Friday, September 14, 2012

Chapter 4: Planning an Essay


The thought of writing an essay for a class can be very nerve-racking. Many students in today’s modern world have dealt with this seemingly dreadful task. In this case, people get the negatives and anxieties of writing mixed up with its entertainment. One of the beauties of writing comes from its design. In the design, the author can overview the situation, create and organize ideas, and produce a draft.

 The first thing associated with designing an essay is the overview of the situation. This includes finding the purpose, audience, topic, context and genre. These can all combine to create the essay needed for the situation. For example for a Nascar race, you wouldn’t want to drive a ’98 Honda. Also, if you want cowboys at your concert, you would play country not rap. Once you go over the provided topics, then you can go onto creating your own ideas.

Creating ideas can be both easy and very difficult. Thinking of the first couple ideas is very easy almost instant. But most of the time figuring out that last idea is a pain. This is when techniques such as freewriting and brainstorming are useful. In freewriting you write down whatever is on your mind over a given amount of time. Brainstorming is just like freewriting except you write down everything you know about a given topic. Personally, I don’t find these techniques handy when I need an idea. I usually like to talk to other people or use other sources. This is the lazy way but two thoughtful minds are better than one. Once you wrote down all your ideas, you can then organize it in many different ways to prepare it for your rough draft.

So now you have your plans and ideas to create this monster. The first thing to do is create your thesis. This is a claim of fact or as my professor says your freaking point. After generating the thesis, your provide an outline: Intro, Body, and Conclusion. Stick your thesis into your intro and plot your main ideas into your body. Start writing away. Don’t worry about mistakes, this is a draft. In the end, write the same thing in the conclusion that you wrote in the intro. Just make sure the words are rearranged to provide a different sounding paragraph.

Constructing an essay is fun. It’s like being an architect where you think of what type of building you want for what purpose, and then draw it up, and start building. The pre-planning phase is the most important when it comes to writing. 

5 comments:

Unknown said...
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Christina Feliciano said...

I really like this post because it wasn't the same boring post about writing an essay draft. The use of several similes and metaphors, for example the simile about writing an essay being similar to arquitecture provided a better understanding of what a rough draft is, which is just your ideas in a physical form. The other example I really liked in this post was the example of the '98 Honda in a NASCAR race, and the cowboy at a concert. It really put into perspective for me that my essay needs to be addressed to the audience I want to reach.

Christina Feliciano

Unknown said...

Planning and outlines are essential for high quality essay writing. As for college admission essays, they have more peculiarities which should be taken into account

jenny said...

As a teacher for Write My Essay For Me my suggestion is to take each point and list any supporting evidence that you can use to elaborate. You need definitions, statistics, examples, quotes from famous people or from psychologists (make sure to cite your sources and do not plagiarize ideas) etc...

Terry said...

I have an 8-10 page essay due for Wikipedia Page Consultant Services at the end of this week. How long will it take to write? I'm a very skilled writer but this is the first time I've had such a lengthy assignment.