Essay Writing Strategy: Step by Step

Essay writing is a complex process, which combines several types of mental activity, including learning and analyzing information as well as putting thoughts down on paper. The latter statement is rather metaphorical these days as the majority of people prefer to type their works, but the thinking behind remains the same: students have to express themselves in a proper manner. Writer’s block often occurs at the beginning when the amount of work seems so tremendous that there is not a tiny bit of the desire to start. This guide is meant to clarify the necessary stages of writing an essay. Each step is sorted out, which makes this post from our college essay writing service a handy algorithm of dealing with academic writing. So, let’s start from the beginning.

Preliminary stage

Before starting to write, everyone should analyze information in the first place. Dig out researches and studies related to the topic of the essay; these may lead to further sources if one chooses to analyze and “borrow” the references given in the end. Once you have enough information at your disposal, get familiar with it. It is likely that different sources will coincide in opinions, but coming across contradictions is useful, too. It gives an opportunity to analyze the subject deeper and maybe even find out who was right in the previous debate.

Useful strategies for the preliminary stage include:

• Brainstorming, when you put down all thoughts and ideas related to the topic. Not all of them turn out relevant during the next stages, but having a lot to choose from always creates a beneficial working environment.
• Creating graphics and memos that show vital information and the way it is interconnected with the subject.
• Drawing up a plan for the future essay. Do not forget who the audience will be; this keeps you as an author organized and prevents drifting away from the subject.

Working on a rough copy

The purpose of this stage is to let ideas flow and develop into a steady work, and not in terms of grammar just yet. At this point it is important to stick with the initial plan. If it needs some amendments, make them, but the necessity to neglect the plan completely means failure in determining the goal and the means of analyses. In this case it is better to return to the previous stage and rewrite the plan completely. Otherwise the writing will get mixed up just because of the differences between what seemed relevant to the essay during the preliminary phase and what really is.

Once the plan matches the goal, it is time for a rough copy. Although it will undergo editing later on, a good idea will be to organize the structure straight away. It turns out easier to divide a text in paragraphs at the writing stage rather than during editing – such a strategy saves a lot of time and helps to estimate writing progress objectively.

Each paragraph should start with an introductory sentence and end with a concluding one. Professionals from our online services claim that there is one very efficient way to check the quality of your paragraphs. If a reader can scan through the essay, catching out only the first and the last sentence from each paragraph, and still understand the main idea of the paper, then it is very well organized. All the sentences in-between must present argumentation, but the first and the last one convey what is most important.

Checking the meaning content

Once a draft is ready, take a short break, drink some coffee or tea to renew energy, and then come back to work. Now priority number one is to check whether all the statements in the essay come in the right order and contribute to the topic. The thoughts must be linked together, forming a study on a specific subject. Each paragraph has to add something to the general idea, and each sentence – to help you reach out to the readers. What utterly important here is to stick with the subject, and not allow any digressions from it. Only essential and – highly recommended – factual data must be included in an academic essay.

The stage of revision should not be overlooked because in the process of active writing only true geniuses do not make any semantic errors. We suggest improving the draft using the next sequence of actions:

• Make sure that the essay has 3 main parts: introduction (if this presents difficulties, firstly learn how to write an introduction properly for different kinds of essays), main body and conclusion.
• Check all the necessary transitions between different thoughts (taking into account that each paragraph should develop only one idea, you have to establish links between paragraphs if it was not done previously).
• Reorganize (rearrange) the content if this step is necessary to simplify the perception of the paper. Alternatively, some students may need to change the order of paragraphs to make the study logical. Analyze for yourself how good the content is organized from the standpoint of presenting a research.
• Delete superfluous sentences that are not relevant to the topic. If there are not any, well done!
• Ensure that the essay does not lack vital arguments and/or examples.
• Supply each quotation with an appropriate academic reference to it. Even if you borrowed an idea but decided to change the wording, it is still better to give a reference to the original source, just to be on the safe side.

By now the message conveyed in the essay must have improved a lot, so it is time to move on to more formal amendments, such as grammar and formatting.

Editing before submission

In this guide by editing we mean enhancing the vocabulary and the overall appearance of a document. It is no secret that informal words and phrases have nothing to do with academic writing, so if some of them have slipped into the work, they must be crossed out during editing. The same applies to the use of contractions. Do not forget to check the font, too, before turning the paper in. All these formalities may seem absurd to a novice, but they are really crucial in academia.

It is a pretty good idea to level up grammar skills to the degree that allows you to check grammar in essays all by yourself. However, people with perfect grammar are not so common in the modern world. Everyone has their strong and weak sides, and if academic English is your weak one, then turning to professionals for editing is the only winning solution.

Although here we included only grammar and formatting in the editing stage, editing in a broader sense means significantly more. Placing an order at our company, you get the result that combines two aspects at once: these are the content of an essay and the quality of its language. In other words, editing from Smart Essay Rewriter spares our clients from two steps out of four in essay writing. Do not hesitate before choosing to work with us, and get half of the work done by professionals.

All in all, we can single out four stages of writing a college paper. The preliminary one comes first, after which it is time for creating a draft. Revising and editing the rough copy enables to finish the assignment and finally turn it in. Our online writing company can help in two ways: either to undertake half the task (editing, proofreading or revision), or we can write the whole essay from scratch. Go to the order page and get to know the prices for each service. You will see for yourself that working with this website is a real bargain.