Source: salad bar, M.D. Anderson’s Focused on Health, Flickr
Once you select a topic, you are ready to jump into the next step: brainstorming the content for the body paragraphs of your essay. These paragraphs will contain the facts and details that will explain information or answer the question posed by your controlling idea to make your essay complete.
All of the details you choose to include in your body paragraphs should relate to the controlling or main idea. Sticking to the controlling idea and not including any extra or irrelevant information is important because wandering off topic when you write may confuse or frustrate your readers. While you might wander off topic in everyday conversation, your essay has to be more tightly organized because, unlike a conversation, readers can't see body language or facial expressions. They can only read your words on the page.
Source: bananas, rinse, Flickr
Think about the hamburger example again and consider your favorite toppings, such as lettuce, tomatoes, pickles, and onions. You may even add bacon, avocados, or jalapenos. Building the perfect burger means adding the toppings that you like and not adding any that wouldn’t go well with the rest. For example, you might love bananas, but you probably wouldn’t want them on your hamburger.
Similarly, all the details that make up your body paragraphs should relate to your controlling idea. A helpful way to generate relevant supporting details is to create a web or cluster diagram of possible details. The controlling idea goes into the center circle and the supporting ideas connect to it. Let’s practice with a topic from the chart in the previous section.
Source: ClusterImage, IPSI
You probably noticed that the two ideas in the box do not connect to the central idea, so they were not included in the cluster diagram. “Bathe and brush the dog regularly” and “Apply flea treatment regularly” are good practices for dog owners, but they don’t relate to the controlling idea—“How to Train Your Dog.” Remember, you don’t want to include any extra information or things that may be inconsistent with other parts of the text.
Now, you try it. This time, your controlling idea is “Ways to Help the Planet.” Drag and drop four supporting details that relate to this idea into the blue boxes below. One idea doesn’t fit the topic. See if you can guess which one.
The next step is to determine the best order for the details in your expository essay. You need to put the supporting details into a logical order in your paragraphs or into the order that makes the most sense and leads clearly from one idea to the next. A sequence chart may help you put the supporting details into the most logical order.
Click on the box below to reveal a second box. Continue clicking on each box that appears until you reach the fourth and final box. What you will see is a logical sequence for the procedural essay about how to train your dog.
Source: Gertie, Nedral, Flickr
Just as you know to place a slice of cheese directly on top of the meat when making a cheeseburger, you need to organize your supporting details in the most satisfying order.
For example, if you are writing a procedural essay about training a dog, you will need to give specific advice about the best order to follow. As shown in the exercise above, the owner should first decide what commands to work on, then associate each one with a hand signal, next reward the dog with treats, and finally reinforce the learning by repeating practice sessions each day. Voila! All of these steps add up to a well-trained dog.
Source: CamelBak
water bottle,
Kenyon, Wikimedia
Now, think about the details that support the topic “Ways to Help Save the Planet.” One idea for organizing this essay would be to think about going through a typical school day and writing what happens in a logical order from the time you wake up in the morning, as it relates to making good choices for the planet.
Using the school-day scenario as your way of organizing the details below, drag and drop the details into the best order in the sequence chart below. Note: You might have ordered the details differently if you had created the activity below. That's OK. The point is that you need to have a strategy for ordering the writing in your essay.
Source: Boy with dog, johnnyfixedgear,
Flickr
The essay is beginning to take shape. If you think about arranging your body paragraphs in the order of helpful actions that occur in your day, you may begin with turning the water off while brushing your teeth, preparing a water bottle for the day, packing a reusable lunch bag, and finally using both sides of the paper in your classes throughout the day.
As you create your finished expository essay, you will expand each of these supporting details into full paragraphs with additional informative details that relate back to your controlling idea. These specific details might come from your own knowledge as well as research so that your reader truly learns something helpful. Here is an example of how you might develop a specific detail on dog training into an entire paragraph:
When first training your dog, it’s a good idea to start with only a few simple commands. You can always add others after your dog has mastered the first few. Good commands to begin with are “sit,” “stay,” and “come.” Later, you might want to add “lie down,” “roll over,” and walking commands such as “heel.” "Sit," "stay," and "come" are the three most important skills a dog can learn. They are crucial building block for advanced training and for dog safety.
Now, it’s your turn to practice. Let’s use a detail from one of the sequence boxes in the expository essay topic “Ways to Help the Planet” and turn the detail into a full paragraph. Use your notes to write a sample paragraph for the supporting detail titled “Fill a reusable water bottle with tap water,” and then click to see a possible response. If you need to, refer to the sequence chart you completed in the interactive above. If you have access, you may also want to search the Internet for reasons to reuse water bottles. Sample Response:
One easy way to help the planet is to use a reusable water bottle. When you use Styrofoam cups or plastic water bottles, they often are not recycled and end up in landfills where they take thousands of years to decompose. Also, tap water quality is well regulated. If everyone were to make this one change, we could reduce waste in landfills tremendously.
As you continue to plan your final essay, you may want to expand your web or cluster chart to include additional details for each paragraph, such as the one below. If you recall, “Work on a few commands at a time” was the first supporting detail in the sequence chart for “How to Train Your Dog.”
Source: How to train your dog, IPSI
For each body paragraph, you will repeat the process of developing each detail that supports the controlling idea. Within each paragraph, you will again need to arrange the information in the most logical order, but remember, every detail must relate to the controlling idea.
Finally, click on the box below to reveal a logical sequence for the paragraph about working on a few commands at a time. Continue clicking on each box that appears until you reach the third and final box. This is one example of the sequential order for this essay. You might prefer to organize it in a slightly different way.
If you repeat this process of diagraming and sequencing every time you plan an expository essay, your final product will be unified, developed with relevant details, and well organized.