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.

Sequential Organization

Consider the following sentence:

You woke up this morning, checked a message on your phone, and then went to the hospital for an appointment.

It's a basic narrative of largely unrelated events; now consider it slightly altered:

You were awakened by a message on your phone this morning informing you the time of your appointment had been moved up.

It's the same chain of events – wake up, message, hospital – but they are no longer unrelated. Each one depends on and impacts the other. Both of these represent different methods of Sequential organization (Chronological and Cause & Effect, respectively). Sequential methods of organization develop different relationships between the events in question and changes the way the narrative in question develops. The individual methods are:

• Chronological: The simplest method, and by extension, the weakest. All Chronological organization does is identify things happened in a certain order but does not identify any relationships outside of their sequence in time. The statement “I had cereal for breakfast and salad for lunch” is Chronological, but so is saying you ate green beans the day before an earthquake. Just because the event occur in sequence does not mean there is a relationship between them, or, in other words, correlation does not imply causation. While Chronological is a method of organization, there's almost always a better approach out there.
• Cause & Effect: Cause & Effect identifies the causal relationship between events. It fills in the gaps in Chronological by identifying and describing the relationship between the events. The events in question do not have to occur naturally, but can reflect the decisions we make based on our situations. Returning to the meals example, the statement “I had eggs for breakfast, and decided to have salad because it would have fewer carbs and calories,” now identifies a relationship between the two events, namely, nutritional content.
• Procedural: Rather than discuss what has happened or what will happen, Procedural gives direction and instruction: it says certain things have to be done in a specific order to reach a desired end. It therefore is not appropriate for events that naturally occur: Cause and Effect can occur naturally, regardless of our interaction. No matter what, your Ikea bed is not going to assemble itself.
• Problem to Solution: Problem to Solution seems straight forward: take time identifying and discussing a problem, and then follow it by discussing a possible solution. This simplicity, however, can be deceptive because it is easy to just divide an essay into two halves and call it good. When organizing with Problem to Solution, it is a good idea to consider what methods can be used in tandem to complement the broader Problem to Solution. A common approach is to use Cause & Effect in the Problem half, and Procedural in the Solution half.

As for Transitions, they need to reflect the fact the events are related in the way specified by the method. Merely saying “next”, “after”, or “and then” with nothing else only indicates two events occurred at different times and can suggest Cum Hoc or Post Hoc fallacies (i.e. suggesting a causal relationship where none exists). This is why Chronological alone can be weak: it doesn't naturally make these connections or relationships.

However, “and then” and “next” and “after” are not taboo: they just need to be used carefully, ideally in tandem with other words and phrases that complicate the meaning and identify the relationships in question. This means Sequential Organization is not just found in the order and transitions, but in the discussions of how the events are related: stepping outside of the events themselves to explain and explore just why the connections are logical and reasonable. A Cause & Effect piece should not just discuss the events, but should focus on the relationship, and you need more than a transition to do that. Similarly, a Procedural piece will need to not only specify the order, but make it clear why that order is important and what could happen in one were to deviate from it.

Comparative Organization

Comparative methods of organization will take an apple and an orange and will discuss how both of them are fruit, belonging to the same category, but they still have their distinct differences. In this regard, Comparative methods don't necessarily deal with superiority or inferiority, claims of judgment: merely that things share differences and similarities. This makes Comparative organization good for Definition level arguments and genres that aim for objectivity, like Literature Reviews.

The specific methods are as follows:

• Thematic: A thematic approach to organization can be harder than it appears. It involves developing or identifying a theme or concept related to your topic and using that theme to govern the organization. It isn't a matter of designating a unique theme for every paragraph, but having a strong theme to carry the reader from the beginning to the end. If you're writing something personal or open ended, it might be a good idea to experiment with Thematic. The more rigid the form, though, the less helpful it'll be.
• Classification: Classification can be considered Thematic on steroids. It involves identifying a common element and then grouping a lot of related things together based on this element. Classification is good to use in longer pieces because a longer piece will allow time to identify each point and explore it in detail before moving on to the next. A shorter piece attempting Classification will likely feature short, clipped paragraphs, introducing a lot of related ideas without much depth.
• Spatial: Spatial organization deals with where things lie in physical space. For example, if describing a classroom, you may see the desks, tables, chairs, walls, windows, etc., all at once, but you can't describe it all simultaneously: you have to pick one thing first and then move on to another. Because of this, Spatial organization rarely appears outside of creative writing (fiction and non-fiction) and discussions of visual arts: the shape and design of a sculpture, the composition of a painting or photograph, etc.
• Compare & Contrast: Compare & Contrast, whether Block or Point by Point, is similar to Classification as it groups related topics together, but it goes a step further than Classification by emphasizing more of the differences and why the similarities and differences are important. By emphasizing the differences and similarities and bringing together what Classification separates, we compare and contrast.

Transitions in Comparative methods can appear abrupt, even forced at times as you move from one point of discussion to another. On the other hand, trying to make every transition invisible can make the different point blur together to the point it gets hard to distinguish when you've switched from one to another.

The important thing to remember when transitioning with Comparative is forced transitions say is there's something else: words like “and” “another” “in addition” and “also” only signal there's something else for discussion. These words don't develop any deeper meaning between whatever it is they're combining. It is much better to rely on words that convey comparison, that indicate there is some kind of similarity or difference you want to emphasize.

For example, when you say, “on the other hand,” you indicate not just a change in topic, but a strong shift to a very different aspect of the same issue, whereas “and” or “also” suggest you could be moving to an entirely different topic: “I had popcorn and loved the movie” makes sense (however bland it is) by linking two virtually unrelated things. On the other hand, “I had popcorn; on the other hand, I loved the movie” makes no sense because there's nothing in this statement to link the topics of popcorn and the movie.

At its core, Comparative relies on the presence of similarities and differences. When we organize comparatively, we look for what is related just as much as where there are differences and we look for significance in these relations. Comparative, perhaps more than Sequential and Graduated, reminds us we use organization to create and govern meaning.