Establish the inquiry and the argument

Your essay is a formal literary investigation of 1,200–1,500 words into one work studied in class. Use the introduction to establish what you are investigating and offer an initial answer. Simply announcing a theme isn't enough. Choose a work you are neither using for your individual oral nor reserving for Paper 2.

State your line of inquiry explicitly at the beginning of the essay. Identify the work by text-type and author, and include its title if it is a single extended text. You may frame the line of inquiry as a question. Setting these details out separately before the opening paragraph makes them unmistakable, though the guide does not require this layout.

This sheet uses the following running example:

• Line of inquiry: How does Mary Shelley use embedded narratives to complicate judgments of responsibility in Frankenstein?
• Work: Novel, Mary Shelley, Frankenstein (1818).

The inquiry sets out the problem you will explore; the thesis gives the argument you develop in response. For this example, you might argue that Shelley allows competing speakers to justify themselves. Responsibility then becomes something readers must judge, rather than something a single narrator can settle.

Give the introduction a clear progression

Begin with the work and relevant focus, move to the interpretive problem, then introduce your thesis and the direction of your argument. The figure maps out this progression. Use it to plan, not as a compulsory sentence formula.

Include context only where it helps explain the inquiry. A general account of the author's life or historical period takes up space without necessarily establishing an argument. Listing techniques won't do that work either: you still need to explain how those choices shape meaning.

For the Shelley inquiry, establish the relationship between narrative form and moral judgment. There's no need to recount how Victor creates the creature.

Model opening

In Mary Shelley's novel Frankenstein (1818), speakers recount their suffering while also trying to influence judgment. Walton's letters contain Victor's retrospective narrative; within Victor's narrative sits the creature's account of his experience. Responsibility becomes difficult to assign. Each speaker seeks sympathy while describing choices that demand scrutiny. Shelley lets the creature challenge Victor's account, but does not make his suffering an excuse for violence. As the novel moves between competing explanations and finally returns to Walton's perspective, it asks readers to distinguish understanding a speaker from accepting his justification.

The opening proposes a reading and identifies the broad formal choices that will sustain it. There is still work to do in the body: you must demonstrate how sympathy and scrutiny operate together.

Plan provisionally

Expect your introduction to change as your reading develops. You can use the learner portfolio to preserve earlier questions and passage notes, along with changes in your thinking. Choose the work and inquiry independently, in consultation with your teacher. The opening should express your own developing interpretation.

Draft the line of inquiry and work identification first. Follow these with a provisional thesis, then write an opening paragraph in which every sentence helps establish the literary problem or your response to it.

Organize by developing claims

Build the body around an argument about the work. Don't let it become a collection of observations about isolated passages. Each paragraph needs a claim that moves the inquiry forward, with evidence and analysis that show why the claim is convincing.

The guide distinguishes this essay from a commentary confined to a small extract. Plan close analysis of selected moments, but also discuss broader choices: narrative arrangement, characterization, recurring patterns, structural contrasts or the ending. You don't need to cover every part of the work. Your selection does, however, need to show that you understand more than one convenient passage.

For a collection of poems, stories or other short literary texts, plan to discuss more than one text. You may also explore texts by the same author that were not taught, provided at least one of the texts you discuss was studied in class.

Build a sequence, not a list

For the Frankenstein inquiry, you could build the argument through these stages:

These are stages of reasoning, not a prescribed paragraph count. If the evidence needs sustained attention, one stage may take more than one paragraph.

Connect evidence to meaning

A useful paragraph sequence is Claim → Evidence → Authorial choice → Effect and meaning → Link to inquiry. The figure shows how these moves relate to one another. In fluent writing, some will overlap within a sentence.

You can use a brief quotation as evidence, or refer precisely to an event, structural feature or pattern. Introduce the evidence as part of your reasoning, then examine what the writer makes it do. Naming an embedded narrative only identifies it. Explaining how it redistributes sympathy turns that identification into analysis; judging why the redistribution matters to the novel's treatment of responsibility adds evaluation.

Model paragraph movement

The creature's embedded narrative challenges Victor's ability to define him solely through his appearance and violence. When the creature recounts his concealed observation of the De Lacey household, Shelley gives sustained narrative space to his acquisition of language and his desire for companionship. His first-person account makes his exclusion intelligible through experiences Victor has not witnessed. Readers encounter a perspective that exposes the limits of Victor's account. Yet the creature is still a speaker presenting his own case. Access to his suffering does not require readers to accept every explanation he offers. Shelley makes sympathy a necessary part of judgment without letting it become automatic acquittal.

The paragraph draws on a precise episode without retelling it. It stays focused on how Shelley allocates narrative space and what that choice implies. In an actual essay, support the discussion with detailed references to the primary text and accurate citations from the edition you use.

Make development visible

Use a transition to show how claims relate. Moving from the creature's exclusion to his violence, for example, calls for a qualification: his account explains how resentment forms, but it also reveals decisions for which he remains answerable. That move develops the argument rather than simply adding another example.

Secondary criticism is optional. If you use it, let it help you develop or test your interpretation rather than replace your analysis of the work. Acknowledge borrowed ideas and quotations. Keep a record of the sources you consult.

The four criteria reward related but distinct achievements. A concerns knowledge, interpretation and supporting references; B concerns analysis and evaluation of authorial choices. C concerns focus, organization, development and integration of examples, while D concerns the clarity, precision and accuracy of the writing. Each carries 5 marks, giving 20 marks overall. Your detailed plan should therefore record both the evidence and what you will argue through it.

Build your body plan as a sequence of claims. Under each claim, note the evidence and the authorial choice you will examine, followed by the conclusion your analysis supports. Then check that each paragraph adds something the previous one has not established.

Answer with the argument now established

Give the answer your analysis has earned. Return to the line of inquiry without simply repeating the introduction. Your opening proposed an interpretation. Now that the body has tested and developed it, the conclusion can explain its significance more precisely.

Show how the main claims work together rather than repeating a sentence about each paragraph. In the Shelley example, connect competing narratives with sympathy and responsibility. Don't just list Victor, the creature and Walton again.

Synthesize, then draw out the implication

One useful progression is Answer to the inquiry → Synthesis of findings → Literary implication. The figure shows how synthesis differs from a paragraph-by-paragraph recap.

Keep the final implication grounded in the work. Here, the analysis supports a distinction between understanding suffering and excusing violence. It doesn't support claims about what every reader will feel or what all literature teaches.

You may briefly return to evidence you've already analysed. Don't introduce a substantial new passage, technique or critical source that needs an explanation of its own. If an observation changes the argument, develop it in the body first.

Model conclusion

Shelley's embedded narratives complicate responsibility: each central account is open to scrutiny, and no speaker receives final authority. The creature's account of exclusion challenges Victor's explanations. Yet it also reveals choices that suffering cannot fully excuse. From outside their central conflict, Walton offers a further perspective on the relationship between ambition and obligation. These narrative relationships make moral judgment depend on attending to competing explanations while recognizing their limits. The novel's formal complexity does not abolish responsibility; it makes assigning it more demanding.

The conclusion answers the inquiry by bringing the body's claims together. Its final distinction—complicated judgment is not the same as absent responsibility—states what the argument has established about the novel.

Use the ending to check the plan

Compare the answer in your conclusion with the thesis in your introduction. If they differ, your thinking may have developed. The essay still needs to present a coherent argument, so revise the opening or the sequence of body claims where necessary.

Keep the whole essay within 1,200–1,500 words. The guide sets no fixed length for the conclusion. Give the body enough space for sustained analysis and the ending enough space to make your final answer clear.

Your teacher may comment or ask questions on the first complete draft, but may not edit or rewrite it. The next version you submit to the teacher must be the final one. Use planning and drafting to resolve gaps in the argument yourself.

Write a provisional conclusion from your body plan. Check that you've supported every part of its answer. Then revise the introduction and paragraph sequence so that the essay develops towards that answer.