This printable gives you eight model essay plans, one per likely theme on the AQA Power and Conflict paper. Each plan is built to the same shape: a thesis sentence that names a clear argument, four evidence points that map to four paragraphs, and a counter-argument hook that you fold into your conclusion to push the response into the higher AO1 bands. The plans are skeletons, not scripts. You bring the close analysis; the plan stops you from drifting off-question in the first ten minutes.
How to use a plan in the exam
Read the question twice. Pick the named poem's row. Pick the partner poem the spine recommends. Write the thesis sentence verbatim, swapping in the question's keyword. Build each evidence paragraph around its quote, with one sentence on method and one sentence on context. Use the counter-argument hook as your final paragraph's pivot.
The eight themes covered
Power, conflict, the impact of war, memory, nature, identity, suffering, and authority. Each plan pairs two poems and offers a third in reserve if the named poem on the paper forces a different pairing.
Worked example: Power
Thesis: "Shelley argues all human power is illusory; Ozymandias dramatises the proof; Dharker's Tissue refines the claim by suggesting that what survives is not stone but paper, breath, and skin."
Evidence point one: Ozymandias, the broken statue. "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone" stages the collapse of imperial power as a physical fragmentation. The caesura after "Stand in the desert" mimics the gap power leaves behind. Context: Shelley's republicanism and the post-1815 European reaction.
Evidence point two: Ozymandias, the inscription. "My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings: / Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!" The boast is undercut by what surrounds it: "Nothing beside remains." Method: dramatic irony built through the poem's frame narrative.
Evidence point three: Tissue, the opening claim. "Paper that lets the light / shine through" reframes power as something thin and translucent rather than monumental. Method: enjambment makes the line itself fragile.
Evidence point four: Tissue, the closing turn. "turned into your skin" collapses the metaphor: the most lasting "tissue" is the human body. Method: the shift from object to body answers Shelley's wreckage with something tender.
Counter-argument hook: a reader could argue Shelley's poem is finally about the survival of art, not the collapse of power, since the sculptor's "hand that mocked them" outlasts the king. Dharker's tissue, similarly, is destroyed in being read. Both poems may hold power and fragility in tension rather than choosing between them.
The remaining seven plans
Plans two to eight follow the same shape and cover: conflict (Bayonet Charge and Remains), the impact of war (Exposure and War Photographer), memory (Poppies and Kamikaze), nature (Storm on the Island and The Prelude), identity (The Emigree and Checking Out Me History), suffering (London and Exposure), and authority (My Last Duchess and The Charge of the Light Brigade).