Bundle of thanks to the online help that now we can search and fetch over any and everything, as a result life has turned out to be less complicated. Let me tell you, we were not lucky enough back in 90’s to relish the benefits of search engines and get the most appropriate help. Writing essays in those days were not exciting enough rather we use to write simply because we were instructed to do so. The only thing we were aware of was, that an essay resembles composing a five paragraph article backed up with facts and explanations with some arguments here and there. Resultant our essays depicted a monotonous, stale and damp effect.
Essay symbolizes a piece of composition or writing which not only projects writer’s viewpoint but gives an overview of the topic being discussed.
Composing essays can actually be a fun filled activity if one has handy tips and tricks to play with the content. On the other hand it can be considered as just another traditional way of penning down existing information, pushing it further with valid evidence and explanations. But we won’t let you ruin down your writing experience. You just need little bit of guidance and vision as to how to go about effective essay writing. So let’s explore how to frame a powerful essay with the below mentioned techniques.
10 smart tips to write an essay
- Research Out
- Be Resourceful
- Be curious and tempted about writing
- Introduction, body and conclusion
- Support up your essay with the right tools
- Consider both sides of the story
- Work out on What, Why and How
- Make that perfect circle
- Omit certain words
- Review and Rewrite
The first step before beginning to write an essay is to choose an appropriate topic if not already being given. In addition prior to composing its essential that you be clear enough as to what is the purpose behind writing the essay. The purpose mostly relies upon the paper type. Usually essay papers can be categorized in three parts:
- Analytical
This type of essay splits an approach or idea into key factors. These factors are thoroughly analyzed and illustrated for carrying out the overall assessment of the approach.
- Argumentative
Argumentative or persuasive essays, takes into consideration a particular topic, make certain claims about it supported by proofs and explanations to validate that claim. The prime focus of this type of writing is to convince the audience about the righteousness of the claim.
- Expository
These are much simpler form of essays which basically involves explanations pertaining to any topic hence also referred to as explanatory essays. It gives a step by step or fully descriptive info concerning a particular subject.
- Narrative
These sort of essays illustrates a story or present information concerning your chosen topic. It usually goes in a streamlined way or following a general order.
- Descriptive
Descriptive essays requires you to simply choose an essay topic and start describing about it. It purely involves the topic of your interest, though you must keep in accord the reader’s involvement as how they must have felt if they would have been there. It lays emphasis on what actually happened.
With the above cited essay’s categories you can make a clear judgment of the purpose behind your essay.
Exercising your topics
Next tactic being choosing for a variety of topics rather than sticking to just one. This is referred to as brainstorming various topics related to an essay. You can go about this by thinking and listing down the most relevant essay topics. Compare all these topics with one another and scrutinize the ones which are highly applicable and cross out the ones which are complicated and irrelevant. Repeat this process until you identify ‘that one topic’ which makes you jump out and start right away. Another alternative being highlighting the topic in the center of the paper and creating clouds of topic revolving around it. This helps you consider majority of topics in one glance and building your focus on the most desire one.
After performing a mix and match of all the topics and working on the possible word count feasibility, choose the best suitable topic for framing down your essay. Herein begins your actual exercise of creating the building blocks for your essay. We have carefully researched and attempted to jot down few significant tips for achieving our essay writing goal:
- Research Out
Unless you are a repository of information, you need to widen your research on the concerned topic. Wikipedia can be one of the quickest option for getting started and obtaining an overview of your topic. Though it’s advised that you don’t completely rely upon this medium since it’s the very first thing everyone binges upon and you can’t cite them in your reference. Rather explore the References section present in Wikipedia which links to various original sources from which the information is fetched. Moreover, unlike Wikipedia you’ll also be able to cite them. But within Wikipedia you can actually dive in and explore variety of sub heads concerning to the searched topic. For example for essay writing, apart from general information it gives you a variety of options to select from:
- Definitions
- History
- Forms and Styles
- Magazine or Newspaper
- Non Literary types
- See Also
- References
- External links
And since this information gets edited and updated quite often, you can rely upon its freshness and authenticity.
- Be Resourceful
Have you ever been loss of thoughts and word? Where thinking ends, reading begins. You need to supply food to your thoughts. Read, explore dig out innovative and creative contents. Though you may be have bountiful of resources to craft your essay but unless you have the right and effective words to gel up your content, your efforts won’t yield the desired result. Want to get the tag of ‘well-crafted essay’ then employ the following strategy
- Make a habit of tagging quotes of various authors
- Reframe their quotes in your own style, citing their reference
- Make your content source heavy and powerful using such quotes
- Minimize your essay compilation time by incorporating these quotes
- Be curious and tempted about writing
- Write for that ‘one’ particular professor, reader or user.
Ask yourselves are you writing just from the name sake or to really put forth your outlook and deliver the essential information. The moment you actually think of your reader, is the moment you start framing the most valuable content.
- Analyze what they actually desire from your essay
Well you just can’t simply imagine your readers mind. You need to do a survey, research, poll or Q&A session to be aware of your reader’s mindset.
- What’s the best thing you like about the topic?
You can write for your audience only when you, yourself are convinced. Ask yourself, what made you choose this particular topic? Or what’s the most driving aspect of the topic chosen by you. Once you are clear with what and why you want to go ahead with the essay, your how will be taken care of. We will talk more about this in tip #7
- Frame an imaginary blueprint of the topic in your mind or paper
None can go ahead with prior planning. Whatever may be your topic of interest, you must craft an outline of how to proceed, major topic of sentences, citations or references and the final conclusion. With such a blueprint you can quickly fill up the required places without struggling about how to go ahead.
- Take a break, refresh and come back
Don’t take this step lightly. A confused and crowded mind has less efficiency and creativity than a refreshed and charged mind. So if you feel stuck at any moment, pause and take a break. And come back with a striking idea. It’s a well-tested antidote against rot writing.
- Start in an informal way thereafter proceed with the actual content and lastly sum up the conclusion
Well it says all. You need not be serious enough in your introduction. After all it’s an essay and not some parliament bill to pass through. An informal tone at the beginning brings your readers close to you. But don’t over stretch the relaxing point. You need to be formal enough to present your actual content effectively. The creativity can further continue ahead with the conclusion part.
- Read a lot. It definitely expands your skills.
Creativity is rarely gifted by birth. I was neither blessed by this trait. So what? Who stops us from developing and enhancing it? Our skills just need to undergo regularly oiling with intense study and repetitive writing. After all it’s a universal truth that practice makes a man perfect.
- Introduction, body and conclusion
Before you incorporate these three sections, build a thesis statement which precisely outlines the motto of your essay. Ensure that the thesis statement is specific and lucid enough. It’s essential to include a thesis statement because
- It specifies what the essay wants to convey
- Denotes the points you’ll be emphasizing upon
Once the thesis is all ready, we need to frame the Introduction, body and conclusion of the essay. Let’s see them one at a time.
- Introduction
Well this is most important section of your essay as it will provide a comprehensive view of the entire essay. Make your introduction thought provoking so as to capture your reader’s attention in the very first go. A well written introduction must make your readers dig out for more. So ensure, it’s to the point, hitting the bull’s eye. Apparently, introduction must not be too descriptive and entangled.
- Body
Next comes the actual part of the essay which is contained in the body. Here you need to be precise with the facts, explanations and arguments supporting your claim or approach. In addition, the size and span of the body depends upon the number of outlines you have specified. So if there are 4 outlines or ideas to be presented, then each one will have one body paragraph respectively. While composing any paragraph do it the following way
- Initiate the paragraph by citing the proposed outline
This represents the topic sentence of your paragraph. Make it appear bold and weighing.
- Support it by providing essential facts, figures and descriptions.
Here you can’t simply play with word and stories. What exactly is the foundation of your claims or ideas? Validate it with proper proofs and explanations. More than 50% of your essay will rely upon this.
- Conclude the paragraph by portraying the overall essence.
Reconfirm your viewpoint in a general concluding manner. This will not only resurface your point of opinion but will make the reader reflect back and rethink what you affirmed.
Perform the same for all the paragraphs that are being included in the body section.
- Conclusion
So here comes the ending part. As obvious, the essay winds up with the conclusion section. It’s somewhat similar to the Introduction section but of course with certain variations in the wordings. It’s a comprehensive view of the entire topic presented by you. So make sure it’s convincing and complete in all the essence.
Tip: it’s psychological that when faced with any problem, we look out for immediate solutions. While writing an essay it’s obvious that you directly start thinking about the actual content rather than dangling your thoughts here and there for the right intro. It’s perfectly fine. Initially, start with the body section to compose what you are actually confident in. Once you pick up the speed, shift to a higher gear and go ahead with the introduction and lastly the conclusion section. But make sure once you are done, you rearrange the order in the actual way.
Both the introduction and conclusion must strike a right balance to create an impact on the readers. Don’t let your essay be a victim of the Murphy’s Law rather begin it well, so that it ends well.
- Support your essay with the right tools
- Consider both sides of the story
Usually when writing an essay, one needs to focus on one aspect of a particular thing. But when framing lengthy essays, one can consider and enlist both sides of the debate. The benefit is that, you get a lucid and rational view of the entire topic rather than unnecessary stretching only one part.
Let’s consider an essay on sleeping habits. You’ll definitely like to cover the most essential benefits of sleeping, how sleeping boosts and rejuvenate your mind and body? Right posture during sleep? But do consider the other part of the coin, to create a sensible and justifiable balance. Like for example, does oversleeping affects your health? What’s the right amount of sleep? The point is, have a complete picture of both the pros and cons of a particular topic to gain comprehensive view and comprehend the topic in depth. And then move forward to write.
- Work out on What, Why and How
This again is a fail proof technique to keep your audience engaged and continue with what you are trying to convey. We refer it to as W2H strategy.
‘What’, helps in specifying the query or issue?
‘Why’, helps in reasoning and highlighting the logical part
‘How’, helps in elaborating your content to a greater extent as it very well blends the ‘What’ and ‘Why’ aspect too. In a sense, ultimately you need to work on all the three aspects but starting your conversation with a How is a proven methodology of writing an effective and content- rich essay. Let’s consider an example:
How to write impressively for your readers?
According to the writing ethics first we need to address, what we mean by impressive writing or what is the difference between normal and impressive writing. Then comes the why part, that is why do we need to write in an impressive way and not just a routine way or why do we need to create an impression on our reader with our writing. Lastly we emphasize on the How part, that is how to write impressively for your readers. The bottom line is that keep your How in focus to write more effectively with a voluminous content.
- Make that perfect circle
Essay writing should be an enjoyable art. Don’t be rigid and calculative when writing. Give yourself ample space for putting down your thoughts. Employ the circle strategy. Start with a point, revolve around it and finally come to a conclusion to finally complete the circle. That is, without letting loose your topic at the end, make sure to conclude with what you started. Let loose your reins of thought when elaborating your points, be descriptive, be creative, and be liberal.
Though we are talking about how to write an essay, we need to liberally cover the requirements, vision, challenges and measures to cover up this topic. We just can’t put it in a school level Question and Answer format. Your readers seeks and demands for more.
- Omit certain words
Essay writing is not same as writing for a blog post. There are certain restriction and rules that you need to keep in mind while composing your essay. The rule says omit the usage of following words:
- You – I have used a lot of ‘You’ in this article but don’t forget and get confused that I’m not writing an essay but writing, ‘How to write an essay’.
- Clichés – clichés are basically phrases, ideas or a component of a literature, film, theatre or storytelling.
Some other words you must avoid using are:
- Some
- That
- Things
- To be verbs
Also usage of ‘I’ is not encouraged while writing essays, though many of the academic papers incorporate this practice.
- Review and Rewrite
When you are almost 99% done in framing the essay, still there is 1% remaining. It’s not 1% of left over content rather it is reviewing your essay. Reviewing and rewriting the essay at least once is of utmost importance since its ‘human to err’. Involving a second person in performing the review can be more beneficial as your article will be reviewed form a different point of view. Reviewing helps you in
- Checking grammar
- Checking proper flow of your content
- Include any missing information
- Discard repetitive words or information
Once your essay gets thoroughly reviewed, you must rewrite it for that final touch up. Lengthy process indeed, but it’s worth it. Moreover, it will make your writing skills more smooth and fine.
You will also find certain online apps that aids in improvising your writing skills. If you confront any difficulty in framing a complex sentence, these online apps can find a way through. Besides, they are a great source in improving your grammar and guard against any errors. You can try exploring few of them such as Hemingway Editor, Grammar Book, Grammarly and many more.
So lift up your spirits and confidently make that start. Let us know what difficulty you faced, because we love to resolve the ‘How’? 🙂
