Essay Writing: The Basics

Organising Your Ideas

Now begin organising your thoughts into an answer. Your notes should help you to do this.

Thinking it Through

Essay writing requires both creative and critical thinking.

• Creative thinking encourages you to broaden your ideas. Try techniques like brainstorming or mindmapping.
• Critical thinking encourages you to narrow the focus or scope of your ideas (for example, asking why an example is important to your argument). Your essay should include both points in favour of an against your argument. You need to evaluate these points - that is, explain why one argument is more important than the other.

Essay Plans

An essay plan can help you work out how you will answer the question and which information you will use. Essay plans also help with structuring an essay. After you have done some reading, draw up an initial essay plan:

• Decide on a possible answer to the question (in terms of the research you have done)
• Decide on the information you will use to answer the question
• Look through your notes and choose examples to provide evidence to support your point of view
• Decide which points you will discuss, and in which order (first, second, etc.)
• Write all this down in point form and this will be your essay plan
• Your essay will probably change as you draft and edit. Write a second essay plan after you write a draft.

Next Step: Writing your essay