Be it in the field of academics or in the professional world, the potential of writing a good essay paves the path for a better career ahead. But writing an essay may not be as easy as it appears. Often people find certain difficulties to pen down a good essay.

Here are a few tips that could be followed to write a well-structured essay. The most important part of the essay is the body paragraph. Now body paragraph has a certain structure. 

• While choosing the topic, one should be careful that they can explain and describe the topic and put some relevant argument. It is important to jot down the supporting points before start writing the essay. 
• Body paragraph is the heart of the essay. After a concrete introductory paragraph, it is the body paragraph that carries the essay forward. Each body paragraph usually follows the same basic structure. 
• A paragraph usually has three major parts or section. These are points, illustration and explanation or elaboration. They are denoted by the acronym PIE. Now we will figure out what all to be included under each of these sections.

Point

It starts with the topic sentence that is responsible for describing the main point or the focus of the paragraph. One thing needs to be kept in mind that there should be one focus in each paragraph that is each paragraph will highlight one major point. But the point should be able to connect with the overall focus of the entire essay. This major point of a paragraph is also known as the controlling idea. Now the controlling idea may vary from paragraph to paragraph, yet they must be able to connect the dots that will represent the aspect of the overall essay.

Now body paragraphs kick off with the crux of the controlling idea or the topic sentence as mentioned above. Every essay has a clearly defined thesis statement, decided before we start writing the essay. The role of the topic sentence is to summarise the points in a way like that of the thesis statement. 

Once this is sorted, the remaining paragraph should support the topic sentence or the main point. 

Illustrations 

An illustration is the largest part of any body paragraph where the main point raised in the topic sentence is logically explained with evidence. Here we need to make an argument where we can use shreds of evidence from outside to prove our point. One thing should always be remembered. Every time we pick up anything from outside sources, it should be well referenced. Referencing properly is always an integral part of an essay writing. 

Thus, illustrations have various facts and figures supported by proper references. It may include published opinions or inference of other case studies or excerpts from other articles, journals and websites. It is important to do extensive research in order to write a concrete illustration. But illustrations should be authentic and rightly credited. It is better not to simply copy from sources outside else it may come under plagiarised content. 

Thus, it needs to be paraphrased in most of the cases. If an in-person interview is included in the illustration part, the name and other details of the interviewee should be clearly mentioned. 

Explanation 

This part should be able to clarify the readers the perspective of the essay that is depending upon this part, readers will interpret the illustrations of the previous part. It will also highlight the significance of the explanation. It is important to keep in mind that the body paragraph should not appear to the reader as an isolated piece. They should be in synchronization. There should be smooth transitions from one paragraph to the another that will establish the connection between them.  Transition holds the essence of the essay and controls the thought process of the readers.

Now, these three parts should be well synchronized that will help the reader move in the specific inference. To maintain synchronization, one needs to follow a few steps. The first and foremost is to do labelling of the paragraph. The labelling at the beginning of the paragraph helps the reader to get an idea that what will be told next.  This will be followed by the pieces of evidence you have gathered through your research. Evidence may include practical case studies or outcomes of previous studies done. 

Now once the evidence is well established it is important for an essay to have a clear concrete analysis of the evidence. It is during the analysis when you can put your own argument. Here you will establish the relationship between the evidence with the main idea by some discussions.

The penultimate part of the body paragraph is to make a proper transition to the next part of the essay. Better the transition is easier it will be for the readers to keep pace with the essay and understand the direction of flow of it. 

It is always better to use a couple of arguments for each of the respective points proposed by you. This helps to prove your idea in a quality manner. One of them should be strong enough that can’t be questioned and obviously indisputable. The other one can be a little less convincing but has to be well informative. But using more than five arguments is not very acceptable as it may make the text too lengthy and readers may lose the interest. 

This is the very basic structure one can follow at the beginning of writing essays. But often experienced researchers and academicians play with the structure and their structure of the essay may vary depending upon the content volume and the main idea of the text.