Cathlena Martin

Essay Writing Tips

Fall 2007
Syllabus
Assignments
101.04 Schedule
101.13 Schedule
Grade book
Helps
FAQs

Essay: 1. (n.) A scholarly and systematic exposition of a topic
2. (n.) A brief attempt
3. (n.) An earnest try
4. (n.) A short written presentation of a point of view
5. (v.) To have the courage to put forward, as an idea
6. (v.) To make an attempt to do or make

Tips for Essay Writing

Part I. Before you begin:

Collect ideas and jot down references, page numbers, etc.

As soon as you know you’ll be required to write an essay, begin thinking about it. Try to keep the eventual essay in the back on your mind. Then, as you read or study, note down anything that piques your interest. You’ll save time later if you make a point to mark important quotes, page numbers, and references. It can also help to note any “starting points”– that is, questions you have about the subject, or aspects of it that seem worth exploring.

At this early stage, you don’t need a definite topic. At this brainstorming stage, if you come up with a great idea, you don’t want to forget it. Write it down.

As you prepare to write, review all your notes and jotted-down ideas.

Decide which of them interests you the most, which of them seems the most promising to investigate further.

Be sure to read carefully your instructor’s assignment for the essay. Sometimes students write a great essay but miss out on a good grade because they neglect to study the instructor’s requirements. If you’ve been keeping a record of all your ideas, you should find at least one of them that interests you and meets the instructor’s requirements.

Clarify your essay’s thesis in your mind.

First ask yourself, “What am I trying to accomplish in this essay?” Essay writing is for a purpose… You’re making an attempt, an earnest try to do or make something. You want to propose an idea, you want to argue a point, you want to convince the reader of something, or you want to explain something, or perhaps you want to ask or investigate a question. Figure out why you’re writing on this particular subject in this particular way. What are you essaying to do?

Decide upon your writing voice.

In the most formal essay writing, eliminate a first-person voice, contractions, casual tone, and informal figures of speech.

Sometimes it isn’t necessary to write a really formal essay. Your subject matter or the specific assignment may determine the tone and style of your approach. For some subjects, you may choose to use a more casual overall tone that allows your own voice and personality to shine through more blatantly.

Whatever the tone or style, here’s the rule of thumb. Make it apparent early, and carry it consistently all the way through.

If your instructor prefers a more formal style, but you like to write more casually, write a formal essay. You can see it as opportunity to practice writing with more formality. We can all use practice.

Organize your thinking.

Before you actually start writing, you can look over your notes and try to decide what you want to include and what you want to eliminate. Gather together the ideas that seem to “hang together” with the essay you want to write. You’ll want to keep referring back to these notes as you write. It’ll help you remember to include all the really important points.

Setting up a rough flow-chart can really help. It may sound silly, but you may find drawing a visual chart of your essay’s logic can be more effective than outlining or rough drafting.. Just a scribbled one will do.

Part II. The structure of the essay:

You may remember the “Five-paragraph Essay” structure from high school English or a Basic Composition course – but no, you don’t have to use this format. However, the logical basis for the format makes some sense when you are essaying to write a convincing paper, so here’s a review.

The overall structure for a “Five-paragraph essay” is something like this.
Paragraph 1: Introduction, thesis, and itinerary statement
2-4: Supporting Arguments for Thesis
5: Recap and Conclusion

In practice, the “Five-Paragraph” format becomes far too limiting, but its logical elements are normally present somewhere and somehow in all good essays.

So how should you structure your essay (for a mainly classical arguement)?

The introductory paragraph(s) (normally) include
(1) a thesis statement, and possibly also
(2) an itinerary statement.

1. A thesis sentence basically answers the question, “So what am
I trying to do in this essay?” The rest of the essay will support or illustrate the
thesis.
2. An itinerary statement is a sentence which, in a very limited way, describes the
route the essay will follow in its attempt to support or examine the thesis.

Examples:
The Sandman presents, within an unusual narrative structure, an account of
childhood trauma that results in adult neurosis. (Thesis - formal)

At that ending point I will have arrived at a conclusive answer to the question, “What
does Calvino’s novel unveil about the realm of reading?” (Thesis- informal)

I’ll describe or imitate certain strategies within Calvino’s novel, and I’ll attempt to
show how they reveal something about the way we read. (Itinerary – informal)

An examination of the author’s use of ghost imagery, alliterative language, and
seductive phrasing yields an intriguing look at the means by which he gradually ensnares his reader. (Itinerary – formal)

Suggestion:

Sometimes it’s easier to write the first paragraph, the thesis, and the itinerary AFTER you’ve already written the rest of the essay. Don’t get stuck on writing the perfect first paragraph. Just plunge into the rest of the essay, and come back to write the introductory paragraph(s) later, after you’re really clear on what your essay tries to do.

The first sentence should be strong.

The thesis sentence need not be the very first sentence of your essay. It should usually be contained within the introduction, but more important than its exact position is that it should fit logically within the flow of your paper.

It’s almost a cliché to suggest that the first sentence of an essay should be a “hook” or an “attention grabber.” On the other hand, it’s awfully effective to start out with a strong sentence.

Examples:
1. I begin my essay by telling you where it ends. (informal)
2. William Blake’s poetry splits the world in two. (formal)

The body of the essay should move logically from one paragraph to the next in a way that makes it easy for your reader to follow the line of your reasoning.

This is where the flowchart mentioned earlier can really help.

What you’re trying to do is to construct a convincing argument that proves the point you want to make. You want your reader to be convinced of the fact that your thesis is, at least, a logical possibility.

As you move toward your conclusion, you want to tie up all the loose ends, and probably review or recap the arguments you’ve presented.

Sometimes a brief summary of your key points is appropriate. At least you’ll probably want to restate or refer to your thesis idea in your conclusion. The basic message in your conclusion is something like, “Now that I’ve presented all my arguments, it’s clear that my original thesis was correct, with additional information and/or caveats.

As you began with a strong sentence, try to end with a strong sentence, too. These are the last words your reader will read, the last ones your instructor will read before s/he assigns your grade. You want them to be memorable.

Part III. The crucial final step.

Now you think you’re done, right? Wrong! The next step is really important, and if you omit it, the effectiveness of your essay (and your final grade) will suffer.

The last step consists of carefully reviewing the entire essay, and applying a final polish before you turn it in.

What do you need to check?

1. Look carefully for typographical, punctuation, grammatical, and spelling errors.

Make sure you catch and correct them all. Attention to detail pays off.

2. Read through the essay to make sure that the tone, and especially the TENSE, remains the same throughout.

If you start out saying, “During his lifetime Shakespeare writes to please his audience and his company,” then don’t shift in the next paragraph to “Shakespeare wrote this sonnet to a patron.” Keep the tense consistent.

If you do include a change in tense, there should be apparent in the essay a logical reason for the change.

3. Check and improve your “transitions.”

You want each paragraph to lead your reader naturally into the next. If you’ve constructed your argument carefully, the logical flow of it should help bring about smooth transitions. However, sometimes a paragraph may “jump” abruptly to a new argument, and you want to avoid this.

One way to insure smooth transitions is to go over each paragraph, making sure that its internal line of reasoning makes sense. Then, as you read its last sentence, ask yourself if it “sets up” the logical flow into the idea you introduce in the next paragraph. If not, then look to the next paragraph and see if its first sentence “links” back to the previous paragraph. At least one of these conditions (and preferably both) makes for easier transitions between ideas.

You want your reader to feel that your arguments progress in a logical and natural way – not that you’re leaping from one point to the next. Make sure your reader will have a smooth ride by smoothing out the passages between the peaks.

4. Correct from passive to active voice.

When you write “active” sentences, your writing tends to engage your reader more powerfully. Check for places where you resorted to a passive voice, change to active constructions, and then evaluate. Which versions convey your meaning most effectively?

How do you determine an active/passive voice? Ask yourself who or what performs the action of the sentence. The “performer” of the action should be the subject.

Ex:
A brilliant radiation came from the face of the saint.

Since, the face is the performer of the action, change the sentence to:

The face of the saint radiated a brilliant light.

5. Make sure you’re coherent.

A logical and smoothly progressing argument, with consistent tone and tense helps give your essay its overall coherency. Check this aspect of your paper once again just to be sure.

Within a single paragraph, you can also lose coherency, and you want to go back over your paper and correct this situation whenever it occurs.

To check for coherency within a paragraph:
Quickly find the subjects of each of the sentences within each individual paragraph. You’ll find that the subjects fall into one of two extremely loose categories: People or things/ideas. One way to improve coherency is to check that within an individual paragraph all the subjects fall within the same category.

Ex:

Shakespeare writes about love, lust, and loss. Ideas about social manners are also fodder for his writing.

Change to: Shakespeare writes about love, lust, and loss. He also draws upon the fodder of social manners for his writing.

6. Make sure you’ve included a title, your name, page numbers, and a citation page.

SAVE your final version on your harddrive or on a disk, print out your final copy, give it one last read-through.

Congratulations! You’ve just written a potentially great essay.