One of the best ways to organize your thoughts is to make a plan. Such a skill is necessary for all, in particular, schoolchildren. During their studies, children very often draw up a plan for a paragraph, essay, etc.
Why do you need to be able to plan the text?
If you want to write a good essay, speech, novel or simple essay, then you need to first draw up a plan. Without this important stage, the final text will be chaotic, not thought out, and the main idea will be "wandering around." How to make a plan? How to reflect the structure of the plan in the text? Read about it in our article.
Work on the essay: stages
Before you begin to plan for an essay, you need to understand the whole sequence of work. First of all, you need to think about the topic of the future text, decide on its main idea. Next, you need to select the material: statements, quotes, determine the theses. You can start composing a writing plan after you know exactly what you want to say in your text. Next, you need to consider the introduction and conclusion. Planning the main body of the text is as important as working on a general plan. Now you can go directly to writing the essay.
Plan to compose: what is it?
Let's look at how to properly prepare for writing an essay. In general, the preparation of the plan involves the allocation of individual items. You need to identify the key thoughts of the finished text or the one you plan to write. Here the plan of the poem or story is no different from the plan of composition.
What does it mean to draw up an essay plan? This means breaking the text into specific fragments, while highlighting the paths along which your thought will develop. Each of the resulting fragments is a microtext, which will be equal to one paragraph or several. Each such microtext must be entitled. And the title, in turn, is one of the points of the plan.
How to make a plan?
It is important that the entire text be united by one thought, and the selected fragments should be logically connected. The result should be a text, in the structure of which you can distinguish the introduction, the main part and conclusion.
How to draw up a plan and what to put in its points? As a rule, paragraphs are not separate words, but whole phrases and detailed phrases. In separate words, it is very difficult to convey the main topic or idea, they are too specific and "narrow." However, complex sentences are also of little use, since they represent a complete thought: all that they wanted to say has already been said.
How to make a plan? Use exactly phrases as points, because they carry information in an abbreviated, folded form, while at the same time they represent a semantic unity. In the composition itself, this idea will need to be “developed”. However, it is possible to formulate points in the form of questions, the answers to which you will give in the text.
What is important to remember when making a plan?
During work, you should not forget that the previously drawn up plan carries information about the structure of your composition. It contains specific information about the content of each semantic part of the text. That is, the whole composition should be “viewed” through the plan.
Getting started: essay structure
When making a plan, you need to think over the direction of thought that you are going to reflect in the essay. Where do you start? How do you finish? What will you write about in the main part? Any text consists of three main parts: introduction, main part and conclusion. Match headings to each of them. You can supplement them with your notes, explanations. So you get a detailed plan of composition, according to which it will be much easier to write a text without losing the logical connection between the parts. You can formulate the points of the plan in the form of questions that you will answer in the essay.
Remember that all three parts of the text will be unequal in volume. In addition, one of them should not be allowed to “fall out”.
But what to write in each part of the composition?
- Introduction. The anticipation of the main idea of the text is the introduction. It seems to “advertise” it, trying to interest the reader. The introduction prepares for the perception of the main idea, and also sets the tone for the entire text. Interesting aphorisms or expressing your emotions can be given in this part of the composition.
- Main part. This section should reveal the idea that you want to express.
- Conclusion In this part, it is necessary to summarize what you said in the essay. Remember that the text should not break off abruptly. Briefly repeat the main thesis, conclude.
Composition Plan: Example
Here is a sample plan of essay-reasoning. For example, you need to write a text on the topic "What is friendship?" In this topic, you can speculate about who a friend is, or talk about your own friendship and prove that it is friendship.
The plan for the story or reasoning is constructed according to the following scheme:
- Introduction. In this part of the essay we prepare the reader for what we will discuss in the text. We can say that friendship is an important part of our life, or bring an interesting statement by a famous person and express his consent or disagreement, further substantiating it.
- Main part. Here you need to provide arguments proving what you said at the beginning. For example, to substantiate why friendship plays an important role in human life. If you agreed or did not agree with the statement about friendship, you need to explain reasonably why you have the same opinion or why you think otherwise.
- Conclusion Summarize your arguments, conclude.
Making a plan: tips and tricks
- Compilation of any plan begins with understanding the topic and answering the question of what I want to say in my essay. How to connect it logically?
- First, in a draft, sketch out the main points that should be reflected in your text.
- Do not be afraid to use auxiliary materials. This does not mean that you can simply write off everything from the Internet. But to look at the options of other people's works on a similar topic and take some ideas for a note is not forbidden.
- Remember that not all the volume of material will be reflected in your work: choose the most interesting and important.
- First of all, remember that the composition of the composition must be subordinate to its content.
- The soundness of the preliminary plan defines such important things as the sequence of presentation of thoughts in the text and the logical connection between its parts.
- The proportionality of parts of the essay is also important: the total volume of introduction and conclusion should not exceed one third of the volume of the entire text.
- When making a plan, use short and simple sentences. Express your thoughts to the point. It is not necessary that the language be perfect at the stage of creating the plan; the main thing is that the points accurately reflect your point of view.