How to write an Essay?
If there is an English subjective paper in any of the examination that you are preparing for, then be assured that you will definitely be asked to write an essay.
Some exams may indicate the expected length of an essay or the number of words they are expecting you to write. But many times, it will be left to your better judgement. You may have to decide the length of your essay based on the time allotted to you and the topic that you have been given or that you have chosen.
Before we start giving you tips and tricks of essay writing, let us first try to understand what we mean by an essay.
What is an Essay?
An essay is a (relatively) short piece of writing that may contain information, facts, anecdotes and even opinions of a writer.
Steps in Essay writing
In general, students think that in an essay paper we should just start writing and fill-up as many pages as possible. It’s absolutely a flawed notion!
An essay needs to be structured, with smooth flow of ideas and proper embedment of facts, anecdotes and ideas at the right places to support our argument. It’s always the clarity, preciseness, comprehensiveness and writing quality of a written piece that will get you excellent marks, not just the length of it.
And as any writing expert will tell you, writing a good essay needs a lot of planning and structuring of ideas. In fact, if you have 100 minutes to write an essay, you may devote 10-15 minutes just for planning, structuring and brainstorming phase.
So, let’s see the steps that we need to follow while writing an essay. As a beginner try to follow all these steps. With practice, all this will start coming naturally to you, and then you may merge these steps and do multiple steps at the same time.
These steps will help you write clear, interesting, and cohesive essays.
Step 1: Select the Topic
In most of the exams, students are given some choices with regards to Essay topics. Choose a topic wherein you have enough knowledge, ideas, arguments and facts to share with the readers.
It will be a good idea to write some essays at home or in mock tests. If a similar topic appears in the exam, then you will find it very easy to write an essay on it.
Step 2: Brainstorm the Topic
Once you have selected a topic, you should write ideas regarding it on a piece of paper. In brainstorming we do not dismiss any idea. Just write any relevant idea that pops up in your mind in short – just as we do while making synoptic notes. We can arrange, dismiss, and extend those ideas later.
It also helps us to make connections between various portions of our essay.
Apart from the ideas and arguments, you may also note down any facts, stories, anecdotes etc. that you may use in the essay.
That is, we need to choose what tools are we going to use in our essay to engage the reader, e.g. whether we will make it illustrative (i.e. give examples, case-studies), make use of some anecdotes, use quotations, or questions etc. Though, you may do this later on too.
Step 3: Decide the Type of your Essay
We also need to decide the following regarding our essay.
Writing Style
We need to decide what our writing style must be – narrative/descriptive/informative, persuasive, critical analysis, etc.
Let’s understand these terms in more detail.
- Narrative Essay – Also called as descriptive essay or informative essay. Here, we just provide information and facts in a straightforward and orderly manner. E.g. Advances made by humankind in space exploration in the last decade, Possible repercussions of the discovery of Gravitational waves by LIGO lab etc.
Persuasive Essay – Also known as argumentative essay. The aim of such an essay is to convince and persuade the reader about our opinion or point of view on some topic. To do so, you will give your arguments and support them using facts, statistics, logic etc. At the same time, you will present counter-arguments and dismiss them using the same tools, i.e. through facts, logic etc. E.g. ill-effects of carbon-based fuels on climate, dangling sword of religious orthodoxy or ultra-leftism on world peace etc.
Analytical Essay – When we discuss an issue from various points of view, then we are said to be critically analysing the issue at hand. Here, we discuss both positive and negative points, both pros and cons, possible benefits, as well as possible pitfalls. Kind of a 360° analysis. At the end we can provide some conclusion, or leave it to the reader to come up with his/her own conclusions.
Our writing style will depend on the topic at hand, and also on how we are approaching the topic. For example, if you are writing on the issue of right of privacy, then you may choose to ‘critically analyse’ the topic, i.e. try to put forward arguments from both the sides, analyse the issue from various vantage points.
Writing Tone
We need to decide what our tone must be - positive, pessimistic, optimistic, critical, humorous, etc.
Though you may be creative and use any style for any topic. But sometimes it may prove risky. Say you have to write on the issue of terrorism, or malnutrition of children, then using a humorous tone may sound a tad bit odd.
Person
We need to decide what person should we use – first person (I, We, Me), second person (You, Your), third person (He, She, Them).
Well-organized essay which delivers ideas and arguments in an interesting, concise, manner and with clarity will always fetch impressive marks.
You need certain command over vocabulary to convey your points in a convincing manner. But you need not use over-the-top flowery language, with Brooker prize winning vocabulary. Just make sure you are using some good words, within right context and that your grammar and sentence construction is immaculate.
Stuffing your essay with difficult, uncommon words to impress the examiner may backfire. Remember, the aim of an essay is to check your ability to organize your thoughts and convey it with some authority. It’s not just a test of your English language - Vocabulary and Grammar. It’s much more than that.
Step 4: Plan and Structure the Essay
In general, you brainstorm and structure your essay at the same time. So, this step will overlap with the previous step to some extent.
There are three main parts of every essay – Introduction, Body and Conclusion. We need to structure our essay in such a manner that there is a smooth and clear flow of ideas between these parts.
So, now arrange the ideas that we came up with in the brainstorming phase. Decide how you will place those ideas in the essay and build-up your argument.
Give special emphasis to the start (i.e. Introduction) and end (i.e. Conclusion). Once you have decided how you are going to start and end your essay, all else will become much easier.
Step 5: Write the Essay
Now, it’s time to write the essay. As already mentioned, we need to approach the essay as constituting of three parts - introduction, body and conclusion.
Writing Introduction of Essay
Give utmost importance to introduction. Be creative and make the start of your essay extremely interesting. Same can be said for your conclusion.
Introduction must have a hook that may force the reader to read more. A hook can be:
- Something that raises curiosity of the reader
- Ask thought provoking questions
- Provide some very interesting information, anecdote or quote.
- Something that is a bit controversial – but it’s a rather risky strategy and may backfire.
Writing Conclusion of Essay
Your conclusion need not be the summary of the entire essay. That would be rather boring. Give some concluding remarks, or end up with a positive and optimistic note.
Many examiners will read the introduction of your essay and then directly read the conclusion. And on that basis they will make the first impression of your essay and then decide how much time they need to invest in scanning through the body of your essay.
Writing Body of Essay
In the body part of the essay, make sure that you start any new idea or argument with a new paragraph. Stuffing too many ideas in a single paragraph may end up confusing the reader.
You should ensure that the transition between various paragraphs is smooth. For this purpose, use words and phrases like – Moreover, However, Unlike, Though, On a parallel note, On the contrary etc.
The paragraphs should not be excessively long or else the reader may lose his interest in reading your essay.
Step 6: Make the Essay interesting
You can showcase your literary creativity to the maximum extent in an essay. As essay can be comparatively pretty longer as compared to other types of prose pieces. Here we have considerable more leeway to divert from the topic at hand (i.e. digress) and then come back to it later on.
In fact, it’s essential that we use our creativity in such a long piece of write-up, in order to bind the interest of the reader. Examiner will also show more interest in reading your essay, if he likes what he’s reading. You have to force the examiner/reader to read your essay. Otherwise, he may just skim through it.
So, apart from giving interesting information and arguments, make extensive use of:
- anecdotes,
- idioms,
- quotes,
- thought-provoking questions,
- facts etc.
This is even more so important for the introduction part. You must start your essay in such a manner that hooks the reader from the very start and sucks him up into your essay.
Now, some writers also try to gain interest of readers by writing controversial comments/arguments. Though you may make your essay more interesting this way, but it’s a very risky trick. If your examiner finds it offensive or politically incorrect, then you may have to face his/her backlash and end up with very low marks.
While writing an essay on any topic, you must try to approach it objectively. Don’t convey excessive emotions, or your prejudices and stereotypes regarding something/someone unwittingly.
That’s why some people suggest that you must choose an essay topic that you are well-informed about, but are not emotionally invested in. Writing on something that we have strong feelings for, or have strong opinions on, may end up in creation of a very biased written piece of article/essay.
Even if we are biased towards some side, our essay should have some resemblance of balance. Unabashed support of only one side of an argument or topic is not appreciated in general.
Essay exposes your thinking patterns – how deep you think, how balanced-thinker you are, can you appreciate that there may be many sides to an argument, can you think critically etc. It’s not just about how much information or facts you can give.
Step 7: Re-read the Essay
Once you are done writing, do re-read the essay. When we write something 2000-2500 words long, mistakes are bound to happen. So, it’s a must to check for any spelling, grammar, or punctuation mistakes.
When you will read you essay, you will get a bird’s eye view of your idea construction. If you are writing your essay on an online platform, then you may edit your essay a bit. Though it may not be possible in a paper-based exam.
Winding Up
Essay-writing is an art, it’s a work of creativity. So, it’s bound to take some time and a lot of brainstorming and deep-thinking.
To get better in essay-writing is also a matter of patience. More you write, the better you will get with time. Afterall, practice makes a man perfect.
Obviously, if you are an avid reader, and read essays, articles, and editorials on a regular basis, then you will get better at it even without knowing it consciously. But writing skills are a different ball game than just reading. So, you can never underestimate the value of writing practice.
Extra Books and Tools
If you prefer to learn via books, or want some good English Grammar books for reference purposes, you may read this article which enlists some of the books recommended by us.