idea matter for this specific audience and context?
5. Now Write the Introduction
Only now do you write the introduction.
Start broad and move inward:
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Context
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Situate the reader: topic, situation, audience.
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Situate the reader: topic, situation, audience.
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Perspective
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Who are you (or what stance are you writing from)?
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Who are you (or what stance are you writing from)?
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Purpose
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What are you trying to do with this essay (inform, persuade, evaluate, etc.)?
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What are you trying to do with this essay (inform, persuade, evaluate, etc.)?
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Roadmap + Thesis
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Briefly show the order (logic) of your main points.
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State your thesis clearly.
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Briefly show the order (logic) of your main points.
Remember: the introduction is not the place to dump all your ideas. It’s a preview, not the movie.
6. Last: The Title
Leave the title for the end.
A good title should:
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Not simply restate the task (you’re better than “Essay on Macbeth”)
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Hint at the purpose of the paper
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Speak directly to the target audience
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Echo a phrase, image, or idea from your own commentary or conclusion
Why from your CM/conclusion? Because that’s where your voice is clearest. Using your own language there will give your title texture and style instead of sounding like a worksheet heading.
Follow these steps and you’ll be communicating in no time.
Example Outline: Poetry as a Living Happening
Introduction
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Establish context:
Good evening, fellow readers, ex-students, and anyone who’s ever been forced to “analyze” a poem they secretly hated.
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Establish relationship with reader:
I’m not speaking as a professor of literature or a “real poet,” but as someone who still likes language despite what school did to it. After years of running strange poetry happenings in basements, bars, and supermarkets, I’ve realised the best poetry doesn’t sit quietly on the page.
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Thesis / main idea:
My main idea is simple: poetry shouldn’t exist as a fixed product we “make” and then protect. Poetry should always be subjective—constantly reinventing itself in whoever receives it, in whatever context it appears.
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Logic (what the piece will do):
I’m going to show how
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poetry becomes alive when we treat it as a happening, not a product,
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readers and listeners act as co-creators of the poem,
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and context can completely change what even counts as “a poem”.
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poetry becomes alive when we treat it as a happening, not a product,
Body 1 – Poetry as Happening, Not Product
- TS: Most of us were taught to think of poems as finished objects: printed, graded, canonised, and eventually quoted on tote bags. But what if poetry isn’t something you manufacture once and archive, but something that only really exists when it happens between people?
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CD: At one OBJECT:PARADISE event, a person read a poem while someone else got a tattoo on stage, a musician improvised on piano under a haircut, and another performer quietly sliced ham and handed it out. Afterwards, people disagreed on what “the poem” actually was: the text, the tattoo, the sounds, the ham, or the whole scene.
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CM: As soon as you move poetry off the page and into a shared space, it stops behaving like a stable object. The “poem” dissolves into a happening—voices, gestures, smells, jokes, distractions. No two people in that room received the same poem.
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CM:If poetry is only allowed to be “real” once it’s printed and approved, we miss all of this. If we instead see poetry as an event, the poem becomes less of an artifact and more of an interaction.
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CS: Thinking of poetry as a happening, not a product, frees us from trying to manufacture the perfect piece and pushes us toward creating conditions where something poetic can actually happen.
Body 2 – The Audience is the Poet
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TS: If poetry is a happening, then the person receiving it—the reader, listener, bystander—isn’t a passive container. They’re co-creating the poem in real time, whether they mean to or not.
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CD: Writer Richard Hugo once said, “Writing has to do with being in love with your own responses to things.” The interesting part isn’t only in the words, but in how someone responds to them.
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CM: When you encounter a poem, you don’t simply “download” the author’s intention. You bring your own mood, history, language, culture, jokes, and memories. The “same” poem becomes a different creature in each person’s hands. The text is a skeleton and each reader adds their own flesh. Some sickly, some slickly.
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CM: If that’s true, then poetry can’t honestly be static or objective. It’s constantly being rebuilt inside every receiver. The writer might present the ham, but the reader decides why.
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CS: Seeing receivers as co-creators means there is no single, fixed poem—only many versions of it, presenting itself differently to people and moments. That instability is the poetry.
Body 3 – Context as the Real Editor
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TS: If each receiver is quietly rewriting the poem in their head, then context is the invisible hand steering the rewrite. Where and how a text appears often changes it more than the words themselves.
- CD: Imagine reading a pancake recipe: once in your kitchen on a Sunday morning, and once into a microphone at an afterschool talent show. The text doesn’t change, but in the second setting, people might hear it as absurdist poetry, nostalgia, parody, or performance art.
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CM: In the kitchen, it guides your breakfast. On stage, the same words can become commentary on domesticity, comfort, routine, or hunger. The “poem” isn’t in the ingredient list. It’s in the situation.
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CM: Supermarket announcements, the argument next door, the rebooted Windows 11 home desktop image on a public bus can all turn poetic depending on when and where it’s received. The context frames the text, our reception--to the text and the context--create our interpretation.
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CS:If context can flip a recipe into a poem, or a siren into a stanza, then poetry can’t be pinned down as a static product. It keeps reinventing itself every time it appears somewhere new, in front of someone new.
Conclusion
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Revisiting the logic:
We’ve seen that:
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poetry becomes alive when we treat it as a happening instead of a fixed product,
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receivers aren’t just audiences but co-creators,
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and context can radically alter what a text is and what it does.
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poetry becomes alive when we treat it as a happening instead of a fixed product,
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Restating the thesis / importance:
Poetry shouldn’t live only as a static, producible thing locked in books or guarded by The Poetry Foundation. It should be allowed to constantly reinvent itself inside whoever encounters it, each time, in each place.
When we start seeing poetry as a context-dependent happening—something always happening for the first time—everyone gets to participate: not just as writers, but as readers, mis-hearers, passersby, and accidental poets moving through the everyday.