How to write an essay in one hour

I’ve been answering homework questions over in Yahoo Answers, mostly in the English department. I’ve noticed that many people are missing the basics on how to write an essay, so I thought I’d put together this article to help some folks out… and because I’m tired of repeating the same thing over and over With this method, you can write an essay in about an hour.

Your basic essay has three parts and five paragraphs:

1. Opening: Usually one paragraph
2. Body: Usually three paragraphs
3. Closing: Usually one paragraph

Start with the Body

Most people start with a rambling opening that rarely has anything to do with the body and a quick closing that sounds exactly like the opening. To prevent this problem, start with the body. The body consists of (generally) three ideas that support the main idea of the essay. So now you need to answer the questions “What is my main idea?” and “What three ideas support the main one?”

Determine the Main Idea

Your main idea should describe the purpose of your writing. There are three purposes: narrative, persuasive, and expository. The purpose is what you want your audience to gain from reading your essay.

Narrative: A narrative is a sequence of events of a personal, biographical or fictional nature. What is the last event in that sequence? I.e. John Wilkes Booth murdered Abraham Lincoln to avenge the South.

Persuasive: A persuasive essay takes a particular stance for or against something. What is the stance you want people to take? I.e. Abortion is wrong because every unborn child is a potential Einstein.

Expository: An expository essay is a “how-to” piece and is similar to a narrative in some ways. What is the final product of your process? I.e. Many people are missing the basics on how to write an essay, so I put together this article.

Determine your supporting ideas

In a narrative or expository essay, you can utilize a simple sequence of events: Beginning, Middle and the End. If you want to get creative, you could take a multi-viewpoint approach. Say you were writing a narrative about 9/11. You have one event, but each paragraph could address a different viewpoint (a fireman, a mother, a Wall Street broker). For expository essays, you can use a map approach. Instead of offering a linear process, you give a map or model and then describe the map (this is the elephant’s legs, body and trunk). The important point is that it’s clearly organized.

For a persuasive essay, I recommend a thesis/antithesis/synthesis approach. Most people just offer a “this vs. that” sort of essay, but the idea is to persuade the audience so you want to tip the scale a bit in your favor. Say you were writing an essay against abortion. The thesis is the pro-life stance (your stance), the antithesis is the pro-choice stance (the other stance), the synthesis would show how the pro-life stance is appropriate because it honors women’s rights as mothers (answering the pro-choice rationale).

Get some references

Now that you have a main idea and your supporting ideas, you need to get some references. I suggest one reference for each paragraph in the body of the essay. Most people don’t have difficulties finding references, they have difficulties knowing what to quote or utilize from those references. Here’s a simple way:

Narratives: For biographies, no one tells a person’s story the same way. Look for the differences between viewpoints of biographers. Emphasize those differences in your essay. For personal or fictional narratives, add music, books, movies and other popular references to make your essay dynamic.

Expository: The main reason to offer references in an expository essay is so that people can expand their understanding of a process. Use materials written by experts that are readily available and easy to understand. If you were writing about yoga for example, you might use Yoga for Everybody as opposed to the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali.

Persuasive: For your stance, use information that everyone accepts as fact. Avoid anything radical or questionable in any way. Save that for your opponent’s stance. You want people to accept your opinion as simple common sense and the other guy’s ideas as lunacy.

Your Opening and Closing

To get people’s attention you want to create what’s called an open loop. In your opening, you give something for the reader to think about: a question, a reflection, a scene, etc. You want to answer the question, re-visit the reflection or close the scene in your conclusion. For example, in this piece, I told you that you can write an essay in an hour. I gave you a reason to read this article.

In expository essays (like this one) a good opening is to offer a benefit. In a narrative, a good action sequence leading to a climax is a good opening. In persuasion, a reflection on a particular event that leads people to re-evaluate their opinion is a good opening. There are many other ways to open, these are just some suggestions.

Your closing should give the benefit in an expository, give a twist ending to the opening scene in the narrative and a return to a reflection with a call to action in a persuasive.

Writing, Revision and How to Put this all Together in an Hour

To write an essay in an hour, you need to have a good idea what you are writing about and I hope this article has helped you do that. In one hour you are going to spend:

20 minutes brainstorming and outlining

20 minutes writing

20 minutes revising

Brainstorming and Outlining

There are many ways to brainstorm about an idea. We’re going to keep it simple so that we can make this quick. There’s a reason why brainstorming and outlining are together… because they are the same thing in this process.

Writing

If you have an egg timer or something, set it for twenty minutes and just write according to the outline. Try not to edit too much during this part (that’s why you set the timer). Allow for all the bad english you want: mis-spelllings, bad punctuation, fragments, run-ons, too many adverbs and adjectives, bad transition, etc.

Revising

It’s very important that you revise. Revision is eighty percent of writing. It is not nearly as painful or time-consuming as it may appear.

Your going to revise in three steps:

1. Global Changes: Look at the over-all essay. Is everything where it is supposed to be according to the outline? Do your transitions from one part to another make sense? Is there a transition from one part to another (opening to body to closing)?

2. Regional Changes: Read the piece out-loud. Do the paragraphs transition smoothly from one to the next? Do your sentences repeat the same statement over and over? Is there an easier (clearer) way you could write any given sentence? If there is, do it. Make your sentences short and to the point. Avoid any weird phrasing, lots of commas and multiple adjectives.

3. Local Changes: go over the spelling and punctuation. Sometimes spelling/grammar-check miss words and phrases. Tweek a sentence, use a different word here and there. This last revision can be very beneficial.

Take it to the next level

If you have any comments on this article, please feel free to add one below. If you need further help, I’d be happy to edit your essay. I will not re-write it for you. Send your essay to nedjlawrence@yahoo.com