Develop Your Ideas More Fully for Stronger Essays

Previously, I've talked about improving your writing by staying on topic and using transitions. These tips can strengthen almost any paper. They still won't help you much, unfortunately, if the actual content of your essays is thin or underdeveloped. To produce essays that earn As, you must make sure your essay is well supported and well developed. Learn how after the jump.

First, let's step back and look at what makes an essay "thin" or "underdeveloped," two complaints I hear often from teachers. An essay that's thin often lacks support for the ideas in it. It may contain too much opinion or too little fact. (It may also have too few ideas, but that's a topic for another post.) At the college level, most--if not all--of your writing assignments will require some research or outside reading, and your essays should reflect that. Outside evidence alone won't work either, though. Underdeveloped papers fail to clearly explain how the evidence supports the writers' claims or don't put the evidence in enough context. To write a strong, well-developed essay, you need to strike a balance between your ideas and the outside evidence.

What's the key to finding and maintaining that balance? It's easier than you might think. For many of my tutoring students, I recommend a basic format I call "IED": Introduction, Evidence, Discussion. Use IED for each piece of evidence you choose to present.

I: Introduce each idea clearly. In a well-organized paper, you will already have done so through the use of clear topic sentences. Let's say I'm writing a paper that argues in favor of mandatory recess periods in schools. To introduce the idea that recess is important for children's physical fitness, I might begin a paragraph with something like this: "Mandatory recess periods help keep kids healthy."

E: Provide the evidence to support your idea. For my recess example, the paragraph might now read: "Mandatory recess periods help keep kids healthy. In a 2009 study, researchers at the American Foundation for Childhood Health (AMCH) found that children who attend schools with mandatory recess periods are 40% less likely to be obese than children attending schools without mandatory recess periods." (Note: I made that up.)

D: Discuss how the evidence you just presented supports your idea and your main thesis. Why is this fact important? What should the reader conclude?

Let's look at my sample paragraph, to which I've added discussion of my evidence.

Mandatory recess periods help keep kids healthy. In a 2009 study, researchers at the American Foundation for Childhood Health (AMCH) found that children who attended schools with mandatory recess periods were 40% less likely to become obese than children attending schools without mandatory recess periods. With rising childhood obesity rates threatening the health of children and the future public health of the nation, a preventative measure as simple and easily implemented as mandatory recess periods should not be overlooked or eliminated. 

See how that works? I stated my point, presented my evidence, and then explained exactly what I want it to mean to the reader.

You may be wondering how much extra work or how many extra pages the IED system will end up adding to your paper. The answer? Not much. Another benefit of IED is that it will force you to choose the evidence you use more judiciously. A paper crammed full of facts, numbers, quotes, and statistics can overwhelm or bore readers. When you use IED, you'll find yourself becoming more selective about your research. Only choose the evidence for which you can give solid analysis, and don't repeat yourself.

Try IED the next time you write a paper. If you follow this simple format, you'll find yourself producing stronger work with little extra effort.