Graduated Organization

Here are two lists of movies produced by director Alfred Hitchcock.

1. Psycho
2. North By Northwest
3. Rebecca
4. Shadow of a Doubt
5. The Man Who Knew Too Much

1. North By Northwest
2. The Man Who Knew Too Much
3. Rebecca
4. Shadow of a Doubt
5. Psycho

Both lists have the same five movies on them, but are organized differently. It might be easy to assume one organizes them by release date (which is not the case), but what about the other? Either list could be entirely arbitrary, but that would leave them isolated when the goal of organization is to create unity and cohesion from one topic to another. It's even difficult to determine what relationship there is between the lists because some movies change position and others don't, while Psycho drops from the first to last.

Both lists are organized gradually, or by gradations: The first list is organized based on the aggregate user rating found on the Internet Movie Database (8.5, 8.4, 8.2, 8.0, 7.5), while the second list ranks them according to the AFI ranking of the lead actor appearing in the film (Cary Grant, 2; James Stewart 3; Laurence Olivier, 14; William Holden, 25; and Anthony Perkins who was not ranked).

Graduated Organization takes the elements in question and applies a criteria to them to create a relationship between the elements depending on the method applied. The methods are:

• General to Specific: Begins with basic, simple information easily understood and accepted by the audience, before moving to more complex information. Of course, the information addressed should be related to one another. In essence, this is developing ideas and making them more complex.
• Familiar to Unfamiliar: Even more reliant on audience, this focuses on how familiar, well known, or accepted the information is, and does not necessarily have anything to do with its complexity (a simple idea will likely be more familiar, but this will vary from case to case).
• Climactic: Considers the importance of the topics and addresses them accordingly: whatever is least important for your audience is addressed first, and each transition leads to a more significant topic until the most important is reached. By the time this climax is reached, its relationship to all other topics should be clear, as well as its importance.

While these seem simple enough, they can actually be complex because they tend to deal heavily with your audience's perception. While you should always consider your audience when writing, graduated methods, because they essentially rank your topics, need to take the audience into consideration: you want your audience to agree with your rankings, so you need to either frame your list in a way to be readily accepted by your audience, or adopt a perspective they will agree with. This is especially true because graduated methods are sometimes best used for introducing unfavorable or controversial issues gradually and by showing your audience what you're getting at isn't all that complex, nor difficult to believe or accept. Therefore, the theses in essays that employ graduated methods are more likely to be delayed.

What about placing the thesis early on? Doing so would invert the organization, changing them into Specific to General, Unfamiliar to Familiar, and Reverse Climactic. Technically, this is possible, and there may even be situations where a more direct, even shocking, approach might be useful. While there are instances where it is appropriate, and these methods can be inverted, doing so should be used with caution. It may be appealing to take this approach, but it should be handled with care because the most interesting parts of the essay are addressed early on.

The opposite problem is also a possibility: going too broad or vague. Each method ultimately points to a specific point, but gets there from some much less specific place. Because of this, it can be tempting to go too broad and general, in particular to fill space. The solution to this is audience: how far back does your audience need to be taken? The more familiar your audience is with your topic, the less distance you'll have to cover.

As for transitioning, it should identify the shift depending on the method. Climactic should indicate the move from less important to more important; General to Specific should indicate the information is becoming more specific; and familiar to unfamiliar, of course, will start with the more acceptable information. Without such transitions, the essay will appear disorganized because the relationship between the elements won't be clear, forcing the reader to wonder what the relationship is rather than focusing on the content of the essay, and all we really want to do in our writing is make sure our readers understand what we’re trying to say.