Essay Writing Topics Covered:
Essay Planning
The Introduction
Using Evidence
Structuring The Essay
1. Proper Planning
As mentioned, you need to have a plan going into things. The essay question and/or title is something that should demonstrate a clear focus for your overall plan. By exploring this, it can help you make better decisions with regards to what points are most relevant to your essay.
What are you being asked to think about and consider? Always organise your thoughts before getting started. You should be doing various things to help facilitate an organised thought process including but not limited to, mind mapping, researching, and even taking notes. This will allow you to prioritise your thought processes and ideas. If you find that you’re writing a literature essay, you’ll want to do appropriate planning to ensure you’re deciding the various parts of the text you should be focusing most on and what points you should attempt to make.
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2. Introduction
You’ll want to have a good introduction that focuses on the essay question or title to present your idea accurately and clearly. For instance, in an essay that is titled ‘What is it that makes Slim such an integral character in Mice and Men?’ you might begin with:
“Slim is someone who plays an integral part in the novella because he is someone who represents clear moral authority.”
This statement is both clear and concise and it answers the essay’s question. Whereas, the majority of the rest of your essay could continue to provide effective proof and justify the answer by looking at and examining the various ways he represents it. Also, what kind of impact it has on the various points in the story.
An introduction is something that will momentarily introduce both your main idea of the essay and your arguments. You will continue to explore these things in much more detail later on in the body of it.
When you’re tasked with writing an introduction to your essay, you’ll want to avoid:
- Using the phrase ‘In this essay, I’ll be writing about…’
- Going abruptly into the close analysis of the literature
- Going off on tangents and not speaking directly about the topic at hand
3. Using Evidence
You need to use adequate evidence when crafting an essay. The evidence you use is the foundation of your essay and it gives you the ammo needed to prove the points you’re making.
For an essay that is all about a specific piece of literature, you’ll want to use the text itself as the primary resource for your evidence. This will be the strongest supporting evidence you’ll find.
You’ll want to back up all of the arguments you make with support from the literature. The evidence should be both connected and relevant to the various points you’re making.
In the essay, you’ll want to use evidence in the form of:
- Quotes were taken directly from the text
- Examples that are taken directly from the text. A good example would be Slim’s reaction when the fight between Curley and Lennie occurs. This demonstrates his natural leadership.
4. Structure of The Paragraphs
You’ll need to look at and think about how you plan on organising and structuring each paragraph. You may want to begin with a topic sentence that goes over some of the primary points you’ll be making in the paragraph. This is the sentence that will act as the introduction of the paragraph for your essay.
An example: Since so many men respect him, Slim’s capable of influencing the men’s actions.
Whereas, the remainder of the paragraph would then go into detail about the main point and provide a lot more of an explanation that includes evidence:
An example: Slim takes charge of things after there is a fight between Lennie and Curley. Shortly after the fight, he persuades Curley in his way to defuse the situation and keep Lennie on the ranch because of it.
5. Conclusion
The conclusion is the last paragraph of your essay. It’s meant to tie everything together. All of the points you’ve made need to come together at the end.
A good conclusion includes:
- Restate the main idea of your essay
- Link everything back to the title of the essay and question
- Summarise all of the key points of your essay
- Come up with a reflection that you can end with to give the reader something to think about
You might want to make it known that you have reached your conclusion by using clear phrases such as:
- Finally
- In summary
- In conclusion
- To conclude
Keep In Mind
You’ll want to think about what you include in your essay to simplify things. This will allow you to structure your content much better and it can help you concisely organise everything so it fits together better. This allows you to come up with an essay that is a lot more convincing. Whatever your level, essay writer help services can be found online so that you never get stuck for ideas.