How in-depth do essay plans need to be?

I am a first year undergrad currently working on an essay proposal on the Arab Conquests that is due for this Monday coming. The first essay at uni, may I add.

When it comes to how much I know about what I need to do, we were told we needed the following:
- Title
- Plan
- Indicative bibliography
- Has to be done on 1 page

The biggest problem for me is the essay plan. I am extremely pedantic when it comes to this stuff and I don't know how much detail it has to be in. It's getting to a point that I am already over-analysing the sources I read and am adding for and against arguments for each section.

I recognise that this will take forever to do if this is the case, which is why I think I am overthinking it majorly.

That is why I am writing this because I just want some assurance from people who know more about this than me, and also maybe a few pointers to what I should do.

Thank you all in advance! :smile:

Reply 1

SineadH0312

Hiya, I myself was confused when I started at uni as to what consisted as a good essay plan and this may not be what you want to hear, but I've found that its different for everyone. For me personally, I found that creating subheadings of the points I wanted to make in my essay and then giving a brief description of what that paragraph would entail and the sources I could potentially use for it worked for me. However, for some others that I worked with, they found that using their sources as subheadings and then analysing them worked best for them. I think in your first year it is best to trial and error to see what sort of plan suits you best and perhaps speak with your course advisors and ask them how they might tackle a plan for the essay. I hope this helps a little