Hey there kids! It’s Demi, back again for writing tips! It’s almost time for school to start, so you know what that means - essays! Oh boy! Here are my very own notes on writing essays, for my own reference while writing and compiled through experience and by express instruction of my amazing AP English teacher. You can look at them and try to keep them in mind, or alternatively print them out and keep them around for reference while writing and editing. I have more for my own reference in my handy-dandy file folder, like essay rubrics and commentary on other essays so I wouldn’t make the same mistakes again. Most of the key elements from those things have been used in my essay writing tips. Moving on, first the tips if you’re confident in your method, and then I’ll outline some steps for writing a literary essay. If you’re writing a research paper, you’ll want to do things a little differently, but that’s not too hard when you know your way around a good essay.

- Start with a strong thesis. Don’t use something obvious; try to have a little creativity and insight. Don’t go overboard (Ross from MacBeth is secretly a witch!) but look for a way to make your own interesting conclusions. Your thesis should also be very clear and extremely well written. Your thesis should be the strongest sentence of your entire essay. It is the most important one, so pay attention to it. Rewrite it as many times as necessary.

- Start your paragraphs with topic sentences. These are basically a mini-thesis that introduce the subject of your paragraph. To test your topic sentences, combine them with your thesis to create a small paragraph. If this paragraph works well and sums up the major points of your essay, congrats! You’ve got nice, strong arguments to support your original thesis.

        Example from a short essay I wrote comparing Jane Eyre and Elizabeth Bennet, from Jane Eyre and Pride and Prejudice respectively: While the author’s styles of writing may differ, the protagonists of Jane Eyre and Pride and Prejudice share many common features. First and foremost, Jane Eyre and Elizabeth Bennet are strong female characters, both self-assured and determined to be the equal of the men in their lives. After initially rejecting the advances of their future soul mates, Jane and Elizabeth are unable to forget the chances they were given. When they are finally married to their respective husbands, both characters are sublimely happy.

        There’s a slight jump between the second topic sentence and the third, but overall I think that’s a pretty decent paragraph to sum up the main points of my essay. It flows well enough, and it establishes what I’m going to write about, and then elaborates my key arguments. If you have something like this, you know for sure that you’ve got good topic sentences. Then you just need to add good paragraphs onto them!

- Have textual support for your arguments - plainly put, use direct quotes to prove you aren’t pulling things out of your butt. You can use quotes from your source material (book, play, whatever you may be writing about) or quotes from things you’ve researched - as long as it’s related to what you’re trying to prove. Being able to back up your argument with real references will make you look smart, and smart people are sexy.

- Analyze the quotes you’ve sprinkled throughout your essay. Don’t just throw them in there - explain why you picked them, or what they mean and whether or not you agree with them. That’s a little secret - you can quote someone making the opposite argument that you are, and then proceed to prove them wrong. You don’t need to, and in fact shouldn’t, just research things that go along with your argument. Providing a counterpoint, and why it’s wrong, will improve the overall argument of your essay. It’s very easy to make a biased essay, so researching the opposite point of view will help tie things together. You’ll be able to refer to every other point you’ve made, and then make a few new ones.

        Secret PROTIP: You don’t need to quote an entire block of text, or even an entire sentence. You can grab pieces of a quote and integrate them into a sentence just to avoid having to think and sound like you know your stuff.

        Example from the introduction of my Animal Farm essay: The other animals believe that “with their superior knowledge it was natural that the pigs assume leadership” (17), yet they never question the decisions made by the pigs. By following the pigs like figurative (and literal) sheep, the residents of Animal Farm allow the totalitarian regime to flourish unquestioned and unopposed.

        First sentence: Quote integration. See how I got out of actually writing a sentence by quoting the novel? Shows I know the book well enough to incorporate it, and just sounds nicer than whatever I would have written. Also sets up an argument for later.

        Second sentence: Thesis. The topic was the importance of questioning leadership. Important things to note: literary devices. Always a plus for making a shiny thesis statement. Your thesis statement should be catchy and flashy, enough to stand out in your reader’s mind. They should know it’s your thesis, and remember it too.

- Use transitions. Don’t just go straight into a new topic without any kind of obvious connection between the two. This will also help your essay’s organization - if you can’t connect two topics, don’t put them beside one another. Your essay should flow naturally from one thing to another. The final sentence of your paragraph should end things in a way that brings it into the first of your next paragraph. Sentences should also have transitions - however, yet, honestly, moving on, things like that. Google it if you don’t know what they are. Don’t overuse the same transitions repeatedly - every second sentence shouldn’t start with “however, …”, so have a bit of variation. Google a list of transitions if you want to add some variety.

- There are two components to the “sound” of your essay: the style, and the voice. The voice is simple enough, and something to be determined by the purpose of your essay: there is the academic voice, the jovial voice, the sarcastic voice, etc. Your audience determines your voice. This should stay the same throughout your entire essay, and you’ll notice that any time you stray from that it will be very strange for your readers. If you’re writing a serious, academic paper, don’t try to make a joke like you would with your friends. If you’re writing a funny internet article for your funny internet friends, don’t try to sound like a genius.

        Style, however, is something that can vary from sentence to sentence. A short sentence with simple words, or a long, overly wordy sentence. You can use both in your essays, and in fact, you should, because if you have a three page essay with only twenty sentences, you’ve done something wrong. Likewise, you shouldn’t split each of your sentences into three tiny ones because you think it looks cooler to have that many periods. Mix it up and show that you’re capable of writing the way you need to, rather than just the way you want to. Sometimes, a long, flowery sentence is perfectly called for. Other times, tiny, choppy sentences are the way to go. Experiment enough and you’ll find the proper times for both.

- Avoid hyperbole. Should be pretty obvious; don’t exaggerate. Don’t claim that the book you’re writing about is the best book ever, or that Shakespeare is the “most famous playwright of all time” (actually Shakespeare I’m really happy for you and Imma let you finish but x was greatest playwright of all time - OF ALL TIME) or whatever. This is something most people do by default to kiss their teacher’s bum and try to get a good grade, or at least increase their word count. But it sounds better if you rewrite it realistically, I swear.

- Avoid clichés. You may think that it sounds cool to say something your dad says, like “it’s better than a kick in the butt with a frozen boot, you know!” but it doesn’t really add anything to your essay. Usually you can take them out and replace them with something shorter and clearer, which will be better for your essay in the long run. Trust me on this one.

- Take out extra adjectives/adverbs. You don’t need to fully describe the darkness of Grimdark Depthless Land of Eternally Black and Sunless Darkness. Something is not both large and huge. Few things are hugely large. See what I’m getting at? Don’t repeat yourself for the sake of word count or emphasis, at least in this way. Repetition is still a literary device and you can use it that way if you want. But extra adjectives aren’t really a good way to write and make a point, rather you’re over-emphasizing a point you’ve already made.

- Take out extra prepositions. At, under, on, in, of, in the, etc. “In the bedroom under the bed that’s on the floor in the house of the murder.” It makes it very hard to understand what exactly is going on, so try to rewrite your sentence and avoid having multiple prepositions unless you absolutely have to.

- Avoid using a “passive voice.” Try not to use words such as: am, are, was, were, be, been, being. Typically, words like that are used to make a sentence overly formal and make your point sound weak. “The poetry of the 18th century was typically written by aristocrats, but now it is being written by people who are far less well off, many of whom have never even been waited on hand and foot.” What, exactly, am I trying to say there? Who knows? You may not want to go to this level of nitpicking over your vocabulary, but removing these words and rewriting the sentence will be a rewarding challenge if you can find a better way. It makes your arguments tighter and just… it’s something you only notice as a complete overhaul. Entirely passive to none at all.

- Some word nitpicking. Much like passive voice, these are words to avoid using if you can. Much like passive voice, you can use them if you can’t possibly rewrite the sentence. Much like passive voice, your entire essay will sound better if you can avoid using them. Words to avoid forever: is, has, there, it, this, thing, have, had. It can be really hard to avoid them, and especially at first you will find them EVERYWHERE. But the more you work at removing them the less they’ll even work their way in. You will, in all honesty, become a better writer in the course of a few essays if you can rewrite your sentences to avoid them. Much like passive voice. Compare your passive, it this thing have had, essays to your ultra essays and you’ll be so happy inside.

- Something you can always add is literary devices. Some choice ones that won’t be out of place are parallel syntax (that whole “much like passive voice” thing up there), metaphors, allusions. Actually that’s pretty much it on the list of literary devices that aren’t too literary for an essay. So use those if you can.

        1. Pick a topic without being too broad or too narrow in your focus. If you aren’t very particular on your subject, you’ll get too much useless information. if you’re too specific, you won’t find enough information to make good arguments. Use your own judgement.

        2. Do a small amount of preliminary research, enough to have a slight idea of your subject. Chances are you already know something about it. Use this to create a very rough initial outline. First, create a basic thesis, with a little originality. Then give three example supporting arguments you could use for that thesis. Having an idea of what you can write about will help you pick out key information when you do your research.

        3. Armed with your outline, do in-depth research on your topic. There are two strategies here, depending on your time management skills and how early you’ve started to work on your essay. The long-term strategy is to find a lot of sources of information, without reading them until you believe you have enough to pull you through your essay. The short-term strategy is to check out each source and then find another as soon as you’ve finished with what you’ve found. With the long-term strategy, you won’t actually look like you’ve accomplished much until you start working on your information. With the short-term strategy, you know exactly how much information you have and how much you’ve accomplished at any given point in time. The main difference is that with the long-term strategy your essay will come together all at once, while the short-term essay will be a work-in-progress at all times.

        Regardless of what order you plan to gather your information in, when you do start looking into your sources, you will have to take extremely good notes so that you can actually use them to write with. Read through the article (or section in a book, or whatever) and jot down some small notes, then on your second pass write down everything that could possibly be useful in your essay. Copy down quotes that could be useful in your essay, and small phrases that could fit easily into what you write. Repeat the process with all the sources you’ve found. The basic structure of your essay should revolve around these notes. You will be relaying and explaining the information you find, so look at it like a painted Easter egg or something. The squishy insides are the information you’ve found, while the pretty shell around it is what you’ve written using that information. Nothing in your essay should come without information to back it up, and there should be some sort of reference to your research quite frequently. You didn’t make this stuff up, so your writing shouldn’t be the most important part of the essay. All you’re doing is collecting it and putting it in a nice little package, so make sure you wrap it up nice and neat.

        If you’re writing an essay about a book, your process should be slightly different. You probably won’t have time to read the book twice, and even if you do you probably won’t feel like writing afterwards. Your goal then should be to identify and isolate as much useful information as possible on your first read. Use highlighters, post-it notes, write chapter summaries, whatever works for you, so long as you can find the information you need. The more you identify as being useful, the easier it will be to write your essay. So take your time reading, and even if you don’t know what your essay will be about, pick out things that could be useful. You may end up needing it, or you may not. But the more attention you pay, the better your essay will be.

        4. After you’ve finished your research, you will likely have several pages filled with notes and scribbles on your various sources. That’s good. Now, you should have all the information you’ll need for your essay. All that’s left is to put it together. So, now that you have all your information, go back to your outline and evaluate the information you found. If you have a better thesis, start with that. Then look at your arguments and build as many as you need, based on the information you have to work with. If you can’t prove a point, don’t make it. This may not be your final outline, because you may start writing and find it doesn’t make sense, or you can’t argue a point as well as you might like. If you do decide to change your outline again, congrats, you know what you’re doing. Don’t try to fluff up a paragraph just because you need to write a certain amount, because it’s only going to bring your mark down. If 5% of your essay is based on having x paragraphs, you’d be better off losing some of those marks than writing a crappy essay. Of course, you shouldn’t need to worry about that, but what I’m trying to say is that you should write a good essay, whether it’s too short or too long. If it’s good enough, your teacher shouldn’t care whether you met the proper criteria.

        5. Now that you know what you’re going to write, it’s time to decide how you like to write. There are two different strategies here, and I would suggest trying them both to see what works for you, but if you have a gut feeling about it, go for what you like best. One strategy is to write your body paragraphs first, and then complete an introduction and conclusion afterwards. The other is to start with your introduction and write your essay in the order it will be read. I’ve done both, and each has its own benefits and drawbacks. I’ve had good and bad essays with each: waiting to write your introduction and conclusion can mean you have a really strong intro and conclusion that go well with your body paragraphs, or it can mean you have amazing body paragraphs but no strong thesis or conclusion to tie them together. If you get tired when you finish writing your essay, or run out of time, you don’t really want your intro and conclusion to suffer for it. If you write your introduction first and your conclusion last, you may end up having to change your introduction or having a weak conclusion that doesn’t fit what you’ve written. On the other hand, it may help to direct you when you’re writing your body paragraphs. It’s honestly up to you based on your writing style, so try them both and see what you like.

        6. When writing your introduction, your thesis should be absolutely clear to the reader as it should make an obvious point and establish the goal of your essay. The rest of your introduction should briefly outline your body paragraphs, and make a few observation that you’ll revisit in your conclusion. You want to get people interested in what you’re writing, so be interesting.

        The basic format for your body paragraphs should be: topic sentence, lead in to some kind of proof or example, your proof/example, then an explanation and analysis of your quote or reference. Add more proof as needed. The analysis is important, because it’s what your essay is really about; it’s you explaining what you’re actually talking about, and why you included the information you’ve included. Organize your body paragraphs in a way so that they flow nicely into eachother.

        Your conclusion is like a modified version of the introduction, now that you’ve tried to prove your point. Restate your thesis in a slightly different format, and explain the observations you’ve drawn from the information presented. This is where you make everything click, if it hasn’t explained itself yet. By reading your intro and conclusion, someone should get the key points even if they don’t really have all the information. If you think it’s incredibly important, mention it in both the introduction and conclusion.

        7. Now, your essay is done! This final step is optional, but highly recommended. You could just call it a day and hand it in, but I would recommend reading through it yourself and editing it as you see fit, then passing it around to anyone you know who might be able to help you proof-read it before handing it in. If your teacher will do this for you, get them to do so as well before you finalize your essay. The more input you get on your essay, the better it will be. When you have a finished product, the heavy lifting is basically done. Edit and revise as you see fit. Then hand it in and wait for the good news!

        Some other things you could research to improve your arguments in your essays are logical fallacies, annotation strategies (for writing essays on books or other long material), poetic devices (for literary essays), writing style problems (for adjusting your style based on your needs; one example is that passive voice is good for writing lab reports, while not so good for an english essay) and, well, anything you find your lose marks for repeatedly. Your goal should be to identify problems in your writing and correct them in the future. That’s why I’ve kept all my essays from this past year, to compare my original, less-than-stellar attempts to my later essays. Examining my older essays shows the problems with my writing style and mistakes I make repeatedly, so now I know to avoid them in the future. When you can do the same, well, you no longer need anyone else’s help to improve your writing.