What belongs in a useful plan?
A useful plan states your answer to the exact question and the reasoning that will defend it. Select relevant knowledge, organise the strongest objections and decide what each stage will establish. A topic checklist becomes an essay plan only when the points serve an argument.
OCR H573 papers require three 40-mark answers in two hours. About 40 minutes per answer is therefore an average allocation, including planning and checking. Across the qualification, AO1 is 40% and AO2 is 60%. See the official specification for assessment details.
There is no compulsory paragraph formula or fixed number of named scholars. Use a structure that lets you explain precisely and sustain a judgement. OCR's official essay-writing guidance is useful alongside this independent worked example.
Step 1: identify what the question actually claims
Original practice question: “Soul-making is a sufficient justification for God allowing suffering.” Discuss.
The topic is evil, but the claim is narrower. Soul-making identifies the proposed reason for permitting suffering. Sufficient asks whether that reason is adequate, not merely whether suffering can sometimes have benefits. Justification requires attention to the moral cost as well as the resulting development.
A relevant answer can use Augustine as a comparison, but an extended account of the Fall that never tests soul-making would drift away from this question. Write the question at the top of your plan and underline its limiting words.
Step 2: draft a thesis you can defend
Working thesis: soul-making can explain why a world containing real challenges might be valuable, but it does not by itself justify suffering that appears to destroy rather than develop agency.
This is provisional. If your evidence leads you elsewhere, revise it. It already tells you which material matters: the value of freely developed character, the need for a stable environment, and the objection from apparently destructive suffering.
A weaker thesis would say only that there are strengths and weaknesses. That identifies a debate without deciding what your answer will establish.
Step 3: plan the argument in stages
| Stage | Relevant knowledge | Objection or reply | What this stage establishes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Why allow difficulty? | Hick's development from immaturity towards moral and spiritual maturity; freely formed virtues. | Could an omnipotent God create mature goodness directly? Reply: a freely developed character may be a different kind of good. | There is a plausible reason for some challenge, provided freedom matters. |
| 2. Why a world with risk? | Epistemic distance and a stable natural order allow consequential choices. | Would less suffering still permit responsible action? Explain why the degree of risk matters. | A general role for risk does not yet establish that this amount of risk is necessary. |
| 3. What about destructive suffering? | Examples of suffering that overwhelm agency or do not seem connected to the sufferer's development. | Ultimate fulfilment could complete unfinished growth; examine what supports that further claim. | Soul-making needs an account of victims and completion before it can claim to be sufficient. |
These are stages of reasoning, not a demand for exactly three paragraphs. Give an important objection enough space to be explained and answered. Cut material that does not advance the argument.
Step 4: turn one stage into a paragraph
Model paragraph opening: “Soul-making gives a reason for allowing some difficulty because freely developed courage differs from a disposition that never faces danger. Hick can therefore argue that a perfectly comfortable world would exclude certain forms of moral growth. However, this defence establishes only the value of some challenge; it does not show that every instance or degree of suffering is required.”
The next sentences should test that limit with a precise example, consider a reply, and reach a judgement about sufficiency. Simply adding another thinker's name would not complete the reasoning.
Notice how explanation and evaluation work together. Accurate knowledge makes the objection fair; the objection identifies what the knowledge does and does not establish.
Step 5: make the conclusion follow
A conclusion should answer the claim using the distinctions established in the essay. Here, it could judge that soul-making is a possible partial explanation but insufficient on its own because its strongest defence does not yet justify apparently destructive suffering.
You could defend a different outcome by showing why final fulfilment answers that objection. What matters is that you give reasons for accepting that claim and address the strongest challenge to it.
Reuse this five-line planning template
- Exact issue: What claim, limit or comparison must I assess?
- Working answer: What is my provisional judgement, and why?
- Evidence: Which precise ideas support each stage?
- Challenge: What is the strongest objection and reply?
- Result: What has each stage established for the final answer?
Try a brief planning period in timed practice, then check whether it improved focus enough to earn its place. Adjust the split to your writing pace; a suggested timing is a practice tool, not an examination rule.
Ready to test the method? The reviewer supports this related original question: Assess the view that soul-making is an adequate response to apparently pointless suffering. Adapt your plan to that wording, then review an essay on the supported practice question. For an example of a complete argument, read the free annotated model essay.
Independent revision guidance for OCR H573. The practice questions and worked plans here are original teaching examples, not past-paper questions or official mark schemes.