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The buzz word for this process is brainstorming - just letting fly with everything you think might be useful.

Do this for a couple of minutes in an exam, a couple of days for a university research essay and appropriate times in between for other essays!

2. Develop an Argument

When you feel you've jotted down sufficient relevant points, then comes the fun part. You organise these into a coherent, logical argument - in any essay, you are always trying to present a particular 'case' and to convince your reader that your case is worthy of consideration.

Think of the times in your 'real life' where you've had to argue a case - trying to convince mum and dad that yes, you are old enough to go into town with your friends / sleep outside in a tent / get your licence / go away for Schoolies week / fly to Europe for the holidays / get married etc! On each occasion, you marshalled all the arguments you thought would help you to get what you wanted.

Looking back, I'm sure you'll realise that the most successful 'campaigns' were those in which you had planned your points, the ones where you developed an argument in a logical way, where each part of your case arose naturally from the point before, where you had a counter-argument for everything mum and dad said, where you could use evidence to back up all your claims ('of course I'm responsible enough; remember how I fed the dog'... OK ... bad example!) and where your last word on the subject clinched the whole case!

It's exactly the same with an essay - so don't tell me you 'can't do essays' - you've being 'doing' them, with varying degrees of success, all your life - you just haven't realised it!

3. Order Your Information

Your page should be covered in relevant points which you are now going to organise. You'll already have a good idea of what case you're going to present and this will dictate the order in which you present your information.

Sometimes you'll organise your information chronologically - from earliest to latest, from first to last; other times you'll organise from the concrete to the abstract or from the simple to the complex or from the most important to least important - it all depends on the nature of the question and your answer.

The most important thing is to have some clearly defined order to the development of your argument. That means that you have to know where you're going with the essay - if you don't know, then there's no way your reader can follow.

4. Decide on Priorities

So, you know where you hope to go with your argument, now read through your plan and decide which of the points are the most important (which can be developed into paragraphs to advance your case) and which are just minor (to be used to back up your main points).

Mark the main points with an asterisk (or circle them).

Now decide which of these is the most important (or, a good starting point) and put a number 1 next to it; then number the rest of your main points.

5. Check for Relevance

Read through these and check that there is a logical progression of thought and argument; check that all your points are relevant to your main answer - if they're not, discard them.

Once you're happy with the order and content of your plan, you can begin to work on the essay.

6. Draft

You should have a draft of the opening paragraph - the introduction- as part of your plan, then a series of points (which will be developed into paragraphs in the body of your essay), some factual detail to use as evidence and support for each main point, and a draft of your conclusion.

Read through this outline, revising as necessary before you begin to write.

Note: you need to follow this process for every essay you write. Obviously, under exam conditions, you'll have less time to spend on the plan - but for a three hour exam, you should allow yourself 10 - 15 minutes to plan before you start writing the essay.

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