Writing a college essay is like building a house on a desert island. You need 5 people to do the work.

1. An inventory clerk: someone to make a list of everything useful on the island.
2. A madman: someone who will think of all the uses that could be made of the items found on the island.
3. An architect: someone who will sort through the madman’s ideas, discard the impractical ones and draw up a plan.
4. A carpenter: someone who can take the architect’s plan and build.
5. A judge: someone who looks at the finished product, finds flaws and directs the appropriate workman to fix them.

Rules of Use:

• The workmen must work in the order given above.
• No two workmen can be working at the same time.
• Any workman can ask preceding workers to come back and do more labor

Application to Writing

1. Read the material on which you will write and collect notes on relevant areas.
2. Look for all the ways these facts combine or contrast with each other, all the varied patterns they can form.
3. Discarding the ideas that don’t seem defendable or that are outside the focus you select, draw up an outline of your points, always being sure to have general ideas and supportive detail connected.
4. Write the essay.
5. Proofread, edit, and re-write the essay.