How to write an essay
The whole route from a blank page to a finished essay — unpacking the prompt, building a thesis, arguing in paragraphs, and the revising that does the real work.
A prompt and a blank page
Most essays are lost before a single word is written, in the ten minutes nobody spends thinking. A blank page is not really the enemy. A vague idea of what you have actually been asked is.
Unpack the prompt
Underline the command verb first. Discuss, compare, evaluate and describe are four different essays, and an evaluate question answered as a describe essay loses marks no matter how beautifully it is written.
Read around the topic
Read widely before you commit to anything. Aim for more sources than you will use, perhaps eight for a short essay, because the argument you can genuinely defend only appears once you know what the disagreement actually is.
Collect quotes and figures
Collect quotations as you read, with the page number attached, all in one place. Hunting for a half remembered line at midnight is the single largest waste of time in student writing, and it is completely avoidable.
Write a working thesis
A thesis is one sentence that a reasonable person could argue with. If nobody could possibly disagree, you have written a summary. Say what you claim and hint at why, then let the rest of the essay earn it.
Outline the argument
Outline in one line per paragraph. If those lines do not build on each other when you read them alone, the essay will not either, and fixing an outline costs minutes while fixing a finished draft costs hours.
Draft the introduction
An introduction does three jobs: set the ground, name the tension, state the thesis. Write yours last if it fights you, because you cannot properly introduce an argument that you have not made yet.
One claim per paragraph
One idea per paragraph, announced in the opening sentence. A reader who skims only the first line of each paragraph should still follow your entire argument, and tired examiners genuinely do read that way.
Back the claim with evidence
Then comes the proof: a quotation, a number, a documented event. Specific beats general every single time. Three thousand deaths is a fact, whereas a terrible tragedy is an opinion wearing a fact's coat.
Explain what it proves
Now the part almost everyone skips. Explain in your own words how that evidence supports the claim. Evidence never speaks for itself, and a paragraph that ends on a quotation ends without you in the room.
Answer the best objection
Attack yourself on purpose. Name the strongest objection to your case and answer it. Conceding a real point makes everything else you say more believable, while pretending no counterargument exists makes all of it less so.
Write the conclusion
A conclusion is not a rerun of the introduction. Say what follows from the argument, what it changes, or what question it leaves open, and never introduce a brand new idea in the final paragraph.
Revise the structure
Revising means moving the furniture, not dusting it. Read only your paragraph openings in order, and if the story they tell limps, cut and reorder whole sections before you touch a single comma.
Cut and tighten
Now cut. Stephen King's rule is that the second draft is the first draft minus one tenth, and almost nothing of value goes with it. Delete the throat clearing, replace the phrase in order to with the single word to, and choose the shorter word wherever both exist.
Proofread out loud
Read the whole thing out loud, slowly, to the wall if necessary. Your ear catches the missing word, the sentence with no end and the paragraph that runs out of breath, all of which your eye reads straight past.
Hand it in
Then hand it in. Good writing is never one brilliant burst of inspiration. It is a stack of small honest decisions, and the more of them you make deliberately, the better every essay after this one gets.
Watch it explain itself
Every step above is narrated aloud. Play it, or open it in the editor and make it yours — no account needed.