General Essay Writing Tips

 

Pick a Topic

Deciding what you want to write about is very important. This gives you the freedom to come up with the needed material for your essay. If you’re required to write about a specific topic, then you may look at the angle from which to approach the essay. The next thing to do is to research the topic and find out what interests you about that topic. Write that down.

Finally, go through your opinions and see if they align with your goal to either educate or entertain. If you choose to persuade, then make sure that it's clearly seen from the beginning.

Create a Visual for Your Ideas

Having a visual or outline helps with the flow of ideas

For your essay to be good you have to put your thoughts in an orderly manner, this can be done by creating a diagram or an outline of your ideas. This will give you a picture of how your ideas should flow. When creating a diagram based on your thoughts, place the topic in the middle of the page and have branches going to various corners, these branches will represent your ideas.

Using the outline method, your topic is at the very top of the page and the ideas flow downwards and in between the main ideas, there are smaller ideas. This will assist you in visualising the connections and help you be more organised.

Write Your Thesis

After choosing your topic and arranging your ideas, the next thing to do is to write your thesis statement.Your thesis statement is sort of the road map that will tell your reader what you’ll be writing about and the main ideas that will be found in your essay.

The very beginning of the thesis statement will be the heading of your essay, you will say exactly what you want to talk about followed by the characteristics of the essay also known as the main ideas.

The Body

The body of the essay contains the main ideas that you want to share with your readers

The body compromises of the ‘meat’ of your essay - the main ideas on your diagram if you used the visualization or outline method. Each idea will occupy its own paragraph and will describe its arguments in details.

All paragraphs should have the same structure. Start by highlighting the main idea followed by a thorough description. Conclude by using examples to show that you know what you’re talking about.

 

Write the Introduction

Now that you have your thesis and body, it's time that you come up with the introduction to your essay. The introduction will serve as a gateway to grab your readers’ attention thus, you have to come up with something worthwhile or else they’ll get bored with your essay before they even start reading it.

Begin with something that you’re sure will grab their attention from the beginning. These may include a joke, a fun fact, some shocking information or a quote. Whatever you choose to employ in your essay, make sure that it conforms to what you want to write about.

 

Come Up With a Conclusion

The conclusion sums up your essay

The conclusion is what sums up all that you’ve been talking about in your essay. If your reader was to skip everything and go to the end, he or she should be able to get what you’ve been talking about throughout your essay. However, don’t summarise the whole essay here, your reader should just be able to get the gist of what it is that you’ve touched on in the body.

Final Touches

If you think that it’s a done deal after writing the conclusion, then you’re wrong! You have to proofread your work just make sure that it's perfect. Make sure that your grammar and punctuation is perfect, the flow of your ideas is good, start and finish with the strongest ideas and put the feeble ones in the middle.

Review the format that was given to you and make sure that you have observed all the mentioned instructions.

 

Conclusion

Follow these general tips and you’ll be sure to come up with a decent essay. If you’re still struggling with essay writing, don’t hesitate to seek help from professionals. You can get assistance for all types of work such as definition essay topics, term papers, dissertations, among others.

All the best with your essay!