How to write an essay
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Writing
Follow these general rules:
1) Every sentence has a beginning, middle and end. Start each sentence with a strong word that captures the reader’s attention. Make sure each sentence ends in a way that leads to the next and is not a dead end.
―It seems to most people that EF is an unsympathetic character‖ has a weak beginning—see how much the reader has to go through just to get to the basic idea. Try ―EF is an unsympathetic character, to some people.‖ See the difference. ―to some people‖ i mplies an exception—perhaps the writer. The reader will want to know why some people do find EF unsympathetic while others do feel sympathy.
2) The paragraph’s first statement must follow from what has been said before (or start a new train of thought). Once the first sentence is written, the rest of the paragraph must develop this thought. The last sentence must be a conclusion to the idea in this paragraph and may also lead to the next related subject of the following paragraph.
―EF is an unsympathe tic character, to most people. We first meet Ethan when the narrator…‖
This is not a good paragraph because it jumps from one idea—whether he is sympathetic or not---to when the reader first encounters EF in the novel. However, if you said, ―Ironically, when EF is first described it is in terms of the damage done to his body by some earlier injury, such as his limp, which one would think would occasion sympathy from the reader‖ this would be better as the second sentence now develops the idea stated in the first.
3) Whenever you make a statement ask yourself is it important to the essay or not? If not, don’t make it. The same with clauses—don’t add unnecessary words. Not ―I think that I feel sympathy‖ but ―I feel sympathy,‖ –the words ―I think that‖ are empty of substance and contribute nothing to the essay.
4) Move from the general to the specific and give examples of specifics to support the generalization. Concretize generalities—in other words, anchor them with specific instances. This helps the reader both understand and follow your thinking.
5) Always develop – the essay should progress from the simplest to the most complex, from the earliest to the most recent, from the youngest to the oldest, from the superficial to the profound.
In some instances, however, for stylistic reasons, you may present a developmental sequence out of order—as in EF. If you show the effects of (an accident?) (a suicide attempt?) first, this makes the reader more interested in the accident. In such a novel, the developmental sequence has to be put together by the reader.
Often novels are written retrospectively—looking back on a sequence of actions from the present. Or they may jump from past to present to past again. But always be clear in your mind as a writer that you want to develop whatever it is you are writing about—both over time and in terms of maturation or growing complexity of your thoughts.
The beginning must be elementary, the middle must develop from the beginning and go further and the conclusion must set the perspective as a whole so the reader can see the development leads to something—the conclusion.。
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