How to Write an Essay

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How to write an essay: 8 steps

  1. Understand the question fully
    1. Revise: discuss the question with somebody else and see if they think your understanding sounds right
  2. Research and Brainstorm
    1. Revise: Get some feedback about whether your research is relevant and supports your thesis ideas
  3. Thesis Statement
    1. Revise: Pass your thesis by some people and see how it lands. Do they understand what you're talking about? Is it unclear what question you're answering?
  4. Essay Outline
    1. Pull the big ideas out of your thesis and figure out what the subtopics are going to be. These are the seeds for your body paragraph topic sentences
  5. Topic Sentence
    1. Turn the big ideas and arguments from your thesis into topic sentences that will lead off the body paragraphs
    2. They're like mini-thesis statements that you're going to use to elaborate on each of the supporting ideas in your main thesis.
  6. Body Paragraphs
    1. This is where you elaborate on each of your topics. Use
      1. Evidence
      2. Examples
      3. Rhetorical Questions
      4. Elaborate on the above.
  7. Introduction and Conclusion
    1. make a hook in the intro, and pay it off in the conclusion
  8. Revise, Edit, and Format

Every step needs to include its own revise and feedback part. Always look for ways to get feedback as early and often as you can, it will help you avoid mistakes that are much harder to fix later.

Essay writing template

Introduction

Each body paragraph

Conclusion

Review Questions