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Daniel Kies Department of English College of DuPage |
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| Composition
English 1101 |
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The Body of the Essay
The body of the essay is, of course, where all the really work is done. Having gained the readers' attention in the introduction, the writer must now hold their attention by offering substantial, interesting, compelling ideas that support, illustrate, exemplify, or expand the thesis of the essay.
Schematically, the writing process can be captured in a flow chart that might look something like this:
Current work:
Days remaining this term:
Notes:
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And it is in those middle paragraphs above (the body) that the hard work of reading, research, drafting, and revising mostly rests. Some days I feel certain that the person who coined the cliché "The devil is in the details" must have been a writer.
Regardless of topic, the bodies of all essays share two common features: a plan of organization and a means of moving between different levels of abstraction — shifting from general ideas to specific ideas and back again. Indeed, journalists sometimes call this second point the "roller-coaster effect."
Furthermore, within each paragraph of the flow chart above, the ideas within each paragraph vary by different levels of abstraction, as in the diagram below.
Francis Bacon (1561-1626) wrote "Reading maketh a full man, conference a ready man, and writing an exact man." I have feeling that by writing he meant the detailed work that goes into preparing the body of the essay. For, as many writers have noted, it is often the process of writing (the working out of the ideas in the body) that clarifies one's thoughts on any subject.
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