Organically Structured Essays

Learning Objective

  • Identify characteristics of organically structured essays

In high school, standardized tests like the SAT emphasize a rigid, formulaic approach to essay writing, such as the five-paragraph essay. The five-paragraph essay teaches essential skills like crafting a clear thesis, organizing cohesive paragraphs, supporting key points with evidence, and framing arguments with introductions and conclusions.

Students who excel at this format often assume college writing is just a more advanced version of the same. In college, however, you’ll build on these skills and move beyond the formula. Professors expect ambitious, arguable theses, nuanced arguments, and real-world evidence, all presented in an organically structured paper.

Link to Learning

This resource from the UNC Writing Center explains how college writing differs from writing in high school.

Five Paragraph Essay vs. Organic Essay

Let’s take a look at two figures to contrast the standard five-paragraph theme and the organic college paper.

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Figure 1. Figure 3.1 on the left shows the five-paragraph essay model. Figure 3.2 on the right shows the organic essay model.

Key Takeaway: The 5-paragraph Essay

The five-paragraph model follows a predictable structure. In this example, it looks like this:

  1. Introduction: Starts broad, narrows to a thesis at the end, which presents three reasons supporting the argument.
  2. Body paragraphs: Each one explains and justifies one of the three reasons.
  3. Conclusion: Restates the thesis and broadens out again.

This format is useful for organizing ideas and evidence, especially for developing writers. However, it’s often too rigid for college writing.

Key Takeaway: The Organic essay

The organic essay, as shown in the example, shows a more flexible and complex structure:

  • Thesis: Puts forward an arguable, surprising statement that compels readers to think, Why would the author argue this?
  • Body paragraphs: Build on one another, with each paragraph leading naturally to the next to develop the argument.
  • Conclusion: Answers the “So what?” question by explaining why the argument matters, providing a takeaway or call to action.

While mastering the five-paragraph format is a great foundation, college writing requires thorough analysis, non-obvious theses, and conclusions that go beyond repetition. Understanding that college writing will demand more than a five-paragraph essay is the first step. But then what? How do writers move beyond the formulas that are so familiar and well-practiced and begin to develop organic writing?

Try It

A good starting point is to think of writing as a process of discovery. Experienced writers don’t figure everything out before they write—they write to figure it out. They start with a tentative thesis and refine it as they draft, using the process to identify contradictions or gaps that prompt deeper thinking. As they gather more evidence and refine their ideas, the thesis evolves, leading to adjustments in the essay’s structure. This ongoing dialogue between the thesis and the body of the essay allows writers to further develop their argument. Writing organically means embracing this iterative process, allowing ideas to grow and change until the argument feels complete—or the deadline arrives.

Consider the following example.

EXAMPLE

Your political science professor asks you to write a paper on legislative redistricting. The professor spent a lot of time in class talking about motivations for redistricting, state redistricting laws, and Supreme Court redistricting cases. You decide to write about those three topics using the following thesis:

Legislative redistricting is a complicated process that involves motivations for redistricting, state redistricting laws, and Supreme Court decisions.

Then you write a section on motivations, a section on state laws, and a section on Supreme Court decisions.

On the first draft of the paper, the professor comments: “This paper tries to cover too much and has no point to make. What’s the original point you are trying to defend? You are just restating everything we said about redistricting in class. Keep thinking.”

You realize at this point that you have tried to write a five-paragraph essay, and it doesn’t work. You go back to the drawing board. Your professor said you needed an arguable, original point and to avoid just restating everything from class. You think about what interested you most in the discussion of redistricting and remember talking about the Goldilocks principle of getting the balance of voters “just right.” You also remember that the professor mentioned a current case before the Supreme Court involving your home state.

You research the case and decide to revise your thesis to argue that your state has not achieved the Goldilocks balance but has erred on the side of excessive racial representation in some districts. Rather than using the body paragraphs of the paper to give three reasons for why that overrepresentation occurred, you decide to first give background on the racial divisions within the state, followed by profiles of two districts where over-representation of one race has occurred.

After writing those sections, you read further about the current status of the Supreme Court case and find that one of the districts you discuss in the paper isn’t involved in the case and that the Court’s decision has still not been handed down. You decide to rewrite one of the profile sections to focus on the district in the Supreme Court case. Then you add a section overviewing the current court case. You use your conclusion to make a recommendation to the Supreme Court about how the case should be decided.

Once the conclusion is drafted, you go back to the introduction and tighten the thesis to focus just on the two districts covered in the court case. You also revise the initial background section to include specific mention of those two cases. Now you are writing like a college writer, using writing as a tool for thinking and developing the paper in response to your growing understanding.

An organically structured argument gives a paper natural momentum. Every sentence in the introduction sets up the thesis, and body paragraphs build logically, with each one leading seamlessly to the next. Transitions feel natural, and the conclusion expands on the argument, offering new insights and explaining its broader implications without breaking the flow of the analysis.

This smooth momentum may make the writing seem effortless, but that’s an illusion. Like accomplished athletes or artists, skilled writers make the difficult look easy. Even great writers rarely feel confident or produce perfect first drafts. Their polished work is the result of persistence and revision, not effortless inspiration.

Try It