Do you enjoy writing? Most days instead of outdoors activities you would rather write. Every time you start to wander mentally you are thinking about a story… Well, you probably want to learn “the keys” to becoming a great essay writer!
An “essay” is “all about” the author’s developed opinion(s). Scholarly, Opinionated-editorial, or Extemporaneous, an “essay writer” may use many different approaches to essay writing and multiple topics to choose from, but a good essay follows the same “guiding principles.”
This PACE TULSA FREE Online Resource discusses “essay writer’s guiding principles.” and how writers apply them to whatever essay types they create. Let’s start with the heart of a good essay: the topic.
WHAT ON EARTH ARE YOU GOING TO TALK ABOUT?
THE TOP 3 THINGS TO CONSIDER
thesis, type, and audience
The most important element is your thesis or the theme of your essay.
The idea surrounding your thesis statement is the central point you’re trying to make. The thesis of the PACE TULSA essay “Destroying the Fortress of Hate,” is that Advancing Civil Progress in Tulsa, Oklahoma’s community is not possible while domestic terrorists, trained murderers, prolific killers, and systemized hate cells, freely conduct urban warfare on African-American Black People.
Touching on current social tensions within local communities affecting minority groups varies the prerogative aesthetic of equality, however, most essays recommit to one core idea. In this case, it’s African-American Black People’s perceptions of policing agencies.
Be sure to formulate your thesis before beginning any writing. If you’re having problems hammering the one thing that you want readers to remember when they’re done reading, relax, your creative juices will flow with practice.
One great technique is to incorporate your thesis as soon as possible, even in your topic sentence. Make sure you repeat your topic sentence throughout the essay particularly in the conclusion.
The entire essay substantiates your thesis. You may also incorporate observed evidence, tributes, acknowledgments, influential quotes, or even persuasive verbiage–whatever support and/or arguments will challenge your readers to think about the stacks of ideas you’ve constructed from your thesis statement.
The. next most important part of your writing is deciding the type(s)of essay(s) you want to author.
In essay authorship, there are several different types. Association often eludes the type, as with admissions essays, the thesis determines the type. Here are the most common essay types:
Argumentative essay
Argumentative essays assert or defend a position. A commonly preferred type of essay is the school paper.
Admissions essay
Most Academic admissions require an essay within applications, which typically revolve around why you’re interested in their school.
Persuasive essay
A persuasive essay is just as it sounds: an essay to persuade or convince the reader of a certain point. It’s similar to an argumentative essay— they both strongly favor a particular point of view, but the difference is the end goal: Argumentative essays just have to present their case, while persuasive essays have to present their case and win over the reader.
Compare-and-contrast essay
Giving equal attention to two opposing themes is an example of compare-and-contrast that essay. This essay is said to “works better than argumentative or persuasive essays,” that support one side over another. One example of compare and contrast essay is “15 Remarkable women who powered the civil rights movement,” by Journalist Deborah D. Douglas.
Personal essay
Anecdotal or real-life stories of authors like the Micheal Jordan biographies tend to follow narrative structures, the thesis can be flexible or interpretive.
Expository essay
Expository essays don’t have a bias. The expository essay thoroughly explains a certain topic to expand the reader’s knowledge. It is similar to an argumentative and persuasive essay in format. One such story is by Mary H.K. Choi, My Parents Got Sick. It Changed How I Thought About My Marriage
Essay writing for an audience
Your final consideration is who will read your essay—a professor, an admissions advisor, your friends, social media groups, or publications.
Audience’s realistically influenced how we speak. Our readers determine if our writings are formal or casual, Your essay should guide language, diction, and style. Hashtags in texting are good, but only in digital dialogue. : In casual or formal essay writing, not the most appropriate choice.
Your audience also affects the essay’s tone, and how you sound on an emotional level (excited hesitant, optimistic). There are a lot of tonal qualities that can further convey emotionally charged dialogue.
The essay writing process
If you’re writing an essay, research paper, term paper, novel, short story, poem, screenplay, blog article about essay writing—when writing just about anything, really—it’s crucial to follow a traditional writing process. Even if you prefer the cascading ideas as a style for writing your rough draft, you still need to revise and clarify your streaming ideas.
Essay writing has a five-step writing process:
1 Brainstorming
It always helps to collect your thoughts before you begin writing. Based on the thesis, generate as many ideas as possible to include in your essay. Think of as many as possible within a set time. The ideas that don’t work can be reworked later. A set time provides an efficient writing habit.
2 Preparing
The preparation of phases consists of both outlining your essay and collecting resources for evidence. Take a look at the results of your brainstorming session. First, isolate the ideas that are essential to support your thesis and then organize them in a logical and progressive order. In this stage, you’ll incorporate your essay structure. If you want empirical evidence or complementary citations, track them down while preparing.
3 Drafting
This is the main stage of essay writing. Remember everything doesn’t have to be perfect at this stage. This is your first draft, not your final draft, so give yourself the freedom to make errors. Bubble ideal words so you don’t miss the big picture.
4 Revising
The revisions stage involves your second draft, your third draft, or even your fourth draft if necessary. Address all the nuances and subtleties you explained away in the first draft.
Pay attention to both word choice and clarity, as well as complicated writing strategies like avoiding passive voice. If you’re not confident in your writing skills yet, there are resources online offering sentence structure and word choice suggestions, Review mistakes with sentence structure—like run-on sentences, sentence fragments, and passive voice.
5 Proofreading
Correct misspellings, formatting issues, or grammatical errors.
Essay structure
Essay structure almost always follows a simple beginning-middle-end format, or in this case, an introduction-body-conclusion format. What makes your essay unique is what content you have selected readers to enjoy.
Introduction
Essays follow the same guidelines for introductions as any other piece of writing, with an extra emphasis on presenting the thesis prominently, ideally in the topic sentence. By the end of your introduction paragraph, your reader should know without a doubt what your essay is about. From there, follow the conventional best strategies on how to write an introduction.
Body paragraphs
The majority of your essay is body paragraphs, all of which support your thesis and present evidence.
Pay close attention to how you organize your body paragraphs. Some arguments benefit from a logical progression, where one point leads to a second, and that second point leads to a third. Remember that the reader doesn’t understand the topic like the author, so organize your paragraphs in the way that’s best for their understanding.
What if you’re writing an argumentative essay where you compare and contrast two or more points of view? Do you present your argument first and then share opposing points of view, or do you open with your opposition’s argument and then refute it?
Serious writers can get pretty technical about how to organize an argumentative essay. There are three approaches in particular used often: Aristotelian (classical), Rogerian, and Toulmin. However, these can get exceedingly complicated, so for a simple essay, a basic structure will do just fine:
Your point
Counterpoint
Evidence supporting your point and/or
Disproving counterpoint
Conclusion
Essay conclusions wrap up or summarize your thesis in a way that’s easy for the reader to digest. If you get the chance, you can add a new perspective or context for understanding your thesis, but in general, the conclusion should not present any new evidence or supporting data. Rather, it’s more of a recap.
Five-paragraph essay
For quick and simple essays, you don’t need to get too technical with your essay structure. The five-paragraph essay structure works well in a pinch.
This contains:
One introduction paragraph
Three-body paragraphs
One conclusion paragraph
While this essay structure might not be adaptable enough for more advanced topics, it is helpful when speed is a factor, like during timed tests.
Essay writing tips
Master the five fundamentals
Especially for school essays, your reader will scrutinize how well you handle the fundamentals. Knowing about essay structure and the writing process is one thing, but can you demonstrate an understanding of language style? Can you develop your thesis logically and coherently? Are your references and citations trustworthy?
When you’re ready for the next step of essay writing, take a look at the five concepts you must master to write better essays.
Seek out another pair of eyes
This tip is not just for essays; it’s always advisable to have someone else read over your writing before finalizing it. Thinking long and hard on the same topic can give you tunnel vision. The solution is to get a fresh take from someone who’s seeing it for the first time.
Typically you can swap with a friend and edit each others’ works. If that’s not an option, however, you can also use a writing center or join a writing group online. One other thing is to put it down, sleep and wake up and look at your writing again
Remember: Grammar and form are essential
It’s not always about what you say, but how you say it. You could have the most obvious, objectively agreeable thesis in the world, but if your writing is incoherent, confusing, and full of mistakes, it’s tough to engage with your reader.
Some other tips include splitting long sentences, cutting extra words, or rearranging key phrases—in addition to catching common grammar mistakes. Re-focusing your format may make readability simpler. You must know your writing is clear. Proper formatting also helps those who are looking to improve their writing skill level in English, with suggestions for commonly misused words and phrases.
Mastering your writing using these elements is key to sharing your point with your reader—and affirming your thesis effectively.
PACE TULSA 