1. State the thesis of your essay. If you do not know what a thesis is in relation to writing an essay, or if you do not know how to formulate a thesis, consult your handbook. The thesis should encapsulate your thoughts on the story or the particular act of the play.

2. Identify and provide the topic sentence of each of your paragraphs. You may only have one paragraph, but I think you should probably have more than one. Most students control their thoughts better when they write in paragraphs of about five or six sentences.

3. Identify and list the specific examples you provide in each paragraph to back up your general thesis and the topic sentence of the paragraph in which the example is found.

4. Consult your handbook and provide a definition for a simple sentence, for a compound sentence and for a complex sentence.

5. Look at each of your sentences in your essay. Identify from your own essay an example of a simple sentence, a compound sentence and a complex sentence. That means that you have to include in your essay at least one of each of these three different kinds of sentences.

6. Identify as appropriate the subject(s), verb(s) and objects(s) of your simple, compound and complex sentences used in question 5. Also, as appropriate, identify the independent and dependent (subordinate) clauses.