Organize your draft to appeal to your readers.

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Whether you have rough notes or a complete draft, making an outline of what you have written can help you organize the essay effectively for your audience. An evaluative essay contains as many as four basic parts:

  1. Presentation of the subject
  2. Judgment of the subject
  3. Presentation of reasons and support
  4. Consideration of readers’ objections and alternative judgments

These parts can be organized in various ways; two options follow:

If you are writing primarily for readers who disagree with your judgment, you could start by showing them what you think they have overlooked or misjudged about the subject. Then you could anticipate and refute their likely objections before presenting your own reasons.
  1. Presentation of the subject: Reframe subject in terms that support your judgment
  2. Thesis statement: State your judgment directly
  3. Refutation of alternative judgments
  4. First reason and support with refutation of objection
  5. Second reason and support (and so on)
  6. Conclusion: Reiterate why your judgment is preferable to the alternatives
 If you expect some readers to disagree with your judgment even though they share your standards, you could begin by restating these standards and then demonstrate how the subject fails to meet them. Then you could present your reasons and support before responding to alternative judgments.
  1. Presentation of the issue: Reassert shared criteria
  2. Thesis statement: State judgment that subject fails to meet shared criteria
  3. First reason and support showing how subject falls short
  4. Second reason and support (and so on)
  5. Refutation of alternative judgment
  6. Conclusion: Reassert judgment based on shared criteria

For more on outlining, see Chapter 11.

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There are, of course, many other ways to organize an evaluative essay, but these outlines should help you start planning your draft.

Never be a slave to an outline: As you draft, you may see ways to improve your original plan, and you should be ready to revise your outline, shift parts around, or drop or add parts as needed. If you use the outlining function of your word processing program, changing your outline will be simple, and you may be able to write the essay simply by expanding that outline.