How to Write an Essay in a Few Simple Steps

Writing an essay is a long and tedious process that requires multiple steps and many hours of your time in order to be successful at it. The multiple steps required are as follows Choosing a topic, considering the audience, gathering evidence, organizing notes, developing an argument,writeing the first draft,revising,review and revise again. Much time is needed for each step. You cannot rush perfection; you have to relax and focus on the topic. Writing a high quality paper using these few techniques and a few hours of time will result in a well formed essay. In order to choose the topic you must Start brainstorming, followed by choosing a topic, and then finally narrow down the topic. Brainstorming is a good way to find a topic to write about. It is simply writing down all the ideas that you have about a topic. Once the ideas are written down you can choose the main point for the essay. Choose a topic that is interesting. Make sure there is enough information on your topic to do the assignment. For on a school assignment makes sure the topic fits the assignment.

Once you have decided on a broad topic, narrow the topic so that there is only one main idea. Resizing the topic will help narrow it, so you can focus on the main idea. By considering your audience you are choosing what kind of vocabulary to use and what stories and information you should include or leave out, depending on the situation. Show your instructor that you know the material. Some topics need to include more detail than others, but it all depends on the topic and the projected essay length. Next gather evidence to support the claims stated in the thesis statement. You must gather a lot of evidence at the researching stage of essay writing. After you have a lot of evidence, narrow them down to the ones that are the strongest and would persuade the reader the most. By using too much evidence, you will make the essay difficult to read and understand, so choose the most convincing pieces of evidence. The evidence should always clearly support the thesis statement.

Most of the notes you have taken by this step in the process will all be a part of your essay in some way. It is now up to you to organize it in an appealing way that the reader would enjoy. This step is very easy and is mostly just revising your notes to have a well-formatted note outline to refer to during the draft process. You will want to transfer your notes from one page to another, but while doing so, make a number list: one will be most main point that refers to the topic, and two will be the runner-up and so on. How you are going to present your argument is critical because you have to balance the way you word it or else you will make the reader either argue every point or not listen because it is too weak. Once you have a sense of your potential argument, express it clearly then refine it. In order to make a good defense of your argument you will need to provide sufficient evidence and an analysis of that evidence. For some writing the first draft may be easy; for others, they may be overwhelmed and may not know where to start it is very good to know this is not your final product, so mistakes are fine. Just open up and let all your ideals flow, even if some sentences are not worded just perfect that’s alright getting your main ideas down in the first place is what really matters because you will have something to build from later in the revising process.

Stay with the draft until it is all done. Once complete after all the moaning and groaning and countless minutes of staring into space, save it and be done for the day. The final and most important part of writing an essay and maybe the most misunderstood and disregarded step is revising. When you revise your writing, take the opportunity to step back and re-envision it. Ensure that ideas are clearly expressed and well-supported. Make certain that errors of grammar do not detract from the work or make it look as though the paper was prepared hastily. Do not let yourself be easily impressed; be hard on yourself and strive for perfection. Even though it is tempting to slack on some areas and maybe lose a few key points here and there ,it is not worth it you have up to this point spent a lot of time why rush it now? You now have a complete paper and you think you are done, but take a little more time to reread it and revise it once more.

Ask yourself question such as are there enough examples, are there too many periods. Too much or too little of something can be a very bad thing, so weighing out things like that can help when looking to revise your paper for the second time. Read your thesis and pay attention to the body paragraphs and make sure the body stays true to the thesis. Maybe you can reword and expand your thesis a little bit so the body fits the thesis. Following this simple 8 step process will ensure that you can clearly portray your argument and be able to clearly defend it without putting the reader in a defensive state or making them think that you don’t know about the topic. Always remember this process cannot be done in a matter of 30 minutes. It takes time a few hours at least, so you have to trust the process and give it time. Writing a quality paper using the 8 steps will make you more then happy with your final draft.