Everyone gets stuck trying to write the perfect essay or term paper. We all have our own tricks on how to get past the road blocks, but you may not have tried these five methods to a successful paper.
1. Write in a loop
Basically this is writing without really thinking about what comes to your mind. You can let the topic change as many times as you want until you feel like you’re done. (We suggest at least five minutes). When you’re done, take a look at what you’ve written and highlight any main ideas you might be able to use in your paper.
2. Speed writing
This is kind of like loop writing, but instead of writing about whatever, make sure to stick to the topic, write down everything you can think of that might be useful for your essay in a stream of consciousness type of writing. If you can’t think of anything, don’t stop, just write down whatever it is that is going through your head, even if it is what you want for lunch. Don’t worry about spelling and grammar, because this isn’t the final draft of your paper. After giving yourself a good amount of time to write (between five and fifteen minuets) stop and look at what you wrote. Cross out the irrelevant parts and you might just find that you have a basis for a rough draft.
3. No screen writing
This type of writing is where you turn off your screen and just type. This helps the people who just have to correct every little mistake in their writing and make sure that it looks good. A lot of times you can get more genuine feeling and better ideas into a paper this way.
4. Fragment writing
As the name alludes to, this is where you write in words and phrases. This is particularly good for people whose minds run a million miles an hour and they don’t have the time to type out a whole long sentence before they might forget the idea. Again this does not have to be grammatically correct, or even make logical sense to anyone but you. This is a really good way of creating main ideas and getting the basis for supporting details.
5. Distracted writing
This might seem counterproductive, but taking your mind off of writing can really help you. Try talking to a friend or family member when you are trying to come up with ideas. Don’t ask them for ideas, but talk to them about random things while you are typing. Your mind won’t be on typing so much and your subconscious will take over, the same way as it does when you are day dreaming. As you may have noticed, sub-consciousness’s are very good at being creative.
Of course, these suggestions are not foolproof. Sometimes you just have good old fashioned writers block or don’t know a thing about your topic, in which case, I would suggest research or going in to your professor’s office hours. Also, don’t wait to get it done. As good as writing tricks are, they can’t work miracles!