How do I write the rest of a five-paragraph essay when I can't think of anything to write after the introduction?

I can't advise you on what else to put in your five-paragraph essay without seeing your introduction, but it sounds to me like you are not sure what a five-paragraph essay actually consists of, so I will give you an outline and you should be able to use it to plan and write an excellent five-paragraph essay on Romeo and Juliet or any other literature you read in the future. 

First, the five-paragraph essay has the following basic structure:

1. Introduction


2. First P.E.E. paragraph


3. Second P.E.E. paragraph


4. Third P.E.E. paragraph


5. Conclusion

These are your five paragraphs. So what do you put in each of the five paragraphs exactly?

Let's look at the above outline with some specific details added in:

Paragraph 1: Introduction

• Hook (make the reader want to read your essay)


• Background information - Title, author, and one-to-two sentence summary of the work


• Thesis statement: answers the question with three points

Paragraph 2: First P.E.E. paragraph

• Point 1 (from your thesis)


• Example/evidence (to support the point)


• Explanation (of how your example or evidence proves your point)


• Link (to the next paragraph, or back to the question. Create flow.)

Paragraph 3: Second P.E.E. paragraph

• Point 2 (from your thesis)


• Example/evidence (to support the point)


• Explanation (of how your example or evidence proves your point)


• Link (to the next paragraph, or back to the question. Create flow.)

Paragraph 4: Third P.E.E. paragraph

• Point 3 (from your thesis)


• Example/evidence (to support the point)


• Explanation (of how your example or evidence proves your point)


• Link (to the next paragraph, or back to the question. Create flow.)

Paragraph 5: Conclusion

• Restate thesis in different words / summarize three main points


• Show the essay is finished (in a sophisticated way)

Now that you have the outline, you can see that you need to know what you're going to write in your whole essay before you can even begin to write the introduction.

So how can you get started? First, to write a five-paragraph essay on any topic, you have to ASK A QUESTION and then find the answer. For a literary essay, you could ask a question about a character, the plot, a theme, the literary techniques, or the setting. Since Romeo and Juliet is a play, you could even ask a question about how to stage it. For example, "What would costumes look like?" For Romeo and Juliet, I would personally ask a question about literary techniques, because that is my favorite thing about Shakespeare. Let's say you ask the question, "What are some of the literary techniques used in Romeo and Juliet?" That's right, it's that simple.

Now you can start planning your essay using the outline above. Simply find the answer to your question and fill in the outline with key words that answer your question. Your question can be the title of the essay.

You'll notice that the five-paragraph essay introduction requires you to write a thesis statement. For more on how to write a thesis statement, . A thesis statement for my question above might be, "Shakespeare used a lot of imagery, metaphor, and foreshadowing in Romeo and Juliet." Now I have the three main points: Shakespeare used imagery, Shakespeare used metaphor, and Shakespeare used foreshadowing. I can find examples of them in the text and fill in the outline from here.

For more information on how to write a P.E.E. paragraph, . Remember each of the three points in the above example will be expanded into one P.E.E. paragraph in your five-paragraph essay.

If you need inspiration or to search for examples from the text, you can read the entire play of Romeo and Juliet with a modern English translation and annotations to make it easier to understand: .