Writing techniques for essays

Essay writing has its secrets; learn about some of them now

You may think there’s nothing hard about writing an essay only until you actually get to write it. Essays often prove to be harder to write than all other types of academic papers, maybe because they involve a lot of creative writing and demand independent thinking.

 Don’t worry, though: there is a set of essay writing techniques that will help you to do a better job at all times. As a rule, these techniques include following basic essay requirements, working out a solid essay structure and doing a proper research on the subject matter.

Essay requirements. Run-up.

1. Your essay must not be longer than 2 pages (unless your teacher says differently);

2. The main idea of your essay must be clear and understandable to readers.

3. Your essay must contain only information necessary for covering the tropic of your choice and your attitude to it, make it straight to the point and don’t digress into irrelevant matters.

4. Each paragraph must contain one main idea.

5. Your essay must show that you fully understand every term, concept and paradigm you use in your work. To put it simply, you must be well up to speed on the topic you are exploring.

6. Every argument you use to support your vision must be direct, clear and convincing.

As you see, there is some work that must be done before writing your essay. Do your research. Thankfully, there’s no lack of all kind of resources — news sites, forums and discussion boards, reference materials etc. Analyze them and try to understand how relevant your topic is.

Essay structure

In your essay, all of your ideas must be presented in a form of short thesis statements. Because essay writing requires some grounded facts supporting those ideas, every thesis statement must be followed by an argument — facts, events, real life situations, scientific or statistics data that prove that your idea is correct.

This is why all essays usually have a traditional structure “introduction — several thesis statements supported by arguments — conclusion”.

Introduction includes the substance of your chosen topic and the reason why you’ve chosen it.

Conclusion summarizes the main ideas presented in your essay. It’s basically for drawing a bottom line that emphasizes the statements you’ve made.

Now that you know what your essay structure must be, make up a short plan (write it down); this will help organizing your thoughts and make the process of writing a lot easier. In case you think your work won’t look very “professional”, don’t worry. Professional writing has a somewhat different set of goals and requirements. The main idea of essay writing is to show your personal point of view and ability to prove it has a point.

Essay writing algorithm

First of all, read the name of the topic carefully and think about it. Is it new to you? Look for relevant information that covers the topic well. Essay help can be found on some discussion boards, in case you experience difficulties.

Now that you’ve armed yourself with sufficient knowledge on the subject, determine the main idea(s) you want to prove. Choose the arguments that support this idea in the most convincing way.

Think of an impressive introduction. It’s safe to use rhetorical questions, idioms and strong quotes reflecting the issue you are about to discuss.

State the main ideas of your essay supporting them with your arguments.

And, last but not the least, make a well-rounded conclusion.

It would help greatly if you first make a draft of your essay, read it through carefully, make some notes and then write a clean copy.

That’s right; it’s quite a lot of work. Of course, some follow the line of the least resistance and address some custom essay writing service to help them. But you won’t learn unless you do it yourself, right?