How to Write an Essay By Jennifer Betts, B.A.

, Staf f Writer

UPDATED SEPTEMBER 14, 2022

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Essays are common in middle school, high school and college. You
may even need to write essays in the business world (although they
are usually called reports at that point). An essay is defined as a short
piece of writing that expresses information as well as the writer's
opinion. Learn how to write an essay using 8 simple steps.
8 Steps to Writing an Essay

For some, writing an essay is as simple as sitting down at their

computer and beginning to type. But a lot more planning goes into
writing an essay successfully. If you have never written an essay
before, you struggle with writing and want to improve your skills, or
you're tasked with writing an essay fast, it is a good idea to follow a
number of important steps in the essay writing process.

For example, to write an essay, you should generally:

• decide what kind of essay to write

• brainstorm your topic
• research the topic
• choose a writing style
• develop a thesis
• outline your essay
• write your essay
• edit your writing to check spelling and grammar

While this sounds like a lot of steps to write a simple essay, if you
follow them you will be able to write more successful, clear and
cohesive essays.

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1. Choose the Type of Essay

The first step to writing an essay is to define what type of essay you
are writing. There are four main categories into which essays can be
grouped:

• Narrative essay - Tell a story or impart information about your

subject in a straightforward, orderly manner, like in a story.
• Persuasive essay - Convince the reader about some point of
view.
• Expository essay - Explain to the reader how to perform a given
process. You could, for example, write an expository essay with
step-by-step instructions on how to make a peanut butter
sandwich.
• Descriptive essay - Focus on the details of what is going on. For
example, if you want to write a descriptive essay about your trip
to the park, you would give great detail about what you
experienced: how the grass felt beneath your feet, what the park
 benches looked like, and anything else the reader would need to
feel as if he were there.

Knowing what kind of essay you are trying to write can help you
decide on a topic and structure your essay in the best way possible.
Here are a few other types of essays:

• Argumentative essay - Take a position on a controversial issue

and present evidence in favor of your position. If you’ve been
assigned an argumentative essay, check out these top 10
argumentative essay topics.
• Compare and contrast essay - Identify similarities and
differences between two subjects that are, typically, under the
same umbrella.
• Problem solution essay - Describe a problem, convince the
reader to care about the problem, propose a solution, and be
prepared to dismantle objections.
• Informative essay - Educate the reader on a particular topic with
facts.

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2. Brainstorm Your Topic

You cannot write an essay unless you have an idea of what to write
about. Brainstorming is the process in which you come up with the
essay topic. You need to simply sit and think of ideas during this
phase.

• Write down everything that comes to mind as you can always

narrow those topics down later.
• Use clustering or mind mapping to brainstorm and come up with
an essay idea. This involves writing your topic or idea in the
center of the paper and creating bubbles (clouds or clusters) of
related ideas around it.
• Brainstorming can be a great way to develop a topic more deeply
and to recognize connections between various facets of your
topic.
 • Once you have a list of possible topics, it's time to choose the
best one that will answer the question posed for your essay. You
want to choose a topic that is neither too broad nor too narrow.

If you are given an assignment to write a one-page essay, it would be

far too much to write about "the history of the U.S.," since that could fill
entire volumes of books. Instead, you could write about a specific
event within the history of the United States: perhaps signing the
Declaration of Independence or when Columbus discovered the
Americas.

Choose the best topic idea from among your list and begin moving
forward on writing your essay. But, before you move forward, take
heed of these topics to avoid.

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3. Research the Topic

Once you have done your brainstorming and chosen your topic, you
may need to do some research to write a good essay. Go to the library
or search online for information about your topic. Interview people who
might be experts in the subject.

Keep your research organized so it will be easy for you to refer back
to. This also makes it easier to cite your sources when writing your
final essay.
4. Choose a Writing Style

The writing style that you choose for your essay is dictated by your
teacher or the topic of your paper. In general, there are three writing
styles you might come across in high school and college.

• MLA (Modern Language Association) is designed for humanities

and language arts essays. It uses the author-page number
citation style. This is the most common writing style used by high
school and college students.
 • APA (American Psychological Association) uses the author-date
citation style and was created for social science and psychology
research papers and essays. It is the second most common
writing style out there.
• Chicago Manual of Style, also known as Turabian, has two
writing styles: author-date and notes-bibliography. Mostly used
by college students and professionals, the author-date style
works for scientific papers, while notes-biblio makes arts and
humanities papers a breeze.

Each different writing style has its own unique format for in-text and
reference list citations.

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5. Develop a Thesis

Your thesis statement is the main point of your essay. It is essentially

one sentence that says what the essay is about. For example, your
thesis statement might be "Dogs are descended from wolves." You
can then use this as the basic premise to write your entire essay,
remembering that all of the different points throughout need to lead
back to this one main thesis. You should usually state your thesis in
your introductory paragraph.

Additionally, the thesis statement should be broad enough that you

have enough to say about it, but not so broad that you can't be
thorough. To help you structure a perfectly clear thesis, check out
these thesis statement examples.
6. Outline Your Essay

The next step is to outline what you are going to write about. This
means you want to essentially draw the skeleton of your
paper. Writing an outline can help to ensure your paper is logical, well
organized and flows properly. If you’ve been tasked with an
argumentative essay, here’s the best formula for an argumentative
essay outline.
 • Start by writing the thesis statement at the top, then write a topic
sentence for each paragraph below that. This means you should
know exactly what each of your paragraphs is going to be about
before you write them.
• Don't jumble too many ideas in each paragraph or the reader
may become confused.
• Ensure you have transitions between paragraphs so the reader
understands how the paper flows from one idea to the next.
• Fill in supporting facts from your research under each paragraph.
Make sure each paragraph ties back to your thesis and creates a
cohesive, understandable essay.

Does your teacher follow the APA guidelines for writing papers? If so,
these APA outline format examples should help you pull it all together.
As you progress into the meat of the essay (following our tips below),
these APA format examples should prove beneficial! Or, if MLA is
your teacher’s preferred style, check out these MLA format examples.

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7. Write the Essay

Once you have an outline, it’s time to start writing. Write based on the
outline itself, fleshing out your basic skeleton to create a whole,
cohesive and clear essay.

You’ll want to edit and re-read your essay, checking to make sure it
sounds exactly the way you want it to. Here are some things to
remember:

• Revise for clarity, consistency and structure.

• Support your thesis adequately with the information in your
paragraphs. Each paragraph should have its own topic sentence.
This is the most important sentence in the paragraph that tells
readers what the rest of the paragraph will be about.
• Make sure everything flows together. As you move through the
essay, transition words will be paramount. Transition words are
the glue that connects every paragraph together and prevents
 the essay from sounding disjointed. You can even use a list of
transition words to help get you started.
• Reread your introduction and conclusion. Will the reader walk
away knowing exactly what your paper was about?

In your introduction, it’s important to include a hook. This is the line or

line that will lure a reader in and encourage them to want to learn
more. For more on this, check out how to write a hook. And, to help
you formulate a killer conclusion, scan through these conclusion
examples.
8. Check Spelling and Grammar

Now the essay is written, but you're not quite done. Reread what
you've written, looking out for mistakes and typos.

• Revise for technical errors.

• Check for grammar, punctuation and spelling errors. You cannot
always count on spell check to recognize every spelling error.
Sometimes, you can spell a word incorrectly but your misspelling
will also be a word, such as spelling "from" as "form."
• Another common area of concern is quotation marks. It’s
important to cite your sources with accuracy and clarity. Follow
these guidelines on how to use quotes in essays and speeches.
• You might also want to consider the difference between quoting,
paraphrasing and summarizing. Quoting is reserved for lines of
text that are identical to an original piece of writing. Paraphrasing
is reserved for large sections of someone else’s writing that you
want to convey in your own words. Summarizing puts the main
points from someone else’s text into your own words.

Planning Pays Off

A lot goes into writing a successful essay. Fortunately, these tips for
writing essays can help you along the way and get you on the path to
a well-written essay. Out of all these “how-tos,” the worst thing you
could do is plagiarize someone else’s writing (intentionally or
unintentionally). Take a look at these tips and techniques for
preventing plagiarism. Other than that, we wish you great success as
you work your way to a perfect A!