Your Ultimate Essay Writing Companion: The Definitive Guide for Success
You might have an idea about something and feel like sharing it with friends or the world. In this case, Write an Essay! You might also want to disagree with particular worldviews and hope to persuade people to join you. Compose an Essay! Is your dream college making you write about why you want to attend the school? Write an Essay! First, let’s get to know what an essay is.
An “Essay” is a term for a piece of writing that outlines the author’s viewpoint on a topic, be it academic, editorial, or even entertaining. Although essay writing consists of thousands of different approaches and numerous fascinating topics, we have discovered that excellent essay writing frequently follows a similar framework.
We will discuss the specific framework and various ways to utilise it in your essays, regardless of what types they might be. Before everything, let’s begin with the focal point of any excellent essay: The topic.
What is your essay about?
Before writing your essay, you should consider the thesis, type, and audience. Among these three things, your thesis, or the crux of what the essay entails, is, without doubt, the most crucial part of the paper.
Your thesis, compressed into a thesis statement, contains the pivotal idea/ argument you are trying to make. A concrete example of the nucleus of Bertrand Russell’s essay “In Praise of Idleness” is that individuals concentrate too much on work and don’t value time spent doing nothing. Sometimes essays can wander and go into associated digressions, yet they often come back to that one primary claim in the thesis.
It would help if you established your thesis before writing. Suppose you are having a problem narrowing it down. In that case, ask yourself. “What is the one point I want my reader to keep in mind after they complete reading my essay?”
The best approach is to incorporate your thesis immediately, which could be in your topic sentence if it is suitable. Additionally, it would be appropriate if you recapitulate it throughout the essay, specifically when finalising everything in the conclusion section.
After nailing down your thesis, you should include evidence to defend and support your idea. You can incorporate statistical data, logic deductions, testimonials or persuasive rhetoric from credible sources. Remember that you are building upon your main argument(thesis), not swapping to entirely different topics.
Types of Essays
Similar to any style of writing, essays exist in various forms. At times, assignments such as admission essays may dictate the type, and sometimes, the thesis will ascertain it. Nevertheless, it is crucial to know your options; therefore, let’s discuss several most common essay types.
Argumentative essay
Argumentative essays allow the writer to take a stance on a particular issue. This is the most common type of assignment; thus, remember as you are writing your first college essay.
Admissions essay
When applying for your dream college, the school will ask you to write an admission essay. This type of essay explains why you are interested in joining the college.
Persuasive essay
A persuasive essay persuades or convinces the reader of a specific idea. This type of essay is similar to an argumentative essay because they both strongly favor, defend and support a particular opinion. The difference lies in their end goal: While argumentative essays have to present their case and defend it, persuasive essays have to give their point and win over the reader by convincing them to take their side.
Compare-and-contrast essay
Unlike argumentative and persuasive essays, which lean on one side, compare and contrast essay allows an author to discuss the similarities and differences of two or more opposing factors or ideas.
Personal essay
Personal essays are usually anecdotal or real-life stories of the authors, for instance, the works of David Sedaris. Since they often follow a narrative structure, the thesis can be flexible or interpretive.
Expository essay
An expository essay expands the reader’s knowledge by giving in-depth information on a particular topic. It follows a format similar to that of persuasive and argumentative essays but with one core difference: expository essays don’t have a bias.
Process essay
This type of paper explains in length how something is done step by step.
Analytical essay
This type of assignment entails a complete analysis of a particular topic or idea. It requires critical thinking and the implementation of personal inferences.
Creative writing
This writing allows the author to select a topic and style to compile a captivating story.
Essay writing for an audience
Your last concern should be the person or people who will read your work. It could be your professor/instructor, an admissions counselor, mentor, peers, or the internet.
Regardless of what you are writing, your readers should impact your language. It is important to note that your audience establishes whether what you are penning down is casual or formal, which has a substantial influence on language, word choice and style. For example, incorporating emojis might be allowed when writing an informal essay, but when handling a formal paper, they are not the most suitable choice.
Also, your readers influence the essay’s tone or how you sound on an emotional level (enthusiastic, cautious, confident etc.)
The essay writing process
It is vital to follow an efficient writing process regardless of your writing, be it an essay, research paper, dissertation, term paper, short story, poem, screenplay or blog article. Although most people prefer to use the stream of consciousness style when writing the rough draft, you need to systematically organize your work to be easy to revise and adjust.
For essays, we recommend the standard five essential steps in the writing process:
- Brainstorming
Before you embark on writing, it is essential to collect your thoughts. When wondering what to write about, you can start by writing everything that comes to mind. You can use clustering or mind mapping to simplify this brainstorming process and generate essay ideas.
- Preparing
This phase comprises two things: outlining your essay and gathering credible resources for evidence. First, you need to look at the outcome of the brainstorming session. Then, set apart points that back your thesis and organize them logically and progressively. This is the stage where you include the essay structure, which we will discuss below. If you want to incorporate empirical evidence and complementary sources, you do that.
- Drafting
This is the critical stage of essay writing, where you take the step of writing your first draft. Keep in mind that every word, sentence or paragraph doesn’t have to be perfect; this is the initial draft you are allowed to make mistakes that you will rectify in your final draft. If you concentrate more on making everything look flawless, you will not see the bigger picture.
- Revising
This juncture entails creating a second draft, third, or even the tenth draft. Ensure you tackle all the points and ideas you disregarded in the first draft.
While you make sure you avoid using the passive voice when writing, also pay attention to both word choice and clarity.
- Proofreading
Once you are done with the revision stage, this is where you polish your final draft. Keenly go through the work and fix all the pronunciation mistakes, grammatical errors, and formatting problems.
Essay Structure
Most essays follow one structure which is a simple beginning-middle-end format primarily defined as the introduction-body-conclusion format. Nevertheless, the difference arises from what is contained in these sections.
Introduction
Just like any form of writing, essays follow similar guidelines for the introduction, with the primary goal being displaying the thesis significantly, mainly in a topic sentence. Your audience should be able to know what the essay will address by the end of the introduction paragraph.
Body Paragraphs
These sections hold the majority of the essay, all of which give evidence to defend and back your thesis.
It is essential to organize your body paragraphs systematically. In most cases, it is beneficial to organize arguments in a logical progression, this means, one idea leads to a second idea and the second idea leads to another idea. Keep in mind that your audience doesn’t comprehend the topic as you do, therefore, arrange your paragraphs that ideally fits their understanding.
Suppose you are writing an argumentative essay which entails comparing and contrasting two or more viewpoints or claims. Will you first present your argument and later give opposing ideas, or will you being with the opposing claims and disprove them?
When it comes to organizing argumentative essays, dedicated writers can get somewhat technical.Most individuals use three specific approaches when writing this type of paper namely: Aristostlian (classical), Toulmin and Rogerian. Nonetheless, these approaches can get complex if you want to write a simple essay. Below is a basic structure that is easy to follow:
- Your point
- Counterpoint
- Evidence backing your argument and or refuting counterpoint
Conclusions
Essay conclusions are a summary of the main idea(thesis) to make it easier for the audience to process. Although conclusions should not present any new evidence or backing data, you can always add a new point of view or context for comprehending your thesis. Remember that this section is a wrap up and a recap of what was discussed in the body paragraphs.
Five-Paragraph Essay
You don’t require to get technical with your essay structure if you are writing a quick or a simple essay. You can always apply the five-paragraph structure which entails the following:
- One introduction paragraph
- Three body paragraphs
- One conclusion paragraph
Although this essay structure might not be applicable for more advanced topics, it is the best in scenarios where speed is the primary factor, for instance timed assessments.
Have you gone through the entire essay writing guide and yet find it difficult to craft a compelling essay? Reach out to Our Expert Writers they are ready to help you.
