I saw some tags on a post and realized some of you might appreciate a few essay-writing tips. Now, many writers plan out their essays before they start writing, and that’s great! But not everybody’s brains work that way. Here is a method of drafting essays that I recommend to students who have trouble getting started but also hate outlining:
1) Don’t try to work out the whole argument in your head before you start writing. That’s a recipe for a panic attack. (Believe me, I’ve tried it and I know.)
2) Also, don’t start at the beginning. Don’t write your introduction first. That should be the last thing you write, once you actually know what you’re introducing.
3) Begin, instead, with some freewriting. You’ll never show this writing to anyone so it’s okay to say literally anything. Think of your essay topic and just start dumping your thoughts onto the page without censoring them. If self-doubt or fears about what your teacher will think or anger at your teacher come up, write those down too! Do not hold anything back. Write fast, and don’t think very much, just dump.
4) Once you’ve done as much of that as you can stand—10-15 minutes is probably plenty—print it out and read it. Highlight anything that seems like the beginning of a good idea. If there’s a long, rambling section that seems like it’s getting at something, try to sum it up in one sentence, and highlight that.
Think of these highlighted bits as seeds of ideas. They don’t need to be brilliant or fully developed now, because you’re going to develop them later.
5) Read through those highlighted bits again. Now, do some more freewriting with those bits as your starting point. (Maybe write for 5 minutes on each one.) Again, don’t try to be all smart and eloquent, just brain-dump onto the page. You should not be trying or straining or even thinking very much, and you should not be trying to make any of this writing good. This is very important.
6) Now, do the same thing to this freewriting as you did in step #4. In fact, repeat steps #4-5 a few times.
You see what you’re doing here? You’re slowly developing your ideas, but you’re doing it through writing instead of before you write.
7) Once you’ve got some ideas you like, start writing your draft. Be sure to steal the good bits from your freewriting when you can. Also, write in your own voice, the way you really talk. Don’t try to “sound academic.” And write what you really think, not what you think will “sound smart.” At the end, you can go back and revise any parts that aren’t formal enough for an essay. But if you try to “sound smart” or “sound academic” while you’re drafting, you will stifle your real thoughts. Also, you’ll probably write less clearly than you could.
8) During this whole process, remember to take breaks. This is essential! Set a timer so that you work for 20 minutes and then relax for 10 minutes. Drink water, get up and stretch, maybe take a short walk. They’ve done research and apparently walking really helps people write! But any physical movement will do.
9) If you can’t find the right words for something, just ask yourself, “What am I trying to say?”
10) If you’re not sure what order to make your points in yet, remember that most essays ask you to analyze something. So, the basic unit of an essay is an analysis of a small chunk of whatever the essay is about. Let’s say the essay is about a poem. So, the smallest unit of that essay is you quoting a line from the poem and then pointing out something interesting about that line. If you just put each line of the poem in a document and then type some interesting stuff about the line underneath it, you’ve now got a “skeleton” for your essay. You just need to add some connective bits between these tiny analyses and then figure out where the paragraph breaks go. You can do this for things that aren’t poems, too—just figure out what you’re analyzing, and then break it into small chunks.
11) Once your draft is done, set it aside and take a nap or eat dinner or something before you start revising it. If you can, get someone you trust to read your draft and tell you which parts aren’t clear.
12) Remember that “revising” and “editing” are different. When you go through your draft the first time, your only job is to make sure your writing is clear and one idea connects logically to the next. Once you’ve finished that, you can edit, i.e. fix the punctuation and spelling and all that.
This is just one approach to essay-writing, and you might decide you hate it. I just offer it because it’s the one that works for me and I wish I’d discovered it sooner! If you’ve had success with another approach, though, you should write in and tell me about it.
Ask me a question or send me feedback!
