Mini-Course on Essay Structure

Garett Kincaid | Nov 15, 2025

The essay is an ambiguous and paradoxical species of writing; essays are logical and lyrical, literal and literary, personal and philosophical. Since the essay isn't any one thing, it may seem like an amoeba or a worm: invertebrate. Not so—spineless essays exist, but they are a chore to read. The best essays have a solid form, a skeleton beneath the flesh that affords all sorts of fluid movements. So, what is this the shape of this skeleton? What is the common structure that underlies this seemingly amorphous form of writing? (The next paragraph risks being too self-indulgent, but I have decided that the best way to make my point is to extend the essay-as-animal metaphor. Please indulge me for the next three sentences.)

It's better to think of the essay more like a genus than a species. There are different types of essays, each with variations in their anatomy, yet all great essays share some common elements of their skeletal structure. Here, we're going to focus on two species of the genus essay: the Argument-Led Essay and the Story-Led Essay.

What I have to offer, in this mini-course, is a multimedia deep dive into a framework for essay structure. You'll learn from text, images, videos, and exercises how to structure your essays. This framework is loose enough to allow for variety (or "gene flow," if you will—No! Stop. Let it go.), and this framework is rigid enough to give your gooey first draft a solid form. It will help you figure out:

• Which type of essay you're writing (Story-Led or Argument-Led)
• What content belongs in your essay
• And in what order that content should be.

We'll start only skin-deep, looking at the structural elements of arguments and stories. Then, you'll practice X-ray vision with two sample essays, so that you can start seeing the joints and bones of great prose. By the end, you'll have a template for reverse-outlining your essays that you can use to improve any essay draft.

Essays Contain Stories and Arguments

To master essay structure, you need to master both story structure and argument structure, because the best essays contain both stories and arguments. Story structure is about keeping your reader entertained, giving her a reason to keep reading; and argument structure is about persuading your reader, by providing evidence for your claims.

The best essays have both of these elements—story and argument—, but within each essay, one of the two must take priority. If your primary goal to entertain your reader, then you're writing a Story-Led Essay. If your primary goal to persuade your reader, then you're writing an Argument-Led Essay.

The type of essay you're writing determines its ideal structure. If your primary goal is to persuade (Argument-Led), then your essay ought to start with an explicit claim and end with some sort of conceptual takeaway (but not in the trite, cliché way of explicitly stating a moralized, lecture-like lesson—something more stylish and subtle). If your primary goal is to entertain (Story-Led), then your essay ought to open with a narrative promise, something that makes your reader wonder "How is this going to end?", and it ought to close with a payoff that delivers on the original promise (in a surprising yet inevitable way). In other words, the type of essay you're writing determines the "bookends" of its structure. The Argument-Led essay starts and ends with your argument, whereas the Story-Led essay starts and ends with your story.

We all know that stories have a beginning, middle, and end. Arguments do too: an introduction, body, and conclusion. But instead of using those nondescript labels, let's get specific about what belongs in those three parts of your story/argument structure.

*Hat-tip to Brandon Sanderson and his plot lectures, from which I stole the terms “promise, progress, and payoff”

Exercise: Analyze Two Short Sample Essays

CLICK HERE TO GET THE EXERCISE DOC

Before you continue, I encourage you to read these two essays and complete the corresponding exercises. (If you haven't yet, click the link above to create a copy of the exercise doc for yourself in Google Drive.)

• Read the two short essays in full.
• Then, once you’ve indulged in some top-tier American prose, answer the exercise questions to test your understanding of Story-Led and Argument-Led essays.

Finally, after you've completed the exercise doc, take a gander at my annotated copy of the sample essays, which is filled with color-coded highlights and comments about the structure of these two essays.

Argument-Led Structure Breakdown

Anne Lamott's "Shitty First Drafts" appears as an early chapter in Bird by Bird, her famous book on writing; this essay comes early in her book because it contains one of the most important messages that she wants to communicate to readers. Lamott's primary goal with this essay is to persuade aspiring writers to give themselves permission to write shitty first drafts. Here are the bookends of her essay's Argument-Led structure:

Thesis: "All good writers write shitty first drafts. This is how they end up with good second drafts and terrific third drafts." Takeaway: [Exercise from a hypnotist, to quiet the voices in your head that prevent you from writing a shitty first draft]

As evidence for her claim, she tells a story about how she used to write restaurant reviews for California magazine. In that anecdote, Lamott shows how shitty first drafts are essential to her process, and how they can actually help a writer get more done, faster. This anecdote, which accounts for most of the body of her essay, follows a three-part story structure. Here are the promise and payoff of that story:

Promise: "Even after I’d been doing this for years, panic would set in. . . . It’s over, I’d think, calmly. I’m not going to be able to get the magic to work this time. I’m ruined. I’m through. I’m toast." Payoff: ""It always turned out fine, sometimes even funny and weird and helpful. I’d go over it one more time and mail it in."

Lamott inserts this anecdote in the middle of her argument as her primary piece of evidence, to show how shitty first drafts are both essential and useful to even accomplished, professional writers (like herself). As you read, it's clear when she flips into "storytelling-mode," and that is purposeful. The story feels like a break from her argument, but by the end you realize how it serves as evidence her thesis. Argument-Led Essays benefit from having simpler structures, because that reduces the risk of confusion and makes it more likely that one's claims and evidence will be understood and will successfully persuade the reader. For most Argument-Led essays, the complexity ought to come from the ideas themselves, not from the structure, whereas with Story-Led essays, the structure may be more complex—with stories and arguments more interwoven—but the ideas simpler.

Reverse-outline of Lamott's "Shitty First Drafts" (Abridged)

Thesis: "All good writers write shitty first drafts. This is how they end up with good second drafts and terrific third drafts."

Evidence

• Promise: "Even after I’d been doing this for years, panic would set in. . . . It’s over, I’d think, calmly. I’m not going to be able to get the magic to work this time. I’m ruined. I’m through. I’m toast."
• Payoff: "It always turned out fine, sometimes even funny and weird and helpful. I’d go over it one more time and mail it in."

Takeaway: [Exercise from a hypnotist, to quiet the voices in your head that prevent you from writing a shitty first draft]

Story-Led Structure Breakdown

All her life, Joan Didion has suffered from migraine, and she has come to think that no one really understands what it's like for one to suffer from migraine. So, she writes an essay about her experience. Here are the bookends of her essay's Story-Led structure:

Promise: "I fought migraine then, ignored the warnings it sent, went to school and later to work in spite of it, . . . and cursed my imagination." Payoff: "Now that I am wise in its ways, I no longer fight it. I lie down and let it happen."

In the middle of the essay, as she is progressing through her own personal narrative, she's also making an argument about migraine broadly, which argument addresses the social perception of the disease and dispels common misunderstandings. Here are the thesis and takeaway of her argument:

Thesis: "Migraine is something more than the fancy of a neurotic imagination." Takeaway: "We do not escape heredity."

Reading this essay, you learn about Didion's personal experience and are persuaded to see migraine (and really any hereditary disease) differently. Didion weaves her argument into her story to great effect. Here's what it looks like, at a high level, when you put her story and argument together.

Reverse-outline of Didion's "In Bed" (Abridged)

Promise: "I fought migraine then, ignored the warnings it sent, went to school and later to work in spite of it, . . . and cursed my imagination."

Progress

• Thesis: "Migraine is something more than the fancy of a neurotic imagination."
• Takeaway: "We do not escape heredity."

Payoff: "Now that I am wise in its ways, I no longer fight it. I lie down and let it happen."

Lastly, the Foremost: Every Essay Needs a Hook

I've saved the foremost part of the essay for last. On top of everything we've talked about with arguments and stories, every essay also needs a hook. Your hook is the first sentence, the first paragraph, or the first several paragraphs of your essay. Your hook gets your reader invested by stirring up questions that need answers.

Here are the opening lines of Didion's "In Bed." They draw you in and all but guarantee that you'll keep reading.

Three, four, sometimes five times a month, I spend the day in bed with a migraine headache, insensible to the world around me. Almost every day of every month, between these attacks, I feel the sudden irrational irritation and the flush of blood into the cerebral arteries which tell me that migraine is on the way, and I take certain drugs to avert its arrival. If I did not take the drugs, I would be able to function perhaps one day in four. The physiological error called migraine is, in brief, central to the given of my life.

And here is the first line of Lamott's "Shitty First Drafts," which is a spiky, provocative, memorable claim that happens to also be her thesis:

All good writers write shitty first drafts.

In Story-Led essays, the hook is sometimes the promise, and in Argument-Led essays, the hook is sometimes the thesis (as is the case with "Shitty First Drafts"). But more often than not, the hook is something separate from the main material of the essay (yet related) that piques the reader's interest and pulls her into the "essay proper."

If you can manage it, your first lines ought to be the most inventive and distinctive of your essay. Your hook can be anything; don't limit your creativity. It can be related to your argument or to your story or to neither. Your hook ought to be whatever words are most likely to make your reader keep reading. (To be clear, I"m not advocating for click-bait here. Your hook must also be topically relevant—not just salacious or juicy.) Most simply, the hook provides your reader with a sense for what they're about to read, and then she decides whether to continue.

Reverse-Outlining: Applying This Framework to Your Essays

Once you have a handle on the elements of a well-structured story and argument within an essay, you can apply this framework to your own drafts, as a guide for your revision process. The best use of this essay-structure framework is as a template for reverse-outlining.

A "reverse-outline" is an outline that you create after you have already written a full draft (as opposed to a straight-up outline, which you would create in advance of writing a draft). Reverse-outlining is the best way to audit your draft's structure.

Since developing this essay-structure framework, it has become an essential part of my process to do a reverse-outline using this template. It helps reveal what content is missing from my essays, which parts are irrelevant, and how all the relevant material should be sequenced. Once you have generated the raw material for your essay and you have a shitty first draft, turn on your X-ray vision and search for the three elements of both story and argument.

First, ask yourself: Is my primary goal to entertain or to persuade my reader? Then, depending on which type of essay you're writing, answer the corresponding question below:

• Argument-Led Essay: What story will I use as evidence for my argument?
• Story-Led Essay: What is the abstract idea that is exemplified by my story?

Once you know the answer, you're ready to create a full reverse-outline for your essay. Use the templates below to do exactly that.

A reverse-outline of your current draft is an outline for your next draft. So, don't just describe what's already on the page. As you start filling in the essay-structure template, ask yourself: What's missing? What should I cut? Where does this belong, relative to that? Look beyond what your current draft is, and use the practice of reverse-outlining to envision how your essay ought to be.

Below, you'll find the complete reverse-outlining templates for two species of the genus essay—Argument-Led and Story-Led—as well as complete reverse-outlines of the two sample essays, so that you get a feel for how a full reverse-outline can look. Copy and paste these templates, or (even better for committing these frameworks to memory) write/type them up yourself.

If you can analyze your current draft to this level of detail, by completing a reverse-outline, you will come away with a clear revision plan: a path for you to walk from your current draft to your final draft. And your reader will thank you.

Happy revising!

Garrett Kincaid Writer, Editor, & Writing Coach

Reverse-Outline Templates

Argument-Led Essay

**Hook**: 

**Thesis**: 

**Evidence**

- **Promise**: 
- 
- **Payoff**: 

**Takeaway**: 

Story-Led Essay

**Hook**: 

**Promise**: 

**Progress**

- **Thesis**: 
- 
- **Takeaway**: 

**Payoff**: 

Reverse-Outlines of the Two Sample Essays