How to Write a Good Essay: The Easiest Guide

Assignments are part of college work students cannot escape. Students should learn how to write essays as they are part and parcel of their exams. A topic may differ, but its structure will never change, and once students familiarize themselves with the procedure, writing gets easier.

At times, you may be assigned a topic, or you can be asked to choose one.

Either way, you should determine your essay’s nature: persuasive, argumentative, expository, comparative, literary, etc. It might not be hard picking a topic, but it can be torturous, especially if you have no idea what you want to discuss.

The steps:

Choosing a Topic

If you have not been assigned a particular topic, you can focus on an interesting area in your course by referring to your coursework resources like periodicals, handouts, textbooks, etc.

You can also ask yourself who, what, why, or how to determine your key interest.

For example, if your area of interest is abortion, you may ask yourself why abortion is prevalent in a certain area. After this, put your topic in a question form. For instance, what factors contribute to increased cases of abortion in the US?

Characteristics of a good topic

A good topic should:

• (a)    Not have a direct answer. Instead, it should have varied answers but with justifications for each.
• (b)    Be relevant and aspire to provide answers to that problem.
• (c)    Be exciting and engaging, as you will spend a lot of time discussing it.
• (d)    Have enough content to fill the required pages.
• (e)    Have information or materials to refer to.
• (f)    Not be so complicated to discuss it within an allocated time.

Brainstorming

The next step after choosing a topic should be brainstorming. It involves thinking and writing down all possible answers, opinions, and questions to pertain to your topic before you forget them. This helps to determine what is known and what is not.

Researching

Good research must be collaborated by several sources. Please do not refer to one reference only and jump to the conclusion research is a continuous process; discover your topic and find proper arguments to support it.

Create an Essay Outline

Although some students skip this part, it is advisable to outline it as it acts as a writing guide to enable you to stick to the issues under discussion.

As you venture deep into your research, add other interesting discussion points you may have come across.

Writing

Once you have developed your paper outline, start working on your draft. There is no standard procedure to follow. You can start with familiar sub-topics and later the parts that require further research.

Since this is a draft, don’t be bothered much by your grammar. But it would help if you avoided plagiarism at all costs – acknowledge all thoughts and ideas that aren’t yours.

Revise

After completing your draft or individual paragraphs, you can start revising it. This is the time to strengthen your essay and shape it the way you want, and this should take place at least a week before the submission date so you can have enough time to do it.

Edit

If you are happy with your content after revising it, now it is time to edit your work and make it precise and clearer.

Read every sentence in your essay to see if it makes sense and check the meaning of the vocabulary; you are not very sure of their purposes.

If possible, read your work to someone else as it is easier to identify areas that require editing when listening to your thoughts.

Proofreading

After editing, relax for a few hours and re-read your work (proofread) to ensure there are no typos and other silly mistakes.

You can even consider printing your paper as mistakes become more visible on printouts than on computer screens. Once you complete that, please submit your paper to our Professional Custom Writing Service.