How do I make every paragraph get me all the marks it can?

It's important to make sure you're hitting all the relevant assesment obectives in every paragraph in order to reach those top marks. For essays I always find the formula 'Point, Evidence, Analysis, Link' works as a framework to make sure you're staying on topic and not wasting any words. The point you're making is your "idea" and then you need to spend the rest of your paragraph "proving" it!

Remember that background context is always important, but the text you're analysing needs to remain the focus- it's AO1 and 2, with back up from AO4, so it's important not to get carried away in context!