C. Internal Organization (the body of the essay)
The internal organization of the body of an essay is what we are usually after when we outline our essays. In "BSO: The Basic Scratch Outline" I describe a simple, effective method for organizing the developmental material of an essay. That method works for identifying an essay's main points and subpoints, and for getting them arranged in some logical order. But that is only part, though certainly an important part, of internal organization.The parts must also be linked by transitional markers, words and phrases that signal the nature of the connection between one point and the next. These transitional markers are essential aspects of coherence. In "The Developmental Paragraph (II): Coherence" I explain what is meant by coherence and how important proper order and transitional markers are in achieving coherence. The step-by step method I describe in that article for checking the coherence of a paragraph also works for checking the coherence of the essay as a whole.It is true that most students have trouble organizing their essays. But I am going to come right out and say that when they do have such difficulties, it is because they are approaching their essay-writing task all wrong. They are thinking in terms of fulfilling an assignment and trying to get a certain grade, not in terms of analyzing a topic and arriving a genuine understanding that is worth presenting to a reader. In other words, they are not looking at their essay as an act of discovery and communication, but merely as an act of compliance.In the article "Twenty Years and Twenty Minutes" I describe the thinking process ("discovery") that goes into having something worth saying on a given subject. There are no shortcuts. If you want to have something worth saying, you have to do the intellectual legwork necessary to fully explore the topic at hand (though most of the topics you will be required to write on won't require twenty years of discovery!). And the better you understand the topic, the more obvious the logical ordering of its parts will seem to be.I used to work as a scorer for a company that scores assessment essays for various grades in various states. Whenever I would see that an essay had fallen apart on organization, it was also always evident that the student had put little thought into what he was trying to do and why. He wasn't thinking about his subject or about helping his audience to understand his subject. Rather, he was just rambling to fill up the allotted space, or else just tossing ideas down as they occurred to him. In other words, he was not thinking at all, but merely reacting to the circumstance mandating that he write an essay.A dull reiteration of various organizational strategies is hardly worth offering. The fact is, every student already has access to some sort of rhetoric textbook, and any decent rhetoric will offer explanations and examples of the various strategies. Heck, if I list some of them right now, I bet you will immediately recognize them: chronological, climactic, comparison-contrast, classification, definition, illustration, example, enumeration, deduction, induction, etc.See what I mean? You already know about these organizational strategies, and you don't find knowing about them all that useful.But now think about a subject you care passionately about and know a lot about--a hobby, a political stance, or anything else that you can imagine wanting to share with someone. Now, think of how you would start explaining your subject, how you would proceed, what explanations and examples you would offer, how you would arrange them.Did you notice that you immediately knew how you would arrange the explanation or argument? You also instinctively knew how to get from one point to the other, and what transitional bridges would help your audience follow your explanation. The point is that to organize your material effectively, you must know your subject. You must research it to the degree that research is necessary to properly understand it. You must think deeply and analytically about it. It also helps if you can talk about it with someone else. But most students don't do this when they write their essays, whether the essays are two pages or twenty pages long. What they do is pick their topic on the fly and then try to spin an essay out of their own innards, like a spider spinning a web, or from research and analysis so minimal that it amounts to little more than daydreaming or flipping through the pages of an encyclopedia. They don't want to expend all that much time or effort--they just want to get the darned thing written (usually the night before it is due) and then forget about it.Well, I'm sorry, but my articles are not intended for students who are not interested in learning or in actually writing essays. They are intended for students who want to know exactly what they must do to really learn their subjects, and to write well about what they have learned. My intention is merely to demystify the writing process, not to make it unnecessary.Grading Standard: The quality of an essay's organization should significantly influence the grade that essay earns. The introduction should be effective and appropriate (i.e., following the textual conventions of the rhetorical situation). The conclusion should create a sense of closure, a sense that the essay has gotten to where it was headed from the start. If the rhetorical situation is governed by textual conventions, then the conclusion should satisfy those conventions.
The essay should be coherent at both the general level and at the level of the individual paragraphs. The main points of the essay and the main points of each paragraph should all be in some sort of logical and appropriate order, and there should be clear transitional markers to help the read move comfortably from one point to the next.
