Hi all,
Writing essays sometimes feels like an art form I am still in the process of figuring out. In the process of writing essays in an academic setting, it has become increasingly obvious to me throughout my degree that I must be more intentional in my writing.
I have written a huge amount of essays over the last few semesters. As a result, I have started to figure out what helps me collect my thoughts and turn them into an essay that makes sense. If you are about to start writing an essay, I hope this can be a helpful resource for you alongside the other resources SASS provides!
1. Before I start an essay, I try to center myself somehow. Take a few deep breaths, make sure I have some food to munch on nearby and fill my water bottle. I always listen to the Little Women (2019) soundtrack to help myself fancy that I am Jo March wordstringing whims in a dreamy cottage. Enjoy some music while you work—research shows it can help!
2. Read the guidelines and the rubric very carefully. I like to try to find every instance in my notes, on OnQ, and in the syllabus where my professor spoke about the essay assignment. I also consolidate all the guidelines into my document into a checklist. It’s like I am Easter egg hunting for ways to understand how to do well on something!
3. Read the prompt and then dump every single idea that pops into your head immediately into a blank document. It is okay if it feels like a silly notion or something that holds little substance. Write it down still! Write down what words pop into your head, what a concept means to you, and what characters, ideas, thoughts, notions—anything that might be relevant—which you associate with the idea. Think about the topic from different perspectives. What would the question mean to you if you were five, fifty, if you lived in Victorian England, if you were a physicist, a chemist, a professional engineer—whatever feels pertinent to the subject matter. Be creative and hold nothing back. Don’t worry about being “right” or having good evidence for your musings at this stage.
4. Gather resources like you are picking the prettiest flowers to bring home to someone dear to you. Find quotes from your primary sources or results that feel cohesive with anything you’ve mused about in your brain dump. Start perusing secondary sources that touch on topics that the prompt has brought up if you are required to add these (and it can help to do so even if you’re not technically required to include secondary sources—you don’t have to do all the heavy lifting alone, so long as you reference well!).
5. In another document, start writing out different variations of potential points that feel strong. Notice little threads of common themes that could be fleshed out to become a thesis statement. Draft a thesis that connects the strongest potential points. It does not need to be elegant by any means, but it will build a foundation for a stronger thesis when you’re writing.
6. Elaborate on your strongest arguments and take the quotes from your brain dump that help support these. As you elaborate and specify the how and why of your essay, continue to edit and strengthen your thesis.
7. Omit anything in your arguments and the supporting points, including citations, that feel flimsy or useless. You want to make sure the structure of your essay is sturdy and well-supported, which will make the actual process of writing your first draft a lot easier. It’s tough to say goodbye to great ideas or novel insights, but if they don’t belong in the paper, they belong on the cutting room floor!
8. Edit your thesis again to make sure it supports your argument. Make sure it is not just a theme that is being described, but an actual argument. SASS has a lot of great resources for crafting a strong thesis on its resources page.
9. Write out the body paragraphs of your essay. Don’t try to be flowery or fancy, just get to the point of your argument and include everything you have included in your structure. Draft an introduction and conclusion too. Don’t worry about it being “good”; just make sure you have something written down that you can start editing from.
10. Edit!! Make yourself some tea and get cozy because this is where the heart of essay writing is. Delete redundant things and re-write phrases that use passive voice instead of active voice. Make sure you are citing using the proper expected format (use OWL Purdue for help if you need it!) and check for any accidental plagiarism—cite everything, and it’s better to cite too much than too little!
11. Book an appointment with SASS or use any of their resources to help guide you with the more specific, nitty-gritty aspects of your essay writing. This little guideline is intentionally vague because the expectations for format, diction, citations, structure, and content vary between disciplines and individual courses. Triple-check the checklist you made when you started the essay on everything that you will be graded on for this paper and refer to this as a guide for what you are editing to include or omit.
12. A final note on where you write – make sure you write in a place that feels inspiring and hopeful to you – I love writing essays in CoGro, or in parts of the library where the sunlight falls on my face. Wherever these writing spaces are for you, make sure that you are finding ways that your environment is adding to the ease of your writing experience instead of taking away from it.
Cheers,
Hannah