I’ve met a lot of people who struggle with writing essays and I never understood why until I really started to help them. What I realized, is for most of them, writing isn’t really the hard part. Organization, however, is. There are five basic steps in writing a good essay.
The first step is to think of a basic idea about what you want to write about. You cant have good action without thinking things through first. For visual learners I recommend writing your ideas down or making a chart to map out your ideas. For auditory learners, I suggest recording your thoughts out loud and explaining them on tape so you can go back and listen to what you were talking about later.
The next step is the Outline and this is probably the most important part for any writer in the early stages. Even novelists use them to organize a book. An outline is best organized in a layered list. By a layered list, I mean a list where the First Heading is bigger than the second heading and each line correlated with a heading is indented the same. This outline is the most effective I’ve seen because it shows the progression of the essay and the points you want to make. (See figure 1)
After the outline is completed, review it and make sure it is how its supposed to be. The next step in writing a successful essay is the most important…the writing itself. I’ve found that for some people, typing right on the outline is the easiest way to stay on track. I suggest doing so if you loose focus easily.
Remember that this isn’t going to be a ten minute essay. Things take time and good writing will do the same. Pausing while you write and looking over what you’ve written is a good way to make sure that nothing is out of place and it all sounds right. Each point should be made clearly and then supported with facts, not stories or opinion. The thesis should be the first thing noticed, so don’t get tricky and put it at the end of the first paragraph.
The fourth step is the first draft. Once you have the essay written all the way through, the hard part is over. The first draft should be read thoroughly once and then set aside. After about a day or two, pick it up again and look it over. Write down anything you’d like to change.
The last step is applying those changes. You’ll have to change something about it because it cant be perfect. No one is, so its only fair to say that no one’s writing is either. Plus, a final draft should be well crafted, hopefully enough to get you that A+.
Note: Helpful trick to remember these steps. There are five paragraphs in a basic essay and five steps to this process. Good luck!