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Unsurprisingly, writing an essay is more of an art than a science. The format entails an author asserting their opinion on a variety of topics – and though most of us write academic essays as a part of our education, there are also humorous, editorial, and many more different types of essays.

In truth, there are countless approaches to the craft of essay writing and an infinite number of topics to cover – but, ultimately, the end products that we define as high-quality essays usually have a similar structure. And if you want your essay to count itself among them, follow the basic essay writing guide we’ll outline below! 

The Importance Of A Thesis Statement

Once you start working on your essay, writing right away isn’t the best idea. Instead, you need to consider a few things: the type of essay you’re writing, your audience, and its thesis. And of those three, the thesis is arguably the most important part. In many ways, it’s the centerpiece of the entire essay. 

The thesis, which you’ll express in a short thesis statement, represents the main point that your writing is supposed to make. And while an occasional tangent into a related topic is allowed and may be necessary, it’s vital for the essay to always return to its core idea and central theme. 

So, writing down your thesis statement before you start working on anything else is extremely advisable. And don’t underestimate this part – it’s rarely easy to describe a complex idea in a single sentence or two short ones. If you feel like you’re stuck, just think about this: if there was one thing you could ensure your readers keep in mind after reading the essay, what would it be?

When you have that, the rest of the essay expands on the thesis, argues its merits, and cements it. You can do this through logical deductions, testimonials, empirical evidence, and, if you’re particularly adept at that, persuasive opinionated rhetoric. 

Just remember – sticking to the essay topic is the most important part of your essay writing process. 

How To Write An Essay: The Process

Regardless of what you’re writing, it’s always advisable to follow a specific writing process, one that will streamline your creativity and result in the most efficiently-written piece. And in the case of essays, we can boil down the process into five standard steps, which we’ll get into below. 

Idea Brainstorming

Generally, you can expect to produce a lackluster and incoherent essay if you simply write things as they come to mind. Instead, we recommend collecting your ideas and doing some thinking beforehand.

This part of the process is what we refer to as “brainstorming.” In it, you will try to generate multiple ideas related to your thesis and writing prompt. Allocate as much time to this task as you can, and try to come up with a bunch of ideas that you can test and see what works. 

Preparation

In this phase, we haven’t started writing just yet. Before that part begins, you must perform all the necessary preparations. In the case of an essay, that means isolating the truly essential ideas that stemmed from the brainstorming session. Then, you can organize those in a progressive, logical manner that will ensure your essay has a proper flow. 

Once you’ve done that, you can start gathering all the required citations and evidence. If you feel confident that you’ve got all the needed information, you can start writing the citations. Just make sure you’re following the style guide you’ve been given. In most cases, citations are written in either Chicago, APA, or MLA; each style comes with its own requirements and rules. 

First Draft

Finally, we arrive at the first stage of your essay where you’ll actually do some writing. At this juncture, you’ll use all of the information you’ve gathered and the outlines you’ve created to come up with the first draft of your essay. And remember – this is merely the first draft, so the essay isn’t supposed to be perfect. You’ll return to it and root out errors and logical fallacies later. 

Revisions

When the first draft is done, it’s time to start working on all the subsequent ones – your second and third drafts. Of course, if you have time and feel like you need to revise, even more, feel free to do so. Here, the main point is to focus on all the subtleties and nuances that your first draft might have glossed over. 

Proofreading

Finally, once you’ve dealt with the more significant revisions, it will be time to deal with your final touches. That includes proofreading for grammatical mistakes, formatting problems, misspellings, etc. If you want your essay to be spotless by the time you submit it, use an essay checker like https://prowritingaid.com/essay-checker. 

And that’s pretty much it – at least, from a general standpoint. Most essays will have some specifics that need to be addressed, but there aren’t many topics that you can’t cover successfully as long as you stick to this kind of systematic writing.