How to Write an Awesome Essay
An essay is not only a demonstration of your writing, research and organizational skills, but it is a challenge, too, in hooking and maintaining the reader's interest. Whether it's a funny summary of how you spent your summer vacation or a more serious paper in which the target objective is to get a grade, win a contest or impress a college review board, an awesome essay starts with passion for your subject matter. Even if the topic has been chosen for you by someone else, it's important to examine it from all angles and choose which one provides the most latitude for a unique slant.
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Instructions
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Decide what you're going to write about. Whether the topic of your essay is your own idea or one that's been assigned by your teacher, make a preliminary list of everything you already know about it and a secondary list of what you don't know and will need to research. Let's say, for example, you're writing an essay about homelessness. You've seen homeless people on the street but perhaps haven't pondered until now the reasons behind their plight or what kind of government services are available if they're hungry, sick, mentally ill or become victims of crimes. Make a list of questions and identify potential sources such as books, newspapers and experts that can provide answers.
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Compose a thesis statement for your essay and keep this in front of you when you start doing your writing. A thesis statement summarizes what your essay is about and will keep you focused. Using the topic of homelessness as an example, your thesis statement might read, "The line between those who have nothing and those who have everything is much thinner than the latter might like to believe." This sets up the premise of how materialism has come to define human worth in our society.
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Create a five-part working outline for your essay. The first and last sections are for your introduction and conclusion. The three sections that comprise the bulk of your essay can be written in several ways. If, for example, you're writing an essay about historical events, the content would be presented in a linear fashion starting with the oldest event and working forward. If the purpose of your essay is to explain how something works, you'd start with simple concepts first and proceed to more complex material. A third option--and one which would work well for the essay on homelessness--is to devote each of the three sections to a separate story/case study that can be compared and contrasted with the other two.
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Open your essay with a strong hook to grab the reader's attention. One way to do this is to pose a dramatic question the reader may not have previously considered.
Examples:
Where would you sleep tonight if you had no money and no one to take you in?
How much of your identity would fit in a shopping cart?
What are you really worth as a human being?Another good strategy is open your essay with statistics.
Examples:
Almost 70 percent of Bay City's homeless population are women.
By the year 2015, one in 10 Californians will be homeless.
Teenagers comprise the fasting growing homeless population.Another popular route for essay openings is a thought provoking quotation. Topical sayings can be found in reference books such as "Bartlett's Book of Familiar Quotations" as well as websites like Brainy Quote (http://www.brainyquote.com), Quote Land (http://www.quoteland.com) and The Quote Garden (http://www.quotegarden.com).
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Tips & Warnings
Always assemble your research materials before you start writing so you don't have to go hunting for them and risk losing your train of thought. Keep a dictionary and thesaurus on hand as well.
References
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