Most writers who have ever submitted a paper for a grade have received the dreaded paper that looks like its red and white instead of black and white. Maybe it was grammar or flow, but regardless of what exactly it was there are certain elements that go into essay writing that could save a less than perfect piece or make an already good piece shine. There are three main steps that one should follow while writing an essay: Pre-writing, writing, and finally editing.
Pre-writing consists of brainstorming topics, or ideas and thoughts for use within the essay, researching your topics, and organizing your thoughts into a coherent structure.
Brainstorming ideas for a topic is the first step. This is sometimes the most difficult step in writing. While brainstorming, think of subjects you enjoy, pet peeves, beliefs, or even events. There's no sure-fire way to getting a dynamite topic, but one thing to remember is that it may take time to find a subject you can write about, so never give up. If you cannot think of a topic, try looking up prompts. Many websites have writing prompts, and there are whole books of them as well. Taking a look through one, or both may be just the spark needed to start a great essay. After you have your topic, start thinking about what you want to say in your essay. Are you advocating something? Explaining a historical event? Or are you discussing the importance of some discovery? No matter what your topic is, figuring out what you want to say is vital to saying it. A great way to organize ideas and thoughts is through writing topic sentences. By writing out what you plan to discuss in a single sentence, you can clarify what you're trying to say.
After you know what you're writing about, and what you want to say, the next step is researching your topic. This takes a varying amount of time, depending on what, and how much you need to learn before writing your essay. The most important thing to remember while researching is to set reasonable goals for your research. It would be impossible to read a book about the workings of a cell every night for a week, and trying to do so isn't going to help you. Set reasonable goals, and read materials that pertain to your subject. Look through a variety of sources such as books and Internet sites. A common mistake made among many people is just reading what a single source has to say about a subject. Being able to site multiple different sources gives an essay credibility, and helps give more content to the essay itself.
Organizing your thoughts and ideas is the last step in pre-writing. Organizational methods vary from person to person, but organizing what to say is still of vital importance. There are a few ways to do so. Flow charts are very useful for cause and effect essays. It helps get everything into a very clear, this happened and caused this, format. Web charts work very well for more general essays, or essays that have to cover a wider variety of material. There's also simply outlining your essay. It works well for all essays, and provides you with a thesis statement and topic sentences to work with when you start writing. No matter which method you choose, organizing what you want to say in the order you want to say it saves a great deal of actual writing time.
The second step in writing an essay is actually writing it. Sitting down and actually writing the introduction, body paragraphs and finally the conclusion is vitally important to writing a good essay. Without this step, there would be no essay, just ideas and thoughts.
What makes a good essay? Where do we start? Well, for a general no-no, not with a broad, unanswerable question like that. Avoiding the attention grabber used by many middle-school, and even elementary, students is a must. The reader is obviously reading your essay to learn something, so asking a question doesn't help them. The type of introduction that should be used varies from piece to piece, and can range from telling a personal story, to jumping right into the subject matter. The best way to write the introduction is to write it ether last, or if you have a great idea that is assured to fit write it when you think of it. The last part of your introduction is the thesis statement. The thesis needs to be clear, concise, and tell the reader the points you are going to touch upon within your essay.
The body is the core of your essay, and is where you immerse the reader in the subject matter. To write solid body paragraphs you have to have a topic sentence, and then supporting evidence. A clear understanding of what your talking about helps the reader focus on learning, or listening to what you have to say. Make sure when you write you don't just say what you want the reader to believe - explain to them why they should. In informative pieces, give details, facts and figures, and follow that up with commentary about what the figures mean or imply. In the body you want to avoid purely "I think" statements. The best way to craft a solid body is to say what you think, and back it up, or give all the information about a subject you can.
The last part of the essay is the conclusion. One way to approach writing your conclusion is to think of it as bringing the reader out of your essay, and back into the world. Running over the points in your body can be helpful, but a focus on making sure the reader knows why they spent their time reading the essay is also key. Why is it relevant to their life, or why does this matter in the bigger scheme of things. Making the reader feel like they gained something valuable from reading the essay is the feeling you want to leave them with. It's never a good thing for a reader to think, "Why do I even care about this?" or, "I just read an interesting article about nothing."
So now the essay is finished, and fairly polished, but there's one more step: editing. Editing can range from asking a friend, paying a professional, or self-editing your piece.
If you choose to have a friend, or pay a professional to edit your piece, then there isn't much to this step, just sit back and wait. However, if you choose to go over your essay yourself, there's a little more work involved. Checking for grammar and spelling can be tedious, but a good eye and spell check solves that problem if you're using a computer. If it's purely pen and paper, a dictionary and a great deal of patience are required. To find problems in flow, or word choice, a great way to go is reading your essay out-loud. It may sound odd if somebody walks in on you, but hearing what you've written helps you notice places that need commas, or should have periods instead of commas, words that break up the flow, or even incorrect words. Over all, editing takes time, and patience, so don't give up!
Writing essays takes time and practice, so keep writing. By following these tips, you'll set yourself up for a more polished essay, and prevent frustrating rewrites of entire papers. Plan your paper, research it, and then organize what you want to say. Write it out, edit it, and you're on your way to a great essay.