Why bother writing an essay?

So, you're considering writing an essay.

Before you start, you will need to convince yourself that doing so is worthwhile. This is extremely important, because your genuine belief in what you are doing will help organize your motivation and actions, and will make it much easier for you to write.

Writing is thinking.

Consider this: you can write down far more than you can remember at one time. Writing therefore increases your capacity to consider a number of ideas at the same time.

Once those ideas are written down, you can move them around and change them, word by word, sentence by sentence, and paragraph by paragraph. You can reject ideas that don't hold up to your careful scrutiny.

Thinking is powerful.

If you learn to write and to edit, you will also be able to tell the difference between good ideas, intelligently presented, and bad ideas put forth by murky and unskilled thinkers.

Then you can be properly influenced by profound and solid ideas instead of falling prey to foolish fads and whims and ideologies, which can range in their danger from trivial to mortal.

If you can think and communicate, you can defend yourself, and your friends and family, when that becomes necessary, and it will become necessary at various points in your life.

The person who can formulate and communicate the best argument almost always wins. This is true in many of life's domains.

If you want a job, you have to make a case for yourself. If you want a raise, you have to convince someone that you deserve it. If you are trying to convince someone of the validity of your idea, you have to debate its merits successfully, particularly if there are others with other competing ideas.

Our capacity to write and think is what makes us human.

Your mind is organized verbally, at the highest and most abstract levels. Thus, if you learn to think, through writing, then you will develop a well-organized, efficient mind – and one that is well-founded and certain.

This also means that you will be healthier, mentally and physically, as lack of clarity and ignorance means unnecessary stress.

Don't ever underestimate the power of words. Without them, we would still be living in trees. So when you are writing an essay, you are harnessing the full might of culture to your life.

That is why you write an essay (even if it has been assigned).

Forget that, and you are doing something stupid, trivial and dull.

Remember it, and you are conquering the unknown.

Before you start, set yourself up for success.

Now that you believe writing an essay is important, or you are at least willing to give it a real shot, there are some things you should know about your mindset and environment. The following is advice for how to set yourself up for success.

Leverage technology.

Most university students these days have a laptop, or a tablet, that they use for completing schoolwork.

Laptops are an excellent way to work on the go, but they are not always the most ergonomic, or the most efficient, right out of the box.

Consider using an external monitor, keyboard, and mouse. These will make writing more ergonomic and efficient, while minimizing frustration.

Monitors

Most monitors are height-adjustable, which allows better posture while working.

Ideally, you want two monitors. The idea is that you need space to look at your reference material at the same time as you are writing and taking notes. If you are not able to afford this kind of a setup, research how to do split screen on your particular OS, and make do.

Keyboard

The built-in keyboards that come with laptops are typically not as efficient or as ergonomic as an external keyboard. This keyboard doesn't need to be expensive, but it should be comfortable. There are many different options available: some people swear by mechanical keyboards, some prefer low-profile keys, and some enjoy unusual keyboards that are split by hand or which curve.

Mouse

It is also worth considering whether you would benefit from an external mouse. The trackpads on most modern laptops are usable, but are still not optimal for long writing sessions. If you are going to sit at a desk with a monitor and keyboard you will definitely need an external mouse or trackpad.

Finally, learn to toggle the mouse settings on your computer. A faster mouse tracking speed can make you more efficient.

Text Editor

We have produced a companion app that offers all the features you will need to produce an excellent essay using this guide.

You can still follow this guide without the specialized software.

Take care of your body while writing.

Most people find they are the most effective at writing in the morning.

It is important to sleep enough while you are undertaking a writing project. This ensures your brain is functioning at peak performance.

Before you start work, it is a good idea to eat something. This shouldn't be something fast-burning and carby, but rather something with a good amount of protein and fat that can sustain you.

Make the effort to have something filling and nutritious before you start working. If you're not in the habit of making breakfast, or if this problem will stop you in your tracks, perhaps you want to go out and buy breakfast somewhere. Eat by whatever means necessary.

Your choice of topic is extremely important.

An essay is an answer to a question, and choosing the proper question to answer is arguably the hardest part of writing an essay.

You must choose a topic that is important to you. This should be formulated as a question that you want to answer.

Phrasing your topic as a question is important, because it helps organize your thoughts toward the goal of answering the question.

Perhaps your instructor has provided you with a list of topics, and you think you are off the hook.

Unfortunately, you're not. You still have to determine how to write about one of those topics in a manner that is compelling to you.

It's a moral, spiritual endeavour.

Choose a topic or an approach that speaks to your soul.

It is extremely important to ensure your topic is lined up with these deeper parts of your mind. This interest is what will motivate you to do a good job of writing and editing.

Don't waste your time with ideas that do not grip you.

If you can't find a way to become interested in a topic, it's possible that you need to read more. If you're experiencing this feeling consistently, it might be worth considering whether you are pursuing the wrong field of study.

You can begin the process of choosing a topic in two ways.

1. List the topics you have been assigned (or list ten or so questions that you might want to answer, if you are required to choose your own topic).
2. Start creating your reading list.

If you think you can already identify several potential topics of interest, start with topics. If you are unsure, then start constructing your reading list.

If you can't do this, then you have to do some more reading (which you will likely have to do to complete the essay anyway, so don't fret).

When you have listed your topics of interest, the last step is to choose one.

Write more than your word limit, then cut it down.

When you write your first draft, it should be longer than the final version.

This is so that you have some extra writing to throw away. You want to have something to throw away after the first draft so that you only have to keep what is good.

It is NOT faster to try to write exactly as many words as you need when you first sit down to write. Trying to do so merely makes you too aware of what you are writing. This concern will slow you down.

Aim at producing a first draft that is 25% longer than the final draft is supposed to be.

Essay makes it simple to calculate the right word count to aim for in your first draft.

Compile a reading list.

The next step is to determine what you need to read in order to write your essay. This step may come before choosing a topic, if you are not sure what you'd like to write about yet.

Your sources should be books or articles, generally speaking. If you don't know what articles or books might be appropriate or useful, then you could start with Wikipedia articles or other encyclopedic sources, and look at their reference lists for ideas about further reading. These sources are fine as a beginning.

A good place to find academic journal articles is Google Scholar. However, in order to access the full-text, you will likely have to search for the titles you are interested in through your institution's website.

If you find someone whose writing is particularly interesting and appropriate, it is often very useful to see if you can find out what authors they admired and read. You can do this by noting who they refer to, in the text of their writings or in the reference list. You can meander productively through wide bodies of learning in this manner.

Assume you need 5–10 books or articles per thousand words of essay, unless you have been instructed otherwise. A double-spaced page of typing usually contains about 250 words. List your sources now, even if you have to do it badly. You can always make it better later.

An outline is not optional.

Now you have to write an outline.

This is the most difficult part of writing an essay, and it's not optional.

The outline of an essay is like the skeleton of a body. It provides its fundamental form and structure. Furthermore, the outline is basically the argument (with the sentences and the words serving that argument).

Your outline should be 10–15 sentences.

A 1,000-word essay requires a ten sentence outline. However, the fundamental outline of an essay should not get much longer than fifteen sentences, even if the essay is several thousand words or more in length.

This is because it is difficult to keep an argument of more than that length in mind at one time so that you can assess the quality of its structure.

So, write a ten to fifteen sentence outline of your essay, and if it is longer than a thousand words, then make sub-outlines for each primary outline sentence.

Here is an example of a good, simple outline:

Here is an example of a good longer outline (for a 3,000-word essay):

Write a bad draft.

Now that you have your outline, the next step is to write your first draft.

Many people struggle with the first few words of an essay. They can put it off until the very last minute because of how uncomfortable it makes them feel to see their imperfect initial ideas.

It is therefore important that you embrace the idea of a "bad draft".

A bad draft is a start. It can easily become a good essay, but it's easier to start when the expectations are low.

When you've convinced yourself that it's okay to write a bad draft to start, you can begin writing.

For each of your outline headings, you will write a paragraph composed of 10–15 sentences.

Don't worry too much about how well you are writing at this point.

You may find it helpful to add additional subdivisions to your outline, and to work back and forth between the outline and the sentences, editing both. This is the time where you will want to make use of your notes, as well.

Try not to focus on the niceties of sentence structure, spelling, and grammar. That is all best left for the second major step, which is editing. You should think of the essay writing process as twofold, because it is. It is composed of production and editing, which are separable processes in the brain.

Production and editing are separate, and it is important to keep them that way.

When you infect your production with the process of editing, you can really impair yourself. This is because each interferes with the other. The purpose of production is to produce. The function of editing is to reduce and arrange. If you try to do both at the same time then the editing stymies the production. It's not faster to combine them, nor is it better, and it is bound to be frustrating.

Your first draft can be relatively quick and dirty. You can use your notes, extensively, and rough out the essay. If you get stuck writing anywhere, just move to the next outline sentence. You can always go back.

Once you have completed 10–15 sentences for each outline heading, you will have finished your first draft. Then it's time to move to editing.

The process of editing is what makes an essay excellent.

The next step is to edit your essay. This is where you will make massive improvements to the writing and ideas, and really hone your work. First, we will go over the philosophy behind the software's editing process.

An essay, like any piece of writing, exists at multiple levels of resolution, simultaneously. First is the selection of the word. Second is the crafting of the sentence. Each word should be precisely the right word, in the right location in each sentence. The sentence itself should present a thought, part of the idea expressed in the paragraph, in a grammatically correct manner. Each sentence should be properly arranged and sequenced inside a paragraph, the third level of resolution.

Your essay has to nail it at every level of resolution, from the sentence to the context and every paragraph in between.

As a rule of thumb, a paragraph should be made up of at least 10 sentences or 100 words. This might be regarded as a stupid rule, because it is arbitrary. However, you should let it guide you, until you know better.

Rewrite, reorder, reread.

This section will explain exactly how to edit an essay into perfection.

Rewrite each sentence and choose the best version.

Choose a paragraph to edit. Start by rewriting each sentence within it. Try to write at least three different versions of each sentence. Make each version genuinely different. Don't just play with the punctuation or word order.

Once you have your different versions, pick the best one. If none of them are good enough, write more versions. Keep doing this until you have improved each sentence in the paragraph.

Once you have done this, you will have a better paragraph. Then move to the next paragraph. Do this with the entire essay.

Reorder your paragraphs within the essay.

Next, you'll look at the order of the paragraphs themselves (as you just did with the sentences within each paragraph).

You may find that the order of the subtopics within your original outline is no longer precisely appropriate, and that some reordering of those subtopics is called for.

So, move around the newly improved paragraphs until they are ordered more appropriately than they were.

Rinse and repeat.

So now you should have produced a pretty decent second draft.

You have identified the appropriate sources, written the proper notes, outlined your argument, roughed in a first draft (paragraph by paragraph), rewritten your sentences to make them more elegant, and reordered those sentences, as well as the paragraphs themselves.

This is much farther than most writers ever get.

You may even think you're finished—but you're not.

The next step will take you from a "B" essay to an "A" essay. It may even help you write something that is better than you have ever produced.

Reconstruct your argument from memory.

Try to write a new outline of 10–15 sentences.

Don't look back at your essay while you are doing this.

If you have to, go back and reread the whole thing, and then return to this page, but don't look at your essay while you are rewriting the outline.

If you force yourself to reconstruct your argument from memory, you will likely improve it.

Generally, when you remember something, you simplify it, while retaining most of what is important.

Fill in a new essay.

Following this process, you'll be able to import material from your first draft into your new outline.

You may find that you don't need everything you wrote before. Don't be afraid to throw unnecessary material away. You are trying to get rid of what is substandard, and leave only what is necessary.

Once you have finished cutting and pasting your old material into the new outline, you will have a new and improved version. That will be your final essay.

If you really want to take it to the next level, then you can repeat the process of sentence rewriting and reordering, as well as paragraph reordering and reoutlining.

Often it is a good idea to wait a few days to do this, so that you can look at what you have produced with fresh eyes.

Then you will be able to see what you have written, instead of seeing what you think you wrote.

When you can no longer improve your writing, it's finished.

Here's a test to tell if you're finished with your essay: can you make it better?

You are not genuinely finished until you cannot edit so that your essay improves. Generally, you can tell if this has happened when you try to rewrite a sentence (or a paragraph) and you are not sure that the new version is an improvement over the original.

Don't forget to format your essay properly, and to create your bibliography.

If you got this far, good work.

If you write a number of essays using this process, you will find that your thinking will become richer and clearer, and so will your conversation.

We hope that this guide has helped you to read, write, and think more clearly.