Writing Essays Made Easy: Key Things to Remember

If you are wondering “how do I write my college paper?”, you are not alone. The jump from high school to higher education can be daunting and presents brand new challenges you may not have been prepared for.

First, take a few moments to review the full task you are set and the scope of the topic at hand. Search out key words like discuss, define, compare etc. to help guide you towards what it is you need to do. If you aren’t completely sure what you are being asked feel free to speak to your tutor or professor to get clarification.

Once you understand the task at hand it’s time to take your stance. You need to decide what point of view you want to present and define your argument clearly and concisely. Having a defined argument or set of arguments will help you keep your essay cohesive and give your essay a clearly defined theme and position.

Whatever argument you choose to make you need to back it up in some way. Find evidence to support your claims for example quotes, statistics or visual evidence related to the topic. Think of it like a law case, if you don’t have evidence you don’t have a case.

Simply listing off evidence, however, is not enough you need to take time to evaluate it and explain how you find this evidence backs up your argument. This is the part where you need to really consider what you know and have learned.

Then to pull everything together show proof that this argument is supported by others. This is where your research and reading will really come into play as you pull together your sources.

Which brings us neatly to citation. Whatever sources you use you need to make sure they are cited in your essay and formatted according to your college’s rules. These rules are usually in place in order to ensure that you keep a consistent style throughout. The important thing is to make sure all your citations are accurate and complete, don’t leave anything out.

When you first learn to write an essay at school you likely get told to focus on the who, what, when and why as a simple method of putting together an argument. However, a really stellar essay will answer the how. If your struggling with making your argument it’s worth going back to the how. How does the research prove your point? How was a specific theme conveyed? How did a historical event impact?

Once you consider the how you will be surprised by how quickly you can start meeting your word count.

While you need a good structure for your essay don’t feel you need to write it in order. This is a difficult habit to break, most of us are simply used to doing this format as it’s how we learned to write an essay. However, if you have a great thought for a specific section or know how you want to wrap an argument up feel free to start there and then go back to fill in the details or create an introduction.

Write something, anything, at the top of your page in a new document. This may seem odd and likely will be something you need to take out later but it honestly helps avoid the anxiety that comes from starting a new essay and starting at a blank page.

Essays are tough and you can feel massively unmotivated, however the best way to beat this is to find the fun in the topic. Look for the most outrageous facts and use them as your hooks, focus on the things that surprise you and you find interesting, play devil’s advocate and see where the argument takes you. Whatever it is, find something that really takes you in and leaves you wanting to write more.

The final advice we have is to remember that all writing is storytelling. Essays feel daunting and stuffy so it’s easy to forget they are really about conflict and change, key elements in every story. This comes back to the argument you are trying to make, that is the story you are trying to tell. If you write your essay as a story you’ll suddenly find it a lot more palatable and your essays will be a lot more readable.