Start with a Scratch Outline and Thesis. Yun Yung Choi’s “Invisible Women” follows a clear plan based on a brief scratch outline that simply lists the effects of the change:

Intro — Personal anecdote

Comparison and contrast of status of women before and after Confucianism

Effects of Confucianism on women

Conclusion: Impact still evident in Korea today but some hints of change

The paper makes its point: it identifies Confucianism as the reason for the status of Korean women and details four specific effects of Confucianism on women in Korean society. And it shows that cause and effect are closely related: Confucianism is the cause of the change in the status of Korean women, and Confucianism has had specific effects on Korean women.

Organize to Show Causes and Effects to Your Audience. Your paper’s core — showing how the situation came about (the causes), what followed as a result (the effects), or both — likely will follow one of these patterns:

Try planning by grouping causes and effects, then classifying them as major or minor. If you are writing about why more students accumulate credit-card debt now than a generation ago, you might list the following:

On reflection you might decide that available credit, credit limits, and interest rates are determined by the credit card industry, government regulation, and current economic conditions. These factors certainly affect students, but you are more interested in causes and effects that individual students might be able to influence in order to minimize their debt. You consider whether your own growing debt is due to too little income or too many expenses. You could then organize the causes from least to most important, giving the major one more space and the final place. When your plan seems logical, discuss it or share a draft with a classmate, a friend, or your instructor. Ask whether your organization will make sense to someone else.

Introduce the Situation. Begin your draft by describing the situation you want to explain in no more than two or three paragraphs. Tell readers your task — explaining causes, effects, or both. Instead of doing this in a flat, mechanical fashion (“Now I am going to explain the causes”), announce your task casually, as if you were talking to someone: “At first, I didn’t realize that keeping six pet cheetahs in our backyard would bother the neighbors.” Or tantalize your readers as one writer did in a paper about her father’s sudden move to a Trappist monastery: “The real reason for Father’s decision didn’t become clear to me for a long while.”

Work in Your Evidence. Some writers want to rough out a cause-and-effect draft, positioning all the major points first and then circling back to pull in supporting explanations and details. Others want to plunge deeply into each section — stating the main point, elaborating, and working in the evidence all at once. Tables, charts, and graphs can often consolidate information that substantiates or illustrates causes or effects. Place any graphics near the related text discussion, supporting but not duplicating it.