Essay writing tips
Not sure how to get started with an assignment? Here are our top tips to help you avoid all-nighters.
Plan first, write later
Plan your essay in bullet points before you start writing it. This makes it easy to have an overview of your essay and structure your argument so you know what to write. Make your points follow on from one another so your argument builds to a logical conclusion. Once you have all your points in order, then start writing.
You don't need to have done 100% of your research to start writing your essay. Make notes as you research and organise these into key points. Use these as the basis for your bullet points. (Reference the source for your notes as you go — this will make referencing your essay later much easier.)
Once you have your bullet list essay outline, you can start writing — one bullet point at a time. This makes essay writing more manageable than trying to think about the whole piece at once. If you struggle to expand on a bullet point, you probably need to do more research. The good news? You only need to focus your research on this missing bit of information.
You don't need to tackle your bullet points in order. It's usually best to focus on whichever one you have the most information for or are in the mood to write about. You can go back and fill the gaps in any earlier bullet points later, once you’ve made some progress with the rest of your essay and built some momentum.
(Mildly interesting fact: professional writers use "TK" as a placeholder for missing information. If you use a similar method, you can go back and search for "TK" once you've finished your first draft, then tackle each missing item one at a time until your essay draft is complete.
Keep writing and editing separate
Don't worry about word count or try to edit your essay while writing your first draft. Your first goal is to expand on each bullet point until you get all the way through your essay. The quality of writing in your first draft doesn't matter. What matters at the start is momentum. You can fix the word count by adding or removing words and tightening up your writing so it reads well after you've finished your first draft.
Once your first draft is written, you're ready to proofread and edit it. It's usually helpful to put your first draft aside for a few hours (ideally overnight) once you've finished it and come back to it with fresh eyes to edit it. you have two goals for this stage:
1. Edit for clarity
2. Edit for wordcount
Go through it sentence by sentence and ask yourself these questions:
· Have I said what I wanted to say?
· Does it make sense?
· Is this the best way to say it?
If you are under your word count, look for areas where you can give more detail to improve the clarity or strength of your argument.
If you are over your word count, look for places where you have repeated yourself or are over-explaining things. Also, look for ways you can restructure sentences to make them shorter. This can be challenging. It's usually easier to add words than cut them, but there should be parts of your first draft that are the written equivalent of "thinking aloud."
You can often cut many words by focusing on these areas and turning whole paragraphs into single sentences. Similarly, long, complicated sentences can often be split into two or three simple short sentences that improve clarity and reduce your total wordcount.
Do the details last
Add references and formatting at the end. It's much quicker to write and edit your first draft if you don't worry about formatting and referencing at this early stage. Once you've edited for clarity and length, read back through your essay one final time, and format your text and add references as you go. Once you get to the end of this final pass, you are done.
You can (kind of) apply this approach to non-essay projects. Outline a project plan first before you get stuck in. If you plan well and make your decisions on paper before you start to execute your project, you're less likely to run into unforeseen problems part-way through and you should get a better finished project with less effort and stress as a result.
Essay writing summary
1. Start your essay by making a bullet point outline. This will break your essay into manageable bite-sized chunks. Your outline will expand and get reordered as you do your research
2. Once you're happy with your bullet point essay outline, write your first draft by expanding on each point. If any points are hard to expand on, move on to the next point. come back later and do more focused research on any missing points
3. Write your first draft quickly. Momentum is your friend. Don't worry about word count. You can add or remove words later when you edit it
4. Once you've finished your first draft, go back and fill in any missing points. Once you've done this, read through your essay and edit it for clarity and length. Short, simple sentences help with both of these, so use fewer commas and more full stops.
5. Once you have an edited essay of appropriate length, give it a final read-through, add references, and format it so it is presentable and easy to read.
