From Notes to Draft in Forty Minutes

The clock decides more than talent does

Most rhetorical analysis essays that score 3 instead of 5 were not written by weaker analysts. They were written by students who spent twenty minutes reading, discovered a thesis in paragraph three, and stopped mid-sentence when time was called. A fixed plan removes that risk.

Eight minutes of reading, four of planning

1. Read the context note twice; underline writer, audience, date, exigence.
2. Read the passage once at reading speed, making only the three marks: claim, turn, direct address.
3. Choose three moves, and for each write two words plus a line number.
4. Write the thesis out in full on the question sheet before you write anything in the booklet. A thesis you can see is a thesis the essay can be checked against.

The shape of a body paragraph

Four sentences, in this order, and no more than one quotation:

• Name the move in your own words — not the device name, the strategy.
• Quote three to eight words inside your own sentence.
• Explain the mechanism: what does this do to this audience, given what they came in believing?
• Connect forward: what does this move make possible for the next one?

That last sentence is where the difference between a 3 and a 4 usually sits, and it takes fifteen seconds to write once you are in the habit.

Triage in the last ten minutes

If you are behind, cut the third body paragraph down to one move and keep the conclusion. A conclusion that names what the writer's choices add up to is worth more than a fourth paragraph of the same kind of analysis — and an essay with no ending reads as an essay with no argument.