Essays are very common assignments in high school and college. Students are expected to write them in the best way possible. They are supposed to have excellent skills in writing for not only essays but also other assignments. It may seem as simple as sitting at your computer and typing words. However, there is a lot that goes into writing an essay. You need to have a good guide to write an essay. To a beginner, essay writing may seem daunting, but in a real sense, it is not. You need to pay attention to the things that matter if this is your first time writing an essay.
Defining an essay?
If you are beginner, it is good to know what an essay is in the first place. It will give you the right approach and understanding when writing your first essay. An essay is defined as a paper that dwells on a topic revealing certain aspects of the subject. It must have a thesis or the main idea and string arguments to support that thesis. An essay ought to close with a conclusion. Essays come in different types, and you need to have a good knowledge of them if you are going to write something substantive. One can use examples of short essays for college as a reference point if you are writing it for the first time. When you are writing an essay, you are expressing you interpretation of the topics.
Essay wring is something that you are going to deal with henceforth. You have to be ready to handle different topics. You will come across different essays that you will write. You will have to use a guide to write an essay depending on the purpose at hand. Before we can delve on how to write short essays, let us look at the types of essays that you are going to write. It is necessary knowledge for a beginner.
Types of essays you will write
There are four major types of essays you have to know about, and determining the type of an essay to write depends on the goals. You can tell about some personal experience, explain an issue, and describe something or trying to sway the reader into believing something in your perspective. As such, the four major types of essays include the following:
The guide to write an essay, and in this case, a narrative one should tell you how you have to tell your story. This story can be about a real-life experience. Even though storytelling in this context seems easy, the narrative essay challenges the students to think and write something about themselves. As you write your narrative essay, you need to think about the audience an engage them by making the sorry as vivid as possible. These essays are usually written in the first person to give the audience a feeling of being part of the story.
Even when looking for 5 steps of writing an essay, you will have to include the descriptive essay in your search. Here you are trying to paint a vivid picture to the audience using words. You can describe a person, object, place, or memory of significance. However, just because this is a description essay you do not use description for the sake of it. You have to communicate a deeper meaning through your descriptive words. The idea is to show the audience, not tell them, and you achieve this by using colourful words and sensory details. You have to appeal to the emotions of the audience if you want this essay to be effective.
These are not as hard as you can think because they present an informed and balanced analysis of a topic. If you are writing an expository essay, you have to explain a topic using facts, statistics and examples. It has a wide range of variations, like the comparison and contrast essays, cause and effect essays, and process essays and so on. These essays are solely based on facts and not personal opinion or feelings of the writer. They are not written in the first person.
You can have the 5 steps to writing an essay applied when you are dealing with a persuasive piece. Here, you have to convince the audience to accept your perspective on a topic or recommendation. You have to build your argument using facts and logic, expert opinion, examples and sound reasoning. When writing this essay as a beginner, you need to be sure that you have presented all sides of the argument. You have to communicate, showing the reader whey a certain point of view is the correct one.
Those are the four major types of essays that you will write. Of course, there will be other essays, but the most important thing is to know the category so that you have clear goals for the way that you are about to write. You may have to use examples for short essays for college, but the essay you are writing must have a purpose. You need to be ready to take up the challenge and enhance your writing because the success of your essays depends on it.
With that out of the way, it is now time to look at how you can come up with an essay if you are a beginner. There are general rules of which you need to be aware.
General rules of writing an essay
The general rules of writing an essay include the following:
- Decide what kind of an essay you are writing
- Brainstorm for your topic research the topic
- Develop a thesis
- Outline your essay
- Write your essay
- Edit your essay
These are the simplest rules that you can use to come up with a good essay especially if you are a beginner. They might seem like a lot, but they will help you in constructing the best essay that you can think of. As a student, you also want a good grade, and as such, you need to be got to do your best at this. Whether or not you want to know how to write an essay, these general rules apply. Let us put them into perspective:
Choosing the kind of an essay to write
The first thing you do is to choose the kind of an essay you want to write. Depending on the goal at hand, you can choose from any of the above essays and the 5 steps to writing an essay will still apply. You can choose to write a narrative essay, a descriptive essay, argumentative essay, or any other essay that you think fits the bill for your goals. For instance, if your goals are to try to convince the reader to believe in your point of view, you have to choose a persuasive essay. As such, you need to make sure you have everything necessary to write this essay perfectly. Remember that if it is a class assign your grade matters a lot.
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Brainstorming for your topic
There is no point of writing an essay if you do not have a topic. If you are looking for examples for short essays, it means you have every intention to write one. As such, you have to brainstorm for a topic. Brainstorming helps you to formulate topics that have the potential of being developed into an essay. This is the thinking phase, and during this time:
- You can write down everything that comes to your mind and narrow down the topics afterwards
- You can use mind mapping or clustering to formulate essay ideas. This means you can write a topic at the centre of the paper and create bubbles or related ideas around it
- You will be developing the topic in-depth as you recognise the connections between various aspects of your topic
Once you come up with a list of possible ideas for your essay topic, you house the best one that answers the question posed in your essay prompt. The best thing is to go for a topic that is neither too broad nor too narrow. For instance, if you are required to write a short essay on the history of your country, you can focus on a specific event within that history. This is one of the tips of how to write short essays if that is the requirement. The list that you come up with should give you the best and most interesting idea to write about.
Researching on the topic
This is one of the 5 steps to writing an essay is the best way possible. After you chose the topic, you need to research on it. You can use online sources or the library for any information that operations to your topic. As you are doing your research, you have to take detailed notes about relevant information, ideas of interest and any questions that you can explore further. Any information that you see fit to be included in your paper should be written in the detailed citation. It will make the search for this information later, very easy you can organise those notes into different categories to help you identify the specific ideas on which you want to focus.
Developing your thesis
It is going to be the major focus of your essay. Any essay that you write must have a thesis statement. It is the premise up which your essay will be built and should come at the end of your introduction. Your thesis statement is a summary of your entire argument. It can be a sentence or two. It should answer the main question that you would like to address.
Formulate an outline for your essay
This is a crucial step that you have to undertake. Any guide to writing an essay must have this stage. The outline is a simple skeleton of your paper. It gives the blueprint of the structure of the essay. It helps you to write a logical paper that has flow and is well organised. You can start by writing your thesis statement at the top, followed by a topic sentence for every paragraph that comes after. This requires you to know the exact number of paragraphs that you are going to write and the flow of ideas.
Every paragraph should handle one topic sentence to enhance clarity and readability of your essay. The paragraphs should have transitions to enable the reader to understand the flow of your paper, as well as your thought process. In your quest for knowing how to write short essays, you need to ensure that there are supporting facts in every paragraph. The paragraphs should also tie to the major argument that you are making in your essay.
Writing the essay
With the outline done, you are ready to start writing the paper. Since you have taken time to research and outline your work, the writing process will no be as hard as you think. You are going to write your essay based on the outline. Take it from the perspective that you are fleshing out the skeleton (outline) that you prepared earlier. You are going to write a clear, cohesive, and coherent essay. Do not be afraid to make mistakes because this is your first draft. Follow the structure and write the essay until the end.
You have time to come back to it and revise to ensure it sounds exactly the way you want. The essay should communicate your exact thoughts and help you achieve your purpose.
Editing and proofreading
Once you have finished the writing process, you can take some time off the essay. This enables you to come back with a fresh mind to do the editing and proofreading. These are the best beginner’s tips o guide to write an essay.
Writing essays does not have to be a problem for you anymore, especially if you are a beginner. However, you can also get help from our professional online essay writers. We help with all types of essays that you have in mind. Try our services today.
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