studyingiscool

How to Write an Essay

Okay, first things first: although I said essay in the title, this can also be used for research/term papers and that sort of thing; in fact, some of this advice might be more useful for longer pieces of writing, but I made that really cute graphic and I wasn’t changing the text so take that into account.

STEP ONE:

What is my topic?

You’re not going to get anywhere without knowing what the heck you’re writing about. So make sure you know what your topic is, and if it’s one where you pick your own, choose a subject you 

1) feel like you know a good amount about already and

2) ENJOY TALKING/READING/LEARNING ABOUT. Seriously, even if you know a lot about a topic but you hate it, don’t pick that to write about.

Also make sure that you stick to any parameters your professor sets, like one time I had two options for a linguistics term paper: either compare two dialects of English or something else I can’t remember because it was that boring (I compared Irish and Scottish Englishes). Just make sure your topic fits the instructions. Simple things like that.

Now that we have our topic, it’s time for…

STEP TWO:

Outline!

I hate outlining with a fiery passion. But also I can’t get my thoughts organized without at least attempting an outline of some sort. It doesn’t have to be complicated. Mine usually ends up looking something like:

  • Intro
  • Par 1: [topic for P1]
  • P2: [topic for P2]
  • P3: [topic for P3]….and so on until
  • Conclusion

I usually write this out in my notebook as handwriting it helps me to stay more focused. I start trying to type it and I get all caught up in what font to use, configuring Word preferences, and before you know it I’m on pinterest.

STEP THREE:

Research!

Now some people might like to research their topic further before making an outline; honestly I’ve done it both ways and it’s totally up to you. The last term paper I did last summer I researched first (because our prof wanted to discuss our topics/sources with us first and we needed to have read them but hey). 

If it’s something you know a good deal about already then it really doesn’t matter if you research after you outline (if you have to research at all, that is). 

STEP FOUR:

Rough draft!

Now that we’ve done our research and have a general idea of what we’re writing about and how we’re going to format, it’s time to start actually writing.

Now, here’s the important part:

THE FIRST PARAGRAPH INTIMIDATES ME. Seriously. I majored in English and I cannot stand writing the introduction. So I skip it until I’ve written my paper so I actually know what I’ve written about. Sometimes I’ll sketch out a thesis statement for a little direction if I’m feeling adventurous, but most of the time I dive right in to the actual content of the paper.

Back in 2011, I did my first NaNoWriMo and finished it. And among the winner goodies was a code for 50% off of Scrivener. Scrivener confuses the heck out of me. I’ve done some of the tutorial that’s built in, but what I like best about the little I know how to do is the corkboard. 

You select an index card, give it a title, and a section appears in your document. So I pick a card for the Intro, Par1 (and write the topic in the center), P2, P3…all the way to the Conclusion. And this creates sections in my document for each topic so that I can write about one topic on one section, switch to another topic and another, even rearrange the paragraphs or sections, and I swear to you, doing it that way makes my papers longer. 

Every time. 

I’m not recommending you spring for Scrivener (it will confuse you–but hey, if you have it and know how to use it well, more power to you!). But writing the different points in different sections helps my brain focus on one thing at a time not “this is only two pages long and I’m running out of ideas why won’t word move this where I want it to go ahhh” because I hate writing papers in Word from scratch. I’d copy/paste from Scrivener into Word with the professor’s preferred formatting.

STEP FIVE:

Edit!

Yeah, I hate editing my own stuff. If you can spare the paper/ink, print out your paper, give it a day, and then: 

  • read the hard copy of your paper. Make sure you run stupid check spell check to catch the obvious errors, but DO NOT count on it to catch all the errors. Print it out if you can and go over it with a pen/marker to fix spelling/grammar errors. 
  • Make comments about the paper’s overall cohesiveness in the margins and the smoothness of the transitions from paragraph to paragraph. 
  • Most importantly, does your paper reflect your thesis statement?

After that, make all your corrections, read it over again (or have a friend read it over since you’re more likely to miss your own mistakes), and then

STEP SIX:

Time to hand it in!

In whatever format you’re supposed to (hard copy, online, etc)

Sorry this turned out to be so long (longer than I intended it to be, at least!!) I hope this is helpful to those writing long papers this semester and good luck!

Source: studyingiscool