How to Write an Essay

"Like the novel, the essay is a literary device for saying almost everything about almost anything"--Aldous Huxley One of the main objectives in high school or college English composition classes is to learn to write an effective essay. An essay is a composition meant to express and validate your point of view on something. You state a position, then you back it up with reasons. This article will demonstrate the "Sunday Sermon" method of formulating an essay. It's called that because first you tell your audience what you're going to tell them, then you tell them, then you tell them what you've just told them.

Instructions

Difficulty: Moderate

Things You’ll Need:

• Pen and Paper or
• Computer and Word Processing Software
• Reference Materials appropriate to your topic

1. Tell them what you're going to tell them. State your position. Use your first paragraph to state the topic of your essay, and your opinion on the topic. Use a simple first sentence to state your position. Follow this with simple supportive sentences that lead through your chain of logic. Close your paragraph with a simple restatement of your position.
2. Tell them. Take the various points from your first paragraph and explore them one by one. Use each one as the topic for a separate paragraph, with examples and explanations. Don't forget to close each paragraph with a summation of your point.
3. Tell them what you've told them. Write your closing paragraph. Sum up your reasons with a few sentences that finalize your point. And again, close your paragraph with a simple restatement of your position.

Tips & Warnings

• Start with an outline. It will help you organize your sequence of thoughts.
• Read the great essayists and learn from their techniques. You don't have to agree with them to learn from them. Good authors to start with are Voltaire, Joan Didion, Annie Dillard, Charles Lamb, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Thoreau, Shelley, and Gore Vidal, but there are many, many more.
• Don't complicate things. Choose a narrow topic and stick to it.
• Keep each paragraph on topic, then close it and move on.