Essay Structure Planner
Build your argument outline before writing. PEEL paragraph cards for every section — then export or print.
1
Setup›2
Thesis›3
Paragraphs›4
ExportBuild your argument outline before writing. PEEL paragraph cards for every section — then export or print.
Most weak essays are not badly written. They are badly structured — and structure is decided before the first sentence, whether or not you decide it deliberately. An essay drafted straight into prose tends to arrange itself around topics rather than claims, which is why marker feedback so often reads “descriptive” or “lacks argument” on work that is perfectly literate.
A plan forces the argument to exist before the prose does. Once each paragraph is committed to advancing one specific sub-claim, the writing becomes a matter of execution rather than discovery, and the essay stops drifting.
Point. The sub-claim this paragraph proves. It should be a sentence you could disagree with. “Industrialisation changed family structure” is a topic; “industrialisation weakened the extended family before it strengthened the nuclear one” is a point.
Evidence. The specific source, quotation or data you will cite. Name it at the planning stage. A card that says “find a source” is a card you will fill badly at 2am.
Explanation. What the evidence proves, and why that supports the point. This is where marks are won and where rushed essays are thinnest — evidence presented without analysis reads as assertion.
Link. How this paragraph connects back to the thesis or forward to the next. Links are what make a sequence of paragraphs into an argument.
Roughly one body paragraph per 250 words of target length is a reliable starting point: three or four for a 1,000-word essay, five to seven for 2,000, eight to ten for 3,000. The planner works this out from the word count you enter, and the word count planner breaks the same total down section by section.
Treat the number as a constraint rather than a target. If you have nine distinct claims for a 2,000-word essay, you do not have nine paragraphs — you have too many claims, and the argument needs narrowing before you write.