How to Write an Essay

Know the purpose of your essay before you begin writing.

If you have been assigned or chosen a specific topic or direction for your essay, take the time to gather any information you will need before writing the essay. This includes talking to your teacher if you have questions, doing any necessary reading and research, and taking notes about your topic and ideas. It will be impossible to write a coherent, successful essay if you begin writing with no idea what you’re writing about or why.

Of course, this doesn’t mean that you can’t change your mind after you’ve started the essay; writing should be a fluid process, and it’s perfectly fine for your essay to change as your ideas evolve with writing. It may be helpful to write yourself a set of questions to guide you before you begin writing, and then while you are writing your essay. Ask yourself: What am I going to write about? Why do I want to write about X? What details and examples can I include to demonstrate my point? What am I going to tell my reader about X that they don’t already know?

Outline your ideas before writing your essay.

Creating an outline of your essay will help you organize your ideas into a clear, logical structure. Writing an outline should help you determine these essential things about your essay: how you will begin, how you will end, what you will put between the beginning and end, and where you will put each example, detail, anecdote, quote, etc. Think of it as creating a map of your essay.

As you begin outlining it may help to write down each of your main ideas, details, examples, etc. on a separate note card, then arrange the note cards in the order that makes the most sense to you. This will create a visual and physical process of building your essay that you can then turn into a written outline. Your outline can be as formal or informal as you wish (or as required by your assignment).  For more information, see How to Write an Outline.

Write a rough draft.

Once you have an outline, sit down and write out a beginning-to-end rough draft of your essay. Your rough draft does not need to be perfect, or even good. Think of the rough draft of your essay as a test run of your ideas and structure, and just write. The most important thing is to get all of your ideas and information on the page; this isn’t the time to worry about grammar or sentence structure or spelling. Once you’ve written a rough draft you should know if the general ideas behind your essay are sound—if you can get from beginning to end and still make sense, if you have enough supporting details, if you’ll be able to fulfill that three page minimum.

Then revise.

After you’ve written a rough draft, it’s time to revise. Ideally, you should give yourself enough time to take a break (at least a day) between writing the rough draft and revising. This way you can approach your ideas and thought processes with a fresh perspective. The purpose of revising your essay is to fine-tune your writing, the flow of your ideas, and any finer details (like citations or dialogue).

Re-read your essay before revising and ask yourself questions like: Can I make this clearer? Can I add more detail? Can I show this instead of telling it? Where I can expand (or cut out)? Can I use an outside source or example to make my point stronger?

It’s a good idea to revise more than once, using different revisions as separate opportunities to address different aspects of your essay, such as clarity of ideas, flow of logic, use of detail, use of outside sources, paragraph and sentence structure, etc. In some writing classes you will be asked to turn in multiple revisions of your essay before producing a final draft; this is a good habit to learn and practice

Don't plagiarize. Avoid cliche ideas and formats.

Plagiarism—using (stealing) someone else's ideas, words, or intellectual property without acknowledgement, effectively passing them off as your own—is a serious offense. Many colleges and universities consider expulsion an acceptable repercussion for student plagiarism, and plagiarizing in a professional position can cost someone their job and reputation. If you want to borrow from someone else to back up your own ideas, do so with proper acknowledgement in your essay. Ask your teacher or a writing tutor to help you cite your sources and learn about MLA and APA, the main styles of writing with sources.

And along the same lines, try hard to find your own ideas and ways of saying things in your essay. Don’t simply repeat common knowledge (unless you absolutely can’t avoid it—like in a research paper on American politics) and try to avoid using cliché sayings in your writing. Don’t rely on the five paragraph theme for your essay structure. Make the effort to make your essay unique, written in your voice for your own purpose.