How did we get here? How did this happen? What made everything so that you are there reading this and we are here anticipating our next line?
In other words, what was the cause of all this???
When you are writing a cause and effect essay, these are the types of questions you might encounter.
It may seem like a lot to bite off, but if you take a step back and try to adopt a macro perspective before launching into the micro, you’ll have a better chance of making sense of it all.
In this article, we’ll examine the cause and effect essay and share our thoughts on how you can make yours great!
A cause and effect essay is an essay in which a claim is made regarding a cause that has a discernible impact, outcome or effect that can be traced back to the initial action.
The essay outlines or shows how the cause leads to the effect and supports the claim with research.
The essay can also be written by taking a subject—such as the Vietnam War—and identifying what caused it and what its effects were.
You’re essentially looking at a handful of actions and reactions and trying to make sense of them.
Establish a logical explanation for how the actions and reactions fit together—and you’ll have a solid essay ready to go!
The essay should begin with an introduction that includes a thesis statement.
A thesis statement is a sentence that describes the main point of your essay.
If you’re writing about the opioid crisis in the U.S., you would want to identify the cause and the effect of the crisis in your thesis statement.
The thesis statement should come at the end of the introductory paragraph.
The first part of the paragraph should lead into the thesis by giving some background information on the subject.
So if, for instance, your subject was the opioid epidemic, you might start off your intro by leading with a statistic, such as: Nearly 100 people die every day in the U.S. because of opioids (Rudd et al., 2016).
Remember: when you provide data that is not well known by the public, always be sure to cite the information.
To learn more about how to cite sources, check out our citation guides.
Your lead-in will be followed by more background info on the subject as you build your case for your thesis, which will close out your opening paragraph and give the reader clear and concise direction on where the paper is headed.
Let’s examine how it all works in some detail.
First let’s look at the parts of a cause and effect essay.
We’ve already described the Introduction for you.
So what follows?
What follows is the Body of the essay.
The Body is where you flesh out your essay by providing supporting evidence and arguments that help your paper to make its main point—i.e., your thesis.
Each paragraph of your Body should be devoted to a single topic that supports the main idea or intent of the essay.
In this case, it would either expand on the cause(s) of the subject or explain the effect(s) of the subject.
The minimum standard for the Body is three paragraphs.
However, if you are writing a more detailed paper, your Body will more than likely be much longer.
The Conclusion sums up the paper.
It comes at the end and should be one paragraph that concisely restates the main points or arguments of the essay and the main idea that the essay has intended to show or prove.
Step 1
The first step is to pick a great cause and effect essay topic.
A good topic for this kind of essay will be one that has a solid history to it or that is at the center of a string of events.
Wars are typically great topics because every war has a cause and an effect.
Look for subjects that have a chain of events to them—a starting point and an end point.
Social movements are good topics as well.
The Civil Rights Movement, or the Women’s Movement, or the Protestant Reformation, or the Bolshevik Revolution—all of these have causes and effects that can be researched and explained in a five paragraph essay.
Step 2
Once you identify your topic, begin to research it.
You can go to Wikipedia, for instance, to develop a basic understanding of the subject—but you will want to expand your research beyond Wikipedia in order to write a good essay.
Most instructors want to see that you have obtained material on your own from:
If you can gather sources from a wide variety of places, your essay will appear more authoritative than if you based all your research on a single source.
Be honest and ask questions about your subject—and then try to answer them by looking for answers in the sources available to you.
The more questions you ask, the more likely your research is to pay off.
Jot down notes so that you can connect the dots between causes and outcomes along the way.
Basically you should be able to construct an historical timeline of events that illustrates the cause and effect of your subject within a given period.
Step 3
Write as you go.
Don’t wait until you’ve “done all the research” to start writing.
Writing while you research helps you to put ideas together and process what you are uncovering about your topic.
Your writing doesn’t have to be perfect—it’s more about exercising your skills at this point.
The idea is to begin putting words on paper so that you can see what you have.
The more information you obtain, the harder it will be for you to actually start composing your essay once you have a mountain of data in front of you: you’re likely to feel overwhelmed.
Don’t worry if you uncover information later on that contradicts what you’ve already written!
That’s the point: you can always go back and revise.
In fact, revision makes your writing that much stronger.
Step 4
Compose your outline.
It might seem counter-intuitive to create an outline after you’ve already begun writing.
It’s actually a really helpful exercise, however, because it allows you to take what you have, organize it, and order it more effectively.
Consider your initial writing as a rough, rough draft.
It is a way for you to familiarize yourself with the subject.
As you wind down your research and answer all your questions, start thinking about what the best way to introduce your topic would be.
Come up with a hook—a piece of information that will surprise your reader and attract the reader’s interest—which you can use to start off your paper.
A startling figure will do the trick, or a piece of trivia about your subject that you can tie into your thesis will work.
Use this hook to start off your outline, and then identify your thesis—the main point which you will prove in your writing; after that, sketch out the direction that your Body will take: show how you prove your thesis by providing supporting details.
Round out the outline with a Conclusion and re-cap what you paper shows.
This will serve as a great road map for you as you go back to create your rough draft.
Your earlier rough, rough draft helps because it allows you to see what works and what doesn’t, what is essential to your main idea and what is not.
The rough, rough draft will allow you to construct a great outline—and that outline in turn will allow you to construct a great first draft.
Step 5
Write the rough (or first) draft by following the outline you just created.
If parts of your rough, rough draft work for the purposes of your outline, simply plug them in and go.
Once you finish composing your rough draft, go back and edit it to ensure that it has cohesion, consistency, flow, no grammar or logic mistakes, and stays focused on your main idea.
Be sure to make use of transition words and phrases where appropriate.
When you go to prepare your outline, keep this basic structure in mind:
I. Introduction
a. Hook
i. An interesting fact or anecdote that catches the reader’s attention
ii. A tidbit of information or stat that relates to the main idea of your paper
b. Background information
i. Fills in the blanks for your reader
ii. Provides context for the subject
C. Thesis
i. Your main idea
ii. Tell how your essay will explain the cause/effect of your subject
II. Body
a. 1st supporting paragraph
i. Examine the cause(s)
ii. Provide in-text citations as reference points to back up your claims
iii. Explain how the idea discussed in this paragraph relates to your main idea
iv. Close out the paragraph by transitioning to your next idea in the following paragraph
b. 2nd supporting paragraph
i. Examine the effect(s)
ii. Provide in-text citations as reference points to back up your claims
iii. Explain how the idea discussed in this paragraph relates to your main idea
iv. Close out the paragraph by transitioning to your next idea in the following paragraph
c. 3rd supporting paragraph
i. Examine cause(s) and effect(s) together, showing how there is logical progression between the two
ii. Show how the subject must be understood in this light and what is gained from looking at it this way
III. Conclusion
a. Re-cap the main points
b. Re-state the main idea
Some potential topics for a good cause and effect essay are, as has already been noted, usually rooted in some large social or geopolitical event.
Such events have a lot of moving parts and are great subjects for researchers looking to explain how x, y and z all fit together.
Let’s look at a few examples and see why they would make good topics for your essay
Again, we have a good list of other cause and effect essay topics you can feel free to peruse as well!
Social Movements and Geopolitical Events:
Modern Events:
The cause and effect essay is all about picking a good subject that has a lot of ins and outs.
Follow the threads to origins and follow them to outcomes.
Identify the main ideas that help explain the subject from this perspective and develop a solid outline that will allow you to steer the essay to completion.
The 5 main steps to writing a successful cause/effect essay are:
We’ve given you lots of great possible topics to try out on your own and even provided a few instructions on how to follow through on each step.
So when you go to write your essay, just remember to be as thorough as you can, provide substantial evidence to back up your claim, reference and cite your sources appropriately, and revise, revise, revise!
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