Oh, Essays...

Looky here, I got another request for a blog post!

Today we're talking about essays, and how to get them started. I know, they're a pain a lot of the time, but we all have to write them at some point (or had to, depending on your education status).

My best advice to you is to never start in the beginning.

Here's my method for writing essays (and yes, I was very good at writing essays ;-P):

1. Write down all the things you know about your topic.

No, that doesn't mean write an outline. In fact, I highly discourage outlines, because they severely limit what you can do with your essay. Start out by seeing what you have, what data you can find, and what knowledge you already have in your noggin.

2. Organize those ideas, coupling together those that play off each other.

No, that doesn't mean write an outline. ;-)
Based off the information from step 1, you now know what you have the most data on and can write the best argument for (assuming you're writing an argument, as this is what most teachers these days are looking for in solid essays).

After this, we'll get into the meat of the matter.

3. Start in the middle.

Never write your intro first. I almost always recommend writing the intro after you've written the main bulk of your data, so you can customize your intro to match what you've already written.

Many teachers will tell you that this is a bad idea, but I can't even tell you how many essays I wrote in high school where I ended up rewriting the entire intro paragraph because it didn't match the rest of anything that I'd written. 

4. Once you've finished the body of the essay, write the intro.

I think I've already covered that fairly neatly... 

5. After you've written the intro, write the conclusion.

Yes, I do generally save the conclusion for last. I do this because generally the conclusion is the same thing as the intro, just with more answers and less questions. So once you have your intro in place, writing the "outro" is simple enough to do.


I know, it's a little convoluted and sometimes hard to follow, but it's the best advice I have.

I do not, however, recommend writing like this when you're working with short stories or novels. In those, you generally want to start with the beginning and end with the end.

I hope that this helps! If you have any more questions on my method, let me know and I'll answer your question or write another blog to elaborate.

[love]

{Ardy... get it?}