Dale Carnegie: ‘Tell the audience what you’re going to say, say it; then tell them what you’ve said.’ – Part Two

In my last blog I went through how I write an introduction for my essay. Essentially, it is a roadmap. It sets out what you are going to talk about in your essays.

In this blog, I am going to move on to the main body of the essay.

Paragraph 2: The law

In law, you are commenting on ‘the law’. Your essay will usually be talking about whether the law is satisfactory and whether it requires reform. Therefore, in paragraph 2, I outline the law. However, don’t get me mistaken, the law encompasses a variety of things and it is likely your marker doesn’t want to know everything about the law. You need to write about the area of the law that is relevant. In the essay title I’m arguing the context in which the human transplant act was created is important so I would write a few sentences on that.

‘The law on organ donation is regulated by The Human Tissue Act (HTA) 2004 which was created after the Alder Hey and Bristol Infirmary Scandal. Doctors removed children’s body parts after they had died, causing controversy because parents believed small tissues were being kept but hospitals were retaining large organs. The HTA covers the use and storage of human materials, including both, before and after death. For this essay I will focus on S34 which criminalises commercial dealings of organs. However, it is important to note, consent is a fundamental principle of the act.’

The HTA is a large piece of legislation which is why I have specifically pointed out that I will focus on s34 of the act. I talk about why the law was introduced – this is important because it provides context.

Paragraph 3/4/5/6

I find using headings are extremely helpful to create a roadmap. You will remember in my introduction I pointed out what arguments I will be making. Using this, I created headings for each paragraph.

Paragraph 3: Autonomy

Paragraph 4: Exploitation

Paragraph 5: Commercialisation of human body

Paragraph 6: Erin and Harris’s proposal for a regulated market

This is helpful for you, when you are writing the essay, and the reader because they know what they are going to read.

Within these paragraphs:

For my main arguments I follow a simple structure: PEE

P = Point

E = Evidence

E = Explanation

For a paragraph of autonomy PEE may look something like this:

P =One policy argument for not having a legal market for organs is that it will exploit the weak.

E = MacKellar (2014) found that 7000 organs are traded illegally each year (and then go on to provide any further evidence you think is relevant)

E = This is problematic because poor people might sell their organs to get themselves out of a dire situation which makes it seem as if rich lives are more valuable than the poor.

Although this is a very simple outline, you probably will have to flesh it out a bit more. This just shows you an idea of what you can write.

You might decide to add a counter argument and then disprove that if it is relating to the same topic.

In my next blog, I will write about the conclusion of an essay and then proofreading before you submit it.