Essays are an unavoidable part of being a student—but little do most students know, writing them doesn’t have to be difficult. All it takes is a good method. I’ve written so many essays in my life, I have the process down to a science. As an English major and a pretty good essayist, I’d like to share my patent-pending process with you now:
1) Know the content.
Before the essay is even assigned, be sure you’re paying attention in every class and doing the work so you know the material. Given that you’ve done this, finding something cohesive to write about will be much easier. If you spaced out all semester and have no idea what to write about, do some research. Before you even think about writing, make sure you are well-versed in what you are potentially going to spend 10, 20 or possibly 30 pages talking about.
2) Get familiar with the assignment and rubric.
Make sure you fully understand the essay’s guidelines before you do anything. If you are fuzzy on something the professor has asked for, go to their office hours or send them a quick email to clarify. It’s better to clear that up right away so you’re on the right track from the beginning.
Something I also like to do is go over the rubric and turn it into a checklist (i.e. Make sure I have 5 pages, everything is in MLA format, sources are cited, etc.) so I can go through my finished product later and make sure it’s up to snuff.
3) Spitball.
Alright, now you’re ready to put pen to paper. Contrary to what most students think, the first step shouldn’t necessarily be opening a Google Doc and typing your name and date into it. Instead, you should take out a piece of paper or make a blank document and do some preliminary spitballing. Jot down some bullet points in no particular order about what you want to say in this essay.
It doesn’t have to be articulate. If you’re stuck, just start by writing your simplest thoughts about the topic. You might say, “Alright, all I know is I disagree with the topic.” Now go further—why do you disagree? What evidence can you point to? How would someone who agrees with the topic counter your points?
I like to set a timer for five minutes and write non-stop about the essay topic to see what my brain naturally comes up with.
4) Compile quotes or facts you want to use.
When you’re writing that 20 page essay on Homer’s The Odyssey, the last thing you want to do is feverishly flip through your book to find quotes at 11 p.m. the night before it’s due. Save yourself the trouble and spend time in the beginning making a huge collection of quotes or evidence you might want to use. Even if you don’t end up using all of them (which you probably won’t), that’s fine.
5) Make an outline, then organize it.
You can be formulaic when making your outline. If you need to write eight pages for this assignment, that’s about two paragraphs per page, which means you need to write 16 paragraphs. Two of those will be an introduction and conclusion, so you just need to come up with 14 topics/subtopics to write about in between.
I come up with topics for each paragraph by breaking down the topic of the essay into the smallest chunks that I can, usually by asking myself, “What do I need to prove to my reader?” If my thesis is about power in Shakespeare’s King Richard II, I need a paragraph about how power is portrayed overall as a theme, one with examples of how Richard uses power, one with examples of how Bullingbrook uses power, one with examples of their power’s effect on other characters, one discussing the differences between them and so on. Reference your spitballing to find things to talk about.
Nail down what each of your paragraphs is about, plug in the quotes/facts you found earlier, then go back and rearrange them in a logical order. Your outline is a roadmap to your writing—if you can’t follow it clearly, then your reader surely won’t be able to.
Your outline is also where you can make sure your paragraphs aren’t just duplicates of each other. Plan ahead so you don’t end up talking about the same things over and over.
6) Write a shitty first draft.
Time to write a shitty first draft. It’s going to be bad, and you just need to embrace that. My mantra when writing is, “You can edit a bad page—you can’t edit a blank page.” Having five pages of shitty writing is phenomenally better than zero pages of any writing.
While you write, use your tools—look at your spitballing, follow your outline and plug in the quotes and facts you collected.
Write as much as you can for as long as you can. Don’t be afraid to write too much because you can always chop up your writing later and save the best parts.
7) Make a second draft (and third or fourth, if you need).
Read over your first draft and make notes on what you want to change. Open up a new blank document and type your essay again from scratch, this time adding what you see fit. Use thesaurus.com to find more powerful words to use in your sentences. Write up your second draft and make a third or fourth if you think it will help. My second draft is typically my final draft.
8) Do a final check-over.
Read your essay a couple times (yes, all of it) to really be sure it makes sense. Ask a friend to thoroughly read it and have them summarize what it was about, so you can check if your message communicates well to an audience.
If your writing is done, checked and double-checked, it’s time to make sure we didn’t miss any requirements from the professor. Remember in step 2 when we turned the rubric into a checklist? Pull that out and compare it against your final product.
Some things that might not be on your rubric, but you should still make sure you check:
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Is your thesis/main idea stated clearly somewhere? Find it, and make sure it’s in a sensible spot.
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Did you use enough evidence (quotes, facts, personal anecdotes, etc)?
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Did you give the paper a fun, but relevant, title?
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Is there any chance you plagiarized something? (If the answer is yes, you better go back and fix it.)
If everything is satisfactory, submit that beautiful piece of work and give yourself a pat on the back.