Why You Need a Point Plan in Paper 2
A point plan is a pre-writing roadmap that sequences your Paper 2 paragraphs around shared themes or techniques, preventing drift into plot summary or an essay that favours one work over the other.
Paper 2 demands a comparative essay on two works you've studied, written in 1 hour 45 minutes with no notes. Under that pressure, it's tempting to write everything you know about Work A, then everything you know about Work B — but that's not comparison, it's two summaries stapled together. A point plan solves this before you write a single sentence of the essay itself.
A point plan is a short list — usually 3 paragraphs' worth — of what each body paragraph will argue, expressed as a shared idea plus how each text handles it. You build it by organising around one of three anchors:
- Theme or motif shared across both works (e.g., identity, power, obsession)
- Technique comparison — the same literary device used differently (e.g., soliloquy vs. monologue)
- Character or plot function — a structural role each text fills differently (e.g., tragedy vs. irony)
Each paragraph in the plan should reference both texts, not just one, so the plan itself forces balance from the outset.