Tips on Writing a Great Essay

Some students find writing essays hard because they focus on achieving the grade and what they think their professor would like. Though it is important to bear in mind such thoughts while writing an essay, they exert external pressure inhibiting creativity while writing the essay and therefore, the essay fails to be the very best. Here below are some of the tips a student might consider if he/she has to write a great essay.

college student essay writing 01

The student should treat the essay just like a story and have fun while writing it. Narrating your ideas in a coherent way the way you perceive them makes the essay flow just like a story. As a student, push aside all thoughts about the pressure to deliver the essay and focus on the ways you would let yourself have fun while writing the essay. Enjoying writing your essay opens up subconscious mind for creativity and not only makes the essay unique but also interesting to read as it gives a personal perspective of the writer. To avoid writing what you think your professor wants to read, instead, focus on what fascinates you about the subject. That way, the essay becomes original, interesting and relevant and fetches better grades than struggling to impress the reader with the information you think he requires.

Sometimes writing an essay can be overwhelming and writing a five-paragraph essay can be helpful. The standard format is having an introduction, three body paragraph each presenting an idea. Each of the three body paragraphs has a thesis statement and several other sentences to build on the thesis statement with the last of them leading to the next sentence. The last sentence of the third paragraph leads to the conclusion which wraps up the content of the essay. A simple trick of writing faster and interesting essay is writing the body first, introduction and the conclusions last since the introduction and conclusion are dependent on the content of the body. Including sources in the essay not only makes the essay scholarly but also demonstrates in-depth research into writing it. Making an essay resource heavy is also dependent on the professor but it is also a good way of avoiding plagiarism.

It is important when writing an essay to answer the question ‘how?’. The essay becomes an answer to your question and avoids struggling to insert content into the essay which is irrelevant. Do not limit your creativity by making one single argument when presenting your ideas but rather ‘dance’ around with the topic then refine the content when proofreading. Dancing around with the topic allows you to be creative and freedom which is important when you need to have interesting, creative and relevant content. Avoid some phrases and words which lower the quality of your essay like clichés. Ensure all quantitative and statistical content is accompanied by well-researched facts to avoid poor wording that does not add to the content. Avoid writing an essay from the first person unless absolutely necessary or when presenting a personal perspective or idea. Some sources like Wikipedia are regarded to be low quality and therefore to be on the safe side you can avoid citing them though they can be a good source to start the research. They also offer links to credible sources which can be included in the essay.

essay tips table

Concisely, considering the aforementioned tips on writing great essays can help improve your writing. The above points can transform your writing to something you want to do rather than something you have to do. It can also help you lift the mentality that writing essays are hard and demanding task.

related articles