Writing an Essay
The essay section is a 25 minute test that measures your ability to write an effective essay. You need to know that in evaluating your essay, readers are looking for your essay to be well organized and properly developed. All of the main ideas should be clearly outlined and explained. It should be error free and contain a variety of examples and reasoning to explain your ideas.
Planning Stage
You should spend about 4 minutes planning and jotting down a few quick notes. Consider the position you are taking, determine a few good reasons for making your choice, some evidence or explanation that support the choice, some effective details you might include, and what order you should use to effectively present your points.
Sticking to the Plan
You should spend about 17 minutes writing your essay. Refer back to your plan, remembering that the topic requires you to make a choice or take a position, and explain your reasoning in some detail. You should also consider the criterion specified so that your essay is convincing to the addressed audience. Make sure that the language you choose communicates your ideas clearly and appropriately.
Reviewing the Plan
You should spend about 4 minutes reviewing your writing, adding or removing as necessary and making any changes needed to enhance clarity. You should make clear the answer and angle you will choose for your essay, offering a few good reasons for your choice and explaining your reasoning in some detail. As you explain the reasons for your choice, you should develop explanations for each, including such things as evidence, examples, or observations.
Brainstorming Smart
Brainstorming is a process of directing your mind toward idea generation. Every book on essays will advise you to brainstorm. It’s a method proven to be successful for several reasons. This is the point at which different writers will begin to disagree about how to brainstorm. The method of brainstorming that is recommended here is two-tier. First you have to brainstorm about what you are going to write about. You want to determine what is going to be the focus of your essay.
Example:
Sample topic: “If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be? Discuss why.”
Example Brainstorming Level 1: What should I write about?
Intelligence, looks, personality, wealth, family, friends, time, fame, etc.
Your first impulse, and honest reaction, might be to respond with something such as making yourself more beautiful, more intelligent, or more popular. But remember that you want to be able to write at length about this topic. If you choose an answer that while truthful, may sound shallow to an essay reader, such as to become more beautiful and better looking, then you probably won’t win any points with the reader.
Don’t automatically go with your first impulse. The scorer is not giving points for essays that are the most honest, but for essays that are the best written. A well-written essay needs substantial support to explain the reasoning behind your choice.
A choice such as more intelligence could sound shallow, but with a little creativity, you can turn this into an excellent essay. Instead of stating that you want to be more intelligent in order to get better grades, use deeper reasoning. Explain what you would do with that added intelligence. Give examples of how your side research into molecular biology and genetics would be greatly improved with added intelligence and enable you to have a greater chance at your goal of contributing to finding a cure for cancer or diabetes.
If you choose “more popularity” as your topic, you could discuss how you would use your popularity in order to persuade more people to support your humanitarian causes and to be a positive role model for others.
After you’ve decided which topic you are going to write about, then you should begin the second wave of brainstorming, which will be about what you want to discuss about your chosen topic, which examples you want to use and which observations you hope to present.
Example Brainstorming Level 2: You’ve chosen to write about having more free time. Now you brainstorm about what you should say to support that choice. spend more time with friends and family, work at a local homeless shelter, write a novel, open a new business, adopt some children, enjoy your hobbies, etc.
You have to have a proper balance at each level. If you spent too much time at brainstorming level 1, then you won’t have time to decide on what you want to use as examples in level 2. But if you spend too little time at brainstorming level 1, then you may not come up with a really good topic to use for your essay. A good strategy is to practice using this two level brainstorming process until you get comfortable with using it and quickly generating lots of ideas.
Making the Cuts
Once you’ve finished the brainstorming level 2 process, you should look over the supporting ideas you hope to use and the examples you’ve written down from the brainstorming process. Look back over the ideas and see which ones look the best. Which ones could you write the most about and would give you the most sound reasoning and logic to back up your initial decision of what to write about?
Make mental notes about which supporting ideas from brainstorming level 2 you hope to use, because those will be the ones that will comprise your successive body paragraphs. Your goal is to hit the high notes. Pick the best ideas you’ve developed and write about those. You only need 3-5 good ideas to write about and may have a loss of focus if you try to write about more than a few important supporting topics.
Ending at the Start
Many essay writers will start off by writing their introductory paragraph, along with the main ideas and supporting ideas that will be used, and then force fit the essay into the guidelines that they have predetermined for their essay. The problem with this is that many of the best ideas will occur to a writer while writing the essay. Rather than immediately jumping into writing your introductory paragraph, take the brainstorming ideas that you’ve developed and begin writing your essay, by expanding on each of the supporting ideas that you’ve chosen and writing your body paragraphs first.
As you write your body paragraphs, new ideas may occur to you that you would prefer to use. Rather than having to go back and make changes to your introductory paragraph, since you haven’t written it yet, you can just adopt the new ideas as you write and incorporate them into your body paragraphs.
When you’re finished writing your body paragraphs, which should each include at least one primary supporting idea, then you can go back and write your introductory paragraph and make sure that it matches up with each of your body paragraphs and covers the overall topic you are discussing.
Additionally, don’t make the mistake of writing too much in your introductory paragraph. The introduction is not where you explain your reasoning. Save your logic for the body paragraphs, and only use the introductory paragraph in order to briefly outline what you are going to discuss. Brevity is better than wordiness in an introduction.
