Advanced Writing for the College-Bound

Unit 11: Organizing — Overview

Conveying order to the reader

Often when we write, especially in an examination situation, we feel so pressured to get everything out there that we don’t necessarily arrange it in a way that is accessible to the reader. Even if we ourselves understand the relationships between the parts, unless we express them rationally, those relationships will not be clear to the reader. Spending the effort to clarify your organization will insure that your perceptions and good ideas won’t be lost and confused.

From the mind to the page: the problem

Our ideas apparently live in our minds in what psychological researchers refer to as a “neural net” — something they will be quick to tell you we don’t understand very well. Perhaps the most convenient way of thinking about it is as loosely clustered ideas that reinforce each other, like the (aptly named) “mind maps” we discussed in Unit III — like bubbles connected with lines to one another. The order is clear in our minds, because we see these spatial relationships in two or three dimensions, or because we’re so familiar with the content that we can easily slide sideways from one domain to another — often the more easily, the better we understand the big picture.

The problem is that, even using hypertext, one cannot really convey these clustered ideas in a raw form in writing. Writing (like speech, on which it is modeled) is a fundamentally linear medium. Bubbles or clusters won’t work for prose: things may exist in a simultaneous form, but they don’t get expressed in writing that way (though a good chart or graph is sometimes a powerful tool to express those other, non-linear relationships). When you’re dealing with writing alone, the reader can’t usually see the whole picture at once: instead he or she needs to take in these ideas one at a time. As writers, then, we must put those ideas in a sequence that enables the reader to understand the connections between them, in the hope that eventually the “big picture” will emerge and cohere.

Sometimes the order of presentation is intuitively obvious, either by the nature of the material itself, or because different disciplines have certain well-established conventions of presentation. If it is not, or if there is even likely to be significant ambiguity, then one may need to draw an explicit road map in the introduction, describing the plan beforehand. One should not be completely shackled by obvious or conventional ways of presenting material, since there are sometimes reasons for doing them differently. If there isn’t a reason, though, it’s probably a good idea to stick with the convention. In the long run, it’s an issue of courtesy: try to pursue the course that’s easiest to follow, while still serving your overall goal. As an added benefit, the process of distilling, simplifying, and streamlining your ideas will often bring more clarity to your own thinking. Everyone wins then.

Perhaps the one general principle that applies to all the following modes of presentation is just this: start with what is known, understood, or generally believed to be true, and move from there to the unknown, the tentative, or the proposed. You make your reader much more comfortable and secure by at least beginning with material he or she knows or believes.

Division and classification

If you have a definition essay ("What is literature?"), or large or complex subject to discuss ("What is the goal of current US foreign policy?"), breaking it down into smaller topics will allow you to define subordinate domains and discuss them in detail. Doing so will also usually help you to find suitable examples. If you are writing a research paper, identify those areas early, so that you can organize your notes.

Comparing and contrasting

Compare and contrast essays require you to find similarities and differences between two or more things. A good approach to such topics is to sit down and make two lists. On one, put all the ways that you can think of that the two objects are the same. On the second, put all the things that you can think of where the two objects are different in important ways. Then decide whether you have more important similarities or differences, so you know which type of relationship you want to emphasize.

At this point you can choose to take either of two courses:

• You can discuss all the similarities together, followed by all the differences, or vice versa. Most often, you probably would want to start with the way the two things are similar, since it is easier for readers to grasp similarities, but you don’t have to, if you really want to emphasize differences, or if your audience understands or already is committed to the similarities). This is probably the easier strategy on the face of things, but is perhaps less capable of subtle distinctions.
• You can follow a subject-area format akin to the one we discussed under “Division and classification”. In area A, there are these similarities, and those differences; in area B, there are these similarities and those differences, and so on. This is probably a better strategy if the subject areas are very dissimilar from each other, and the points of comparison are subtle and nuanced.

Cause and effect

Essay subjects that require you to explain why something happened are mine-fields for the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy, so keep your eyes open for that. They should normally proceed from the known to the unknown:

• If you know the causes, and need to explore the effects (e.g., “What were the results of Roosevelt’s New Deal?”), start by identifying those causes, and then show how they led to certain particular effects.
• If you know the effects, and need to explore the causes (e.g., “What were the causes of the Great Depression?”), start by identifying particular effects, and then show how certain causes gave rise to them.

As with the compare and contrast essay, you have two choices for how to break things down. You can decide based on the situation and the nature of the material:

• You can discuss individual cause-effect relationships as a sequence of paired items. This is probably the best where those relationships are easily isolated and identified.
• You can discuss all the causes first, and then all the effects. This is probably best when there are many interlocking relationships producing complex consequences.

Whichever course you choose to take, make sure the reader can understand the rationale you’ve chosen to pursue.

Chronological organization

A narrative history essay is a special kind of cause-and-effect essay — effectively a story. Here, you are often best served by simply telling that story in a straightforward chronological order. If the sequence of events is complex, making a timeline may help you move through them chronologically. Once you commit yourself to such a story-based order, don’t jump around in time. It’s confusing. If you must treat events out of chronological order, warn your reader that you are doing so: “In order to see why this happened, it is necessary to look at some events which occurred earlier in the Baroque period...”, etc.

Problem solutions

Some essays ask you to present a solution to a problem. Here as elsewhere, move from the known to the unknown. The essay will normally fall into a statement of the problem, and then will enumerate one or more solutions to that problem, followed by an assessment of the solutions proposed and perhaps a statement of which is best for the given circumstances. Here, you want to be sure that you have clearly stated the problem first, so that your readers can see how each solution does or does not address all the points at issue. One standard form for business presentations is called an “STP” presentation: situation, target, proposal. In such a presentation, you are expected to identify the current situation, discuss where you want to arrive, and propose a way to get there.

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