When you first sit down to work on any writing project, you should first strive to create an outline of the content. Once you have an outline, you should use the outline in order to create a draft of your paper. The idea behind a draft is that it is a good mechanism for getting all of your ideas down on paper. If you feel that you must express everything perfectly, it is generally harder to write. On the other hand, if you know that you will be revising the paper, it is much, much easier to get your ideas down on paper!
In creating a draft, focus on the “big picture.” What is the essential message you want to convey? What are the key points you need to communicate in order to get that message across? As you develop your draft, think about how you can help the reader see the structure of your argument – the key points and the overall message. A good way to do this is to break your paper down into appropriately titled sections that help orient the reader.
As you begin to identify the information you need to include in each section this will help you identify paragraphs. Remember each paragraph in a paper is a series of sentences discussing a theme. The first sentence, the so-called “topic sentence” should identify the theme for that paragraph.