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How to Write an Essay

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Essay Writing Fundamentals

How to prepare to write an essay, how to edit an essay, how to share and publish your essays, how to get essay writing help, how to find essay writing inspiration, resources for teaching essay writing.

Essays, short prose compositions on a particular theme or topic, are the bread and butter of academic life. You write them in class, for homework, and on standardized tests to show what you know. Unlike other kinds of academic writing (like the research paper) and creative writing (like short stories and poems), essays allow you to develop your original thoughts on a prompt or question. Essays come in many varieties: they can be expository (fleshing out an idea or claim), descriptive, (explaining a person, place, or thing), narrative (relating a personal experience), or persuasive (attempting to win over a reader). This guide is a collection of dozens of links about academic essay writing that we have researched, categorized, and annotated in order to help you improve your essay writing. 

Essays are different from other forms of writing; in turn, there are different kinds of essays. This section contains general resources for getting to know the essay and its variants. These resources introduce and define the essay as a genre, and will teach you what to expect from essay-based assessments.

Purdue OWL Online Writing Lab

One of the most trusted academic writing sites, Purdue OWL provides a concise introduction to the four most common types of academic essays.

"The Essay: History and Definition" (ThoughtCo)

This snappy article from ThoughtCo talks about the origins of the essay and different kinds of essays you might be asked to write. 

"What Is An Essay?" Video Lecture (Coursera)

The University of California at Irvine's free video lecture, available on Coursera, tells  you everything you need to know about the essay.

Wikipedia Article on the "Essay"

Wikipedia's article on the essay is comprehensive, providing both English-language and global perspectives on the essay form. Learn about the essay's history, forms, and styles.

"Understanding College and Academic Writing" (Aims Online Writing Lab)

This list of common academic writing assignments (including types of essay prompts) will help you know what to expect from essay-based assessments.

Before you start writing your essay, you need to figure out who you're writing for (audience), what you're writing about (topic/theme), and what you're going to say (argument and thesis). This section contains links to handouts, chapters, videos and more to help you prepare to write an essay.

How to Identify Your Audience

"Audience" (Univ. of North Carolina Writing Center)

This handout provides questions you can ask yourself to determine the audience for an academic writing assignment. It also suggests strategies for fitting your paper to your intended audience.

"Purpose, Audience, Tone, and Content" (Univ. of Minnesota Libraries)

This extensive book chapter from Writing for Success , available online through Minnesota Libraries Publishing, is followed by exercises to try out your new pre-writing skills.

"Determining Audience" (Aims Online Writing Lab)

This guide from a community college's writing center shows you how to know your audience, and how to incorporate that knowledge in your thesis statement.

"Know Your Audience" ( Paper Rater Blog)

This short blog post uses examples to show how implied audiences for essays differ. It reminds you to think of your instructor as an observer, who will know only the information you pass along.

How to Choose a Theme or Topic

"Research Tutorial: Developing Your Topic" (YouTube)

Take a look at this short video tutorial from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to understand the basics of developing a writing topic.

"How to Choose a Paper Topic" (WikiHow)

This simple, step-by-step guide (with pictures!) walks you through choosing a paper topic. It starts with a detailed description of brainstorming and ends with strategies to refine your broad topic.

"How to Read an Assignment: Moving From Assignment to Topic" (Harvard College Writing Center)

Did your teacher give you a prompt or other instructions? This guide helps you understand the relationship between an essay assignment and your essay's topic.

"Guidelines for Choosing a Topic" (CliffsNotes)

This study guide from CliffsNotes both discusses how to choose a topic and makes a useful distinction between "topic" and "thesis."

How to Come Up with an Argument

"Argument" (Univ. of North Carolina Writing Center)

Not sure what "argument" means in the context of academic writing? This page from the University of North Carolina is a good place to start.

"The Essay Guide: Finding an Argument" (Study Hub)

This handout explains why it's important to have an argument when beginning your essay, and provides tools to help you choose a viable argument.

"Writing a Thesis and Making an Argument" (University of Iowa)

This page from the University of Iowa's Writing Center contains exercises through which you can develop and refine your argument and thesis statement.

"Developing a Thesis" (Harvard College Writing Center)

This page from Harvard's Writing Center collates some helpful dos and don'ts of argumentative writing, from steps in constructing a thesis to avoiding vague and confrontational thesis statements.

"Suggestions for Developing Argumentative Essays" (Berkeley Student Learning Center)

This page offers concrete suggestions for each stage of the essay writing process, from topic selection to drafting and editing. 

How to Outline your Essay

"Outlines" (Univ. of North Carolina at Chapel Hill via YouTube)

This short video tutorial from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill shows how to group your ideas into paragraphs or sections to begin the outlining process.

"Essay Outline" (Univ. of Washington Tacoma)

This two-page handout by a university professor simply defines the parts of an essay and then organizes them into an example outline.

"Types of Outlines and Samples" (Purdue OWL Online Writing Lab)

Purdue OWL gives examples of diverse outline strategies on this page, including the alphanumeric, full sentence, and decimal styles. 

"Outlining" (Harvard College Writing Center)

Once you have an argument, according to this handout, there are only three steps in the outline process: generalizing, ordering, and putting it all together. Then you're ready to write!

"Writing Essays" (Plymouth Univ.)

This packet, part of Plymouth University's Learning Development series, contains descriptions and diagrams relating to the outlining process.

"How to Write A Good Argumentative Essay: Logical Structure" (Criticalthinkingtutorials.com via YouTube)

This longer video tutorial gives an overview of how to structure your essay in order to support your argument or thesis. It is part of a longer course on academic writing hosted on Udemy.

Now that you've chosen and refined your topic and created an outline, use these resources to complete the writing process. Most essays contain introductions (which articulate your thesis statement), body paragraphs, and conclusions. Transitions facilitate the flow from one paragraph to the next so that support for your thesis builds throughout the essay. Sources and citations show where you got the evidence to support your thesis, which ensures that you avoid plagiarism. 

How to Write an Introduction

"Introductions" (Univ. of North Carolina Writing Center)

This page identifies the role of the introduction in any successful paper, suggests strategies for writing introductions, and warns against less effective introductions.

"How to Write A Good Introduction" (Michigan State Writing Center)

Beginning with the most common missteps in writing introductions, this guide condenses the essentials of introduction composition into seven points.

"The Introductory Paragraph" (ThoughtCo)

This blog post from academic advisor and college enrollment counselor Grace Fleming focuses on ways to grab your reader's attention at the beginning of your essay.

"Introductions and Conclusions" (Univ. of Toronto)

This guide from the University of Toronto gives advice that applies to writing both introductions and conclusions, including dos and don'ts.

"How to Write Better Essays: No One Does Introductions Properly" ( The Guardian )

This news article interviews UK professors on student essay writing; they point to introductions as the area that needs the most improvement.

How to Write a Thesis Statement

"Writing an Effective Thesis Statement" (YouTube)

This short, simple video tutorial from a college composition instructor at Tulsa Community College explains what a thesis statement is and what it does. 

"Thesis Statement: Four Steps to a Great Essay" (YouTube)

This fantastic tutorial walks you through drafting a thesis, using an essay prompt on Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter as an example.

"How to Write a Thesis Statement" (WikiHow)

This step-by-step guide (with pictures!) walks you through coming up with, writing, and editing a thesis statement. It invites you think of your statement as a "working thesis" that can change.

"How to Write a Thesis Statement" (Univ. of Indiana Bloomington)

Ask yourself the questions on this page, part of Indiana Bloomington's Writing Tutorial Services, when you're writing and refining your thesis statement.

"Writing Tips: Thesis Statements" (Univ. of Illinois Center for Writing Studies)

This page gives plentiful examples of good to great thesis statements, and offers questions to ask yourself when formulating a thesis statement.

How to Write Body Paragraphs

"Body Paragraph" (Brightstorm)

This module of a free online course introduces you to the components of a body paragraph. These include the topic sentence, information, evidence, and analysis.

"Strong Body Paragraphs" (Washington Univ.)

This handout from Washington's Writing and Research Center offers in-depth descriptions of the parts of a successful body paragraph.

"Guide to Paragraph Structure" (Deakin Univ.)

This handout is notable for color-coding example body paragraphs to help you identify the functions various sentences perform.

"Writing Body Paragraphs" (Univ. of Minnesota Libraries)

The exercises in this section of Writing for Success  will help you practice writing good body paragraphs. It includes guidance on selecting primary support for your thesis.

"The Writing Process—Body Paragraphs" (Aims Online Writing Lab)

The information and exercises on this page will familiarize you with outlining and writing body paragraphs, and includes links to more information on topic sentences and transitions.

"The Five-Paragraph Essay" (ThoughtCo)

This blog post discusses body paragraphs in the context of one of the most common academic essay types in secondary schools.

How to Use Transitions

"Transitions" (Univ. of North Carolina Writing Center)

This page from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill explains what a transition is, and how to know if you need to improve your transitions.

"Using Transitions Effectively" (Washington Univ.)

This handout defines transitions, offers tips for using them, and contains a useful list of common transitional words and phrases grouped by function.

"Transitions" (Aims Online Writing Lab)

This page compares paragraphs without transitions to paragraphs with transitions, and in doing so shows how important these connective words and phrases are.

"Transitions in Academic Essays" (Scribbr)

This page lists four techniques that will help you make sure your reader follows your train of thought, including grouping similar information and using transition words.

"Transitions" (El Paso Community College)

This handout shows example transitions within paragraphs for context, and explains how transitions improve your essay's flow and voice.

"Make Your Paragraphs Flow to Improve Writing" (ThoughtCo)

This blog post, another from academic advisor and college enrollment counselor Grace Fleming, talks about transitions and other strategies to improve your essay's overall flow.

"Transition Words" (smartwords.org)

This handy word bank will help you find transition words when you're feeling stuck. It's grouped by the transition's function, whether that is to show agreement, opposition, condition, or consequence.

How to Write a Conclusion

"Parts of An Essay: Conclusions" (Brightstorm)

This module of a free online course explains how to conclude an academic essay. It suggests thinking about the "3Rs": return to hook, restate your thesis, and relate to the reader.

"Essay Conclusions" (Univ. of Maryland University College)

This overview of the academic essay conclusion contains helpful examples and links to further resources for writing good conclusions.

"How to End An Essay" (WikiHow)

This step-by-step guide (with pictures!) by an English Ph.D. walks you through writing a conclusion, from brainstorming to ending with a flourish.

"Ending the Essay: Conclusions" (Harvard College Writing Center)

This page collates useful strategies for writing an effective conclusion, and reminds you to "close the discussion without closing it off" to further conversation.

How to Include Sources and Citations

"Research and Citation Resources" (Purdue OWL Online Writing Lab)

Purdue OWL streamlines information about the three most common referencing styles (MLA, Chicago, and APA) and provides examples of how to cite different resources in each system.

EasyBib: Free Bibliography Generator

This online tool allows you to input information about your source and automatically generate citations in any style. Be sure to select your resource type before clicking the "cite it" button.

CitationMachine

Like EasyBib, this online tool allows you to input information about your source and automatically generate citations in any style. 

Modern Language Association Handbook (MLA)

Here, you'll find the definitive and up-to-date record of MLA referencing rules. Order through the link above, or check to see if your library has a copy.

Chicago Manual of Style

Here, you'll find the definitive and up-to-date record of Chicago referencing rules. You can take a look at the table of contents, then choose to subscribe or start a free trial.

How to Avoid Plagiarism

"What is Plagiarism?" (plagiarism.org)

This nonprofit website contains numerous resources for identifying and avoiding plagiarism, and reminds you that even common activities like copying images from another website to your own site may constitute plagiarism.

"Plagiarism" (University of Oxford)

This interactive page from the University of Oxford helps you check for plagiarism in your work, making it clear how to avoid citing another person's work without full acknowledgement.

"Avoiding Plagiarism" (MIT Comparative Media Studies)

This quick guide explains what plagiarism is, what its consequences are, and how to avoid it. It starts by defining three words—quotation, paraphrase, and summary—that all constitute citation.

"Harvard Guide to Using Sources" (Harvard Extension School)

This comprehensive website from Harvard brings together articles, videos, and handouts about referencing, citation, and plagiarism. 

Grammarly contains tons of helpful grammar and writing resources, including a free tool to automatically scan your essay to check for close affinities to published work. 

Noplag is another popular online tool that automatically scans your essay to check for signs of plagiarism. Simply copy and paste your essay into the box and click "start checking."

Once you've written your essay, you'll want to edit (improve content), proofread (check for spelling and grammar mistakes), and finalize your work until you're ready to hand it in. This section brings together tips and resources for navigating the editing process. 

"Writing a First Draft" (Academic Help)

This is an introduction to the drafting process from the site Academic Help, with tips for getting your ideas on paper before editing begins.

"Editing and Proofreading" (Univ. of North Carolina Writing Center)

This page provides general strategies for revising your writing. They've intentionally left seven errors in the handout, to give you practice in spotting them.

"How to Proofread Effectively" (ThoughtCo)

This article from ThoughtCo, along with those linked at the bottom, help describe common mistakes to check for when proofreading.

"7 Simple Edits That Make Your Writing 100% More Powerful" (SmartBlogger)

This blog post emphasizes the importance of powerful, concise language, and reminds you that even your personal writing heroes create clunky first drafts.

"Editing Tips for Effective Writing" (Univ. of Pennsylvania)

On this page from Penn's International Relations department, you'll find tips for effective prose, errors to watch out for, and reminders about formatting.

"Editing the Essay" (Harvard College Writing Center)

This article, the first of two parts, gives you applicable strategies for the editing process. It suggests reading your essay aloud, removing any jargon, and being unafraid to remove even "dazzling" sentences that don't belong.

"Guide to Editing and Proofreading" (Oxford Learning Institute)

This handout from Oxford covers the basics of editing and proofreading, and reminds you that neither task should be rushed. 

In addition to plagiarism-checkers, Grammarly has a plug-in for your web browser that checks your writing for common mistakes.

After you've prepared, written, and edited your essay, you might want to share it outside the classroom. This section alerts you to print and web opportunities to share your essays with the wider world, from online writing communities and blogs to published journals geared toward young writers.

Sharing Your Essays Online

Go Teen Writers

Go Teen Writers is an online community for writers aged 13 - 19. It was founded by Stephanie Morrill, an author of contemporary young adult novels. 

Tumblr is a blogging website where you can share your writing and interact with other writers online. It's easy to add photos, links, audio, and video components.

Writersky provides an online platform for publishing and reading other youth writers' work. Its current content is mostly devoted to fiction.

Publishing Your Essays Online

This teen literary journal publishes in print, on the web, and (more frequently), on a blog. It is committed to ensuring that "teens see their authentic experience reflected on its pages."

The Matador Review

This youth writing platform celebrates "alternative," unconventional writing. The link above will take you directly to the site's "submissions" page.

Teen Ink has a website, monthly newsprint magazine, and quarterly poetry magazine promoting the work of young writers.

The largest online reading platform, Wattpad enables you to publish your work and read others' work. Its inline commenting feature allows you to share thoughts as you read along.

Publishing Your Essays in Print

Canvas Teen Literary Journal

This quarterly literary magazine is published for young writers by young writers. They accept many kinds of writing, including essays.

The Claremont Review

This biannual international magazine, first published in 1992, publishes poetry, essays, and short stories from writers aged 13 - 19.

Skipping Stones

This young writers magazine, founded in 1988, celebrates themes relating to ecological and cultural diversity. It publishes poems, photos, articles, and stories.

The Telling Room

This nonprofit writing center based in Maine publishes children's work on their website and in book form. The link above directs you to the site's submissions page.

Essay Contests

Scholastic Arts and Writing Awards

This prestigious international writing contest for students in grades 7 - 12 has been committed to "supporting the future of creativity since 1923."

Society of Professional Journalists High School Essay Contest

An annual essay contest on the theme of journalism and media, the Society of Professional Journalists High School Essay Contest awards scholarships up to $1,000.

National YoungArts Foundation

Here, you'll find information on a government-sponsored writing competition for writers aged 15 - 18. The foundation welcomes submissions of creative nonfiction, novels, scripts, poetry, short story and spoken word.

Signet Classics Student Scholarship Essay Contest

With prompts on a different literary work each year, this competition from Signet Classics awards college scholarships up to $1,000.

"The Ultimate Guide to High School Essay Contests" (CollegeVine)

See this handy guide from CollegeVine for a list of more competitions you can enter with your academic essay, from the National Council of Teachers of English Achievement Awards to the National High School Essay Contest by the U.S. Institute of Peace.

Whether you're struggling to write academic essays or you think you're a pro, there are workshops and online tools that can help you become an even better writer. Even the most seasoned writers encounter writer's block, so be proactive and look through our curated list of resources to combat this common frustration.

Online Essay-writing Classes and Workshops

"Getting Started with Essay Writing" (Coursera)

Coursera offers lots of free, high-quality online classes taught by college professors. Here's one example, taught by instructors from the University of California Irvine.

"Writing and English" (Brightstorm)

Brightstorm's free video lectures are easy to navigate by topic. This unit on the parts of an essay features content on the essay hook, thesis, supporting evidence, and more.

"How to Write an Essay" (EdX)

EdX is another open online university course website with several two- to five-week courses on the essay. This one is geared toward English language learners.

Writer's Digest University

This renowned writers' website offers online workshops and interactive tutorials. The courses offered cover everything from how to get started through how to get published.

Writing.com

Signing up for this online writer's community gives you access to helpful resources as well as an international community of writers.

How to Overcome Writer's Block

"Symptoms and Cures for Writer's Block" (Purdue OWL)

Purdue OWL offers a list of signs you might have writer's block, along with ways to overcome it. Consider trying out some "invention strategies" or ways to curb writing anxiety.

"Overcoming Writer's Block: Three Tips" ( The Guardian )

These tips, geared toward academic writing specifically, are practical and effective. The authors advocate setting realistic goals, creating dedicated writing time, and participating in social writing.

"Writing Tips: Strategies for Overcoming Writer's Block" (Univ. of Illinois)

This page from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign's Center for Writing Studies acquaints you with strategies that do and do not work to overcome writer's block.

"Writer's Block" (Univ. of Toronto)

Ask yourself the questions on this page; if the answer is "yes," try out some of the article's strategies. Each question is accompanied by at least two possible solutions.

If you have essays to write but are short on ideas, this section's links to prompts, example student essays, and celebrated essays by professional writers might help. You'll find writing prompts from a variety of sources, student essays to inspire you, and a number of essay writing collections.

Essay Writing Prompts

"50 Argumentative Essay Topics" (ThoughtCo)

Take a look at this list and the others ThoughtCo has curated for different kinds of essays. As the author notes, "a number of these topics are controversial and that's the point."

"401 Prompts for Argumentative Writing" ( New York Times )

This list (and the linked lists to persuasive and narrative writing prompts), besides being impressive in length, is put together by actual high school English teachers.

"SAT Sample Essay Prompts" (College Board)

If you're a student in the U.S., your classroom essay prompts are likely modeled on the prompts in U.S. college entrance exams. Take a look at these official examples from the SAT.

"Popular College Application Essay Topics" (Princeton Review)

This page from the Princeton Review dissects recent Common Application essay topics and discusses strategies for answering them.

Example Student Essays

"501 Writing Prompts" (DePaul Univ.)

This nearly 200-page packet, compiled by the LearningExpress Skill Builder in Focus Writing Team, is stuffed with writing prompts, example essays, and commentary.

"Topics in English" (Kibin)

Kibin is a for-pay essay help website, but its example essays (organized by topic) are available for free. You'll find essays on everything from  A Christmas Carol  to perseverance.

"Student Writing Models" (Thoughtful Learning)

Thoughtful Learning, a website that offers a variety of teaching materials, provides sample student essays on various topics and organizes them by grade level.

"Five-Paragraph Essay" (ThoughtCo)

In this blog post by a former professor of English and rhetoric, ThoughtCo brings together examples of five-paragraph essays and commentary on the form.

The Best Essay Writing Collections

The Best American Essays of the Century by Joyce Carol Oates (Amazon)

This collection of American essays spanning the twentieth century was compiled by award winning author and Princeton professor Joyce Carol Oates.

The Best American Essays 2017 by Leslie Jamison (Amazon)

Leslie Jamison, the celebrated author of essay collection  The Empathy Exams , collects recent, high-profile essays into a single volume.

The Art of the Personal Essay by Phillip Lopate (Amazon)

Documentary writer Phillip Lopate curates this historical overview of the personal essay's development, from the classical era to the present.

The White Album by Joan Didion (Amazon)

This seminal essay collection was authored by one of the most acclaimed personal essayists of all time, American journalist Joan Didion.

Consider the Lobster by David Foster Wallace (Amazon)

Read this famous essay collection by David Foster Wallace, who is known for his experimentation with the essay form. He pushed the boundaries of personal essay, reportage, and political polemic.

"50 Successful Harvard Application Essays" (Staff of the The Harvard Crimson )

If you're looking for examples of exceptional college application essays, this volume from Harvard's daily student newspaper is one of the best collections on the market.

Are you an instructor looking for the best resources for teaching essay writing? This section contains resources for developing in-class activities and student homework assignments. You'll find content from both well-known university writing centers and online writing labs.

Essay Writing Classroom Activities for Students

"In-class Writing Exercises" (Univ. of North Carolina Writing Center)

This page lists exercises related to brainstorming, organizing, drafting, and revising. It also contains suggestions for how to implement the suggested exercises.

"Teaching with Writing" (Univ. of Minnesota Center for Writing)

Instructions and encouragement for using "freewriting," one-minute papers, logbooks, and other write-to-learn activities in the classroom can be found here.

"Writing Worksheets" (Berkeley Student Learning Center)

Berkeley offers this bank of writing worksheets to use in class. They are nested under headings for "Prewriting," "Revision," "Research Papers" and more.

"Using Sources and Avoiding Plagiarism" (DePaul University)

Use these activities and worksheets from DePaul's Teaching Commons when instructing students on proper academic citation practices.

Essay Writing Homework Activities for Students

"Grammar and Punctuation Exercises" (Aims Online Writing Lab)

These five interactive online activities allow students to practice editing and proofreading. They'll hone their skills in correcting comma splices and run-ons, identifying fragments, using correct pronoun agreement, and comma usage.

"Student Interactives" (Read Write Think)

Read Write Think hosts interactive tools, games, and videos for developing writing skills. They can practice organizing and summarizing, writing poetry, and developing lines of inquiry and analysis.

This free website offers writing and grammar activities for all grade levels. The lessons are designed to be used both for large classes and smaller groups.

"Writing Activities and Lessons for Every Grade" (Education World)

Education World's page on writing activities and lessons links you to more free, online resources for learning how to "W.R.I.T.E.": write, revise, inform, think, and edit.

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How to Write a Composition

Last Updated: December 6, 2023 Fact Checked

This article was co-authored by Christopher Taylor, PhD . Christopher Taylor is an Adjunct Assistant Professor of English at Austin Community College in Texas. He received his PhD in English Literature and Medieval Studies from the University of Texas at Austin in 2014. There are 7 references cited in this article, which can be found at the bottom of the page. This article has been fact-checked, ensuring the accuracy of any cited facts and confirming the authority of its sources. This article has been viewed 818,377 times.

You don't have to be a good writer to write well. Writing is a process. By learning to treat writing as a series of small steps instead of a big all-at-once magic trick you have to pull off will make writing a composition much easier and much more fun. You can learn to brainstorm main ideas before you start writing, organize a draft of those main ideas, and revise your composition into a polished essay. See Step 1 for more information.

Composition Template

Pre-Writing

• What is the purpose of the composition?
• What is the topic of the composition?
• What are the length requirements?
• What is the appropriate tone or voice for the composition?
• Is research required? These questions are good for you to ask.
• Pre-writing: gathering your thoughts or research, brainstorming, and planning the compositions
• Writing: actively writing your composition
• Editing: re-reading your paper, adding sentences, cutting unnecessary parts, and proofreading

• Try a timed writing by keeping your pen moving for 10 minutes without stopping. Don't shy away from including your opinions about a particular topic, even if your teacher has warned you from including personal opinions in your paper. This isn't the final draft!

• Write the topic in the center of the paper and draw a circle around it. Say your topic is "Romeo & Juliet" or "The Civil War". Write the phrase on your paper and circle it.
• Around the center circle, write your main ideas or interests about the topic. You might be interested in "Juliet's death," "Mercutio's anger," or "family strife." Write as many main ideas as you're interested in.
• Around each main idea, write more specific points or observations about each more specific topic. Start looking for connections. Are you repeating language or ideas?
• Connect the bubbles with lines where you see related connections. A good composition is organized by main ideas, not organized chronologically or by plot. Use these connections to form your main ideas.
• Don’t worry about coming up with a polished thesis statement or final argument now; that can come later in the process.

• Your thesis statement needs to be debatable. In fact, many thesis statements are structured as the answer to a well-formulated question about the topic. "Romeo & Juliet is an interesting play written by Shakespeare in the 1500s" isn't a thesis statement, because that's not a debatable issue. We don't need you to prove that to us. "Romeo & Juliet features Shakespeare's most tragic character in Juliet" is a lot closer to a debatable point, and could be an answer to a question like, “Who is Shakespeare’s most tragic character?” [4] X Research source
• Your thesis statement needs to be specific. "Romeo & Juliet is a play about making bad choices" isn't as strong a thesis statement as "Shakespeare makes the argument that the inexperience of teenage love is comic and tragic at the same time" is much stronger.
• A good thesis guides the essay. In your thesis, you can sometimes preview the points you'll make in your paper, guiding yourself and the reader: "Shakespeare uses Juliet's death, Mercutio's rage, and the petty arguments of the two principal families to illustrate that the heart and the head are forever disconnected."

Writing a Rough Draft

• Introduction, in which the topic is described, the issue or problem is summarized, and your argument is presented
• Main point paragraph 1, in which you make and support your first supporting argument
• Main point paragraph 2, in which you make and support your second supporting argument
• Main point paragraph 3, in which you make and support your final supporting argument
• Conclusion paragraph, in which you summarize your argument

• Proof includes specific quotes from the book you're writing about, or specific facts about the topic. If you want to talk about Mercutio's temperamental character, you'll need to quote from him, set the scene, and describe him in detail. This is proof that you'll also need to unpack with logic.
• Logic refers to your rationale and your reasoning. Why is Mercutio like this? What are we supposed to notice about the way he talks? Explain your proof to the reader by using logic and you'll have a solid argument with strong evidence.

• Ask how. How is Juliet's death presented to us? How do the other characters react? How is the reader supposed to feel?
• Ask why. Why does Shakespeare kill her? Why not let her live? Why does she have to die? Why would the story not work without her death?

• Only use words and phrases that you have a good command over. Academic vocabulary might sound impressive, but if you don’t fully grasp its meaning, you might muddle the effect of your paper.

• Try writing a rough draft the weekend before it's due, and giving it to your teacher for comments several days before the due date. Take the feedback into consideration and make the necessary changes.

• Moving paragraphs around to get the best possible organization of points, the best "flow"
• Delete whole sentences that are repetitive or that don't work
• Removing any points that don't support your argument

• Think of each main point you're making like a mountain in a mountain range that you're flying over in a helicopter. You can stay above them and fly over them quickly, pointing out their features from far away and giving us a quick flyover tour, or you can drop us down in between them and show us up close, so we see the mountain goats and the rocks and the waterfalls. Which would be a better tour?

Expert Q&A

• Write a point, and expand 2 lines on that particular point. Thanks Helpful 9 Not Helpful 2
• Open source software called Free Mind can help with the pre-writing process. Thanks Helpful 7 Not Helpful 2
• You can always add more circles to your guiding diagram if you think the much you have is not sufficient. Thanks Helpful 5 Not Helpful 3

Tips from our Readers

• Remember to always proofread your composition after you have finished! Small typos like a missed comma or a misspelled word are easy to miss the first time around.
• If you want to outline your composition, try using a mini white board. This makes it easier to erase things and restructure your outline if you need to.
• It's hard to write with distractions, so try to pick a quiet place where you won't be disturbed to work on your assignment.

You Might Also Like

• ↑ https://www.student.unsw.edu.au/writing-your-essay
• ↑ https://www.deakin.edu.au/students/studying/study-support/academic-skills/essay-writing
• ↑ https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/544/01/
• ↑ https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/685/05/
• ↑ https://libguides.newcastle.edu.au/how-to-write-an-essay/essay-structure
• ↑ https://www.citewrite.qut.edu.au/write/writing-well/essay.html
• ↑ https://writing.wisc.edu/handbook/grammarpunct/commonerrors/

About This Article

To write a composition, start with a brainstorming session to get your thoughts down on paper. You can create a formal outline during this time, or experiment with bubble exercises and free-writing. Next, create a clear thesis statement to base your composition around. Then, write an introduction, 3 main paragraphs, and a conclusion that summarizes your argument. Read through and revise your content, and don't forget to proofread thoroughly! To learn more about the "rule of 5" and how to back up your statements in a composition, read on! Did this summary help you? Yes No

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A clear, arguable thesis will tell your readers where you are going to end up, but it can also help you figure out how to get them there. Put your thesis at the top of a blank page and then make a list of the points you will need to make to argue that thesis effectively.

For example, consider this example from the thesis handout : While Sandel argues persuasively that our instinct to “remake”(54) ourselves into something ever more perfect is a problem, his belief that we can always draw a line between what is medically necessary and what makes us simply “better than well”(51) is less convincing.

To argue this thesis, the author needs to do the following:

• Show what is persuasive about Sandel’s claims about the problems with striving for perfection.
• Show what is not convincing about Sandel’s claim that we can clearly distinguish between medically necessary enhancements and other enhancements.

Once you have broken down your thesis into main claims, you can then think about what sub-claims you will need to make in order to support each of those main claims. That step might look like this:

• Evidence that Sandel provides to support this claim
• Discussion of why this evidence is convincing even in light of potential counterarguments
• Discussion of cases when medically necessary enhancement and non-medical enhancement cannot be easily distinguished
• Analysis of what those cases mean for Sandel’s argument
• Consideration of counterarguments (what Sandel might say in response to this section of your argument)

Each argument you will make in an essay will be different, but this strategy will often be a useful first step in figuring out the path of your argument.  

Strategy #2: Use subheadings, even if you remove them later  

Scientific papers generally include standard subheadings to delineate different sections of the paper, including “introduction,” “methods,” and “discussion.” Even when you are not required to use subheadings, it can be helpful to put them into an early draft to help you see what you’ve written and to begin to think about how your ideas fit together. You can do this by typing subheadings above the sections of your draft.

If you’re having trouble figuring out how your ideas fit together, try beginning with informal subheadings like these:

• Introduction  
• Explain the author’s main point  
• Show why this main point doesn’t hold up when we consider this other example  
• Explain the implications of what I’ve shown for our understanding of the author  
• Show how that changes our understanding of the topic

For longer papers, you may decide to include subheadings to guide your reader through your argument. In those cases, you would need to revise your informal subheadings to be more useful for your readers. For example, if you have initially written in something like “explain the author’s main point,” your final subheading might be something like “Sandel’s main argument” or “Sandel’s opposition to genetic enhancement.” In other cases, once you have the key pieces of your argument in place, you will be able to remove the subheadings.  

Strategy #3: Create a reverse outline from your draft  

While you may have learned to outline a paper before writing a draft, this step is often difficult because our ideas develop as we write. In some cases, it can be more helpful to write a draft in which you get all of your ideas out and then do a “reverse outline” of what you’ve already written. This doesn’t have to be formal; you can just make a list of the point in each paragraph of your draft and then ask these questions:

• Are those points in an order that makes sense to you?  
• Are there gaps in your argument?  
• Do the topic sentences of the paragraphs clearly state these main points?  
• Do you have more than one paragraph that focuses on the same point? If so, do you need both paragraphs?  
• Do you have some paragraphs that include too many points? If so, would it make more sense to split them up?  
• Do you make points near the end of the draft that would be more effective earlier in your paper?  
• Are there points missing from this draft?  
• picture_as_pdf Tips for Organizing Your Essay

Composition Writing 101: Definition, Types, and Examples

• August 22, 2024

Dr. Marvin L. Smith

As a student, you’ve probably written essays, reports, and stories. But did you know that you were practicing composition writing ? So, what is composition writing?

In simple terms, composition is about putting words, sentences, and paragraphs together. This helps create a clear and meaningful piece of writing. When you write, you want to use language in a way that makes sense to your readers. You want to convey your ideas and thoughts effectively.

Composition writing includes many types of writing, such as essays, stories, and reports. It also includes the techniques you use to write each type of writing well.

What is composition writing?

Composition writing is a type of writing that involves creating a piece of text that is well-organized, clear, and effective. It’s like building a house with words. Just as a builder uses bricks, mortar, and a plan to construct a house, a writer uses words, sentences, and a structure to create a composition.

When you write a composition, you’re not just putting words on paper; you’re creating a message that you want to convey to your readers. You’re trying to tell them something, persuade them, or entertain them. To do this, you need to think carefully about what you want to say, how you want to say it, and who you’re saying it to.

A good composition has several key elements:

• A clear topic or main idea
• A logical structure that makes sense to the reader
• Well-organized paragraphs that flow smoothly from one to the next
• Effective use of language to convey meaning and tone
• A strong conclusion that summarizes the main points

Four modes of composition writing

When it comes to composition writing, there are four main types of composition writing . Each mode has its own unique purpose and style. Let’s explore these four modes and see how they can help you become a more effective writer.

Description

Descriptive writing is like painting a picture with words. When you write a descriptive composition, you’re trying to create a vivid image in the reader’s mind. You might describe a person, a place, an object, or an experience. Your goal is to use sensory details like sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and textures to bring your description to life.

For example, if you were describing a beautiful beach, you might write:

“The warm sand felt soft between my toes as I walked along the shore. The sound of the waves crashing against the rocks was soothing, and the smell of saltwater filled the air. The sun was setting, casting a golden glow over the entire scene.”

Expository writing is like explaining or describing a topic. When you write an expository composition, you’re trying to inform or explain something to the reader. You might write about a historical event, a scientific concept, or a social issue. Your goal is to provide clear and concise information that helps the reader understand the topic.

For example, if you were writing about the water cycle, you might explain:

“The water cycle is the process by which water moves from the Earth to the atmosphere and back again. It’s an important process that helps our planet stay healthy and full of life. The water cycle involves evaporation, condensation, and precipitation, and it’s essential for our daily lives.”

Narrative writing is like telling a story. When you write a narrative composition, you’re trying to engage the reader in a sequence of events. You might write about a personal experience, a fictional story, or a historical event. Your goal is to use descriptive language and vivid details to bring the story to life.

For example, if you were writing about a memorable vacation, you might write:

“I’ll never forget the time I went to the mountains with my family. We spent our days hiking and exploring, and our nights sitting around the campfire, telling stories and making s’mores. One day, we hiked to the top of a beautiful waterfall, and the view was breathtaking.”

Argumentation

Argumentative writing is like making a case or persuading someone to agree with you. When you write an argumentative composition, you’re trying to convince the reader of a particular point of view or opinion. You might write about a social issue, a political topic, or a personal belief. Your goal is to use evidence, logic, and persuasive language to make a strong argument.

For example, if you were writing about why recycling is important, you might argue:

“Recycling is essential for our planet’s survival. Not only does it help conserve natural resources, but it also reduces waste and pollution. By recycling, we can make a significant impact on the environment and create a better future for ourselves and future generations.”

When do you write a composition?

You might be asked to write a composition in school as part of an assignment or project. This could be for any subject, like English, history, or science. Your teacher might want you to write about a book you read, a historical event, or a personal experience.

You might also write a composition for a test or exam. This is a chance to show what you know about a topic and how well you can write. Some colleges and universities even require compositions as part of the application process. This could be a personal statement or an essay about your goals.

Your teacher might ask you to write a composition when the assignment doesn’t fit into a specific category, like an essay or a report, but still requires you to use academic writing skills to express your thoughts and ideas in a clear and organized way.

Outside of school, you might write compositions for work or personal projects. This could be a report, proposal, or memo for your job, or a blog post or letter to a friend. You might even write compositions just for fun, to express yourself and tap into your creativity. Whatever the reason, writing a composition can help you communicate effectively and achieve your goals.

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How to write a composition in 4 simple steps

Writing a composition can seem like a daunting task, but it’s actually quite straightforward. By following these four simple steps, you can create a well-written composition that effectively communicates your ideas.

Step 1: Brainstorm

The first step in writing composition is to brainstorm. This means thinking about the topic or question you want to write about and coming up with ideas.

Ask yourself:

• What do I want to say about this topic?
• What are my main points?
• What examples or evidence can I use to support my ideas?

Take a few minutes to jot down your ideas, even if they seem silly or random. This will help you get your thoughts flowing and give you a starting point for your composition.

Step 2: Create an Outline

Once you have a list of ideas, it’s time to create an outline. An outline is like a roadmap for your composition. It helps you organize your ideas and structure your writing.

• Start by writing down your main topic or question
• Break down your topic into smaller points or subtopics
• Arrange your points in a logical order

For example, if you’re writing about your favorite hobby, your outline might look like this:

I. Introduction

• Introduce my hobby
• Explain why I enjoy it

II. Benefits of my hobby

• Physical benefits
• Mental benefits

III. Conclusion

• Summarize my main points
• Encourage others to try my hobby

Step 3: Write the First Draft

Now it’s time to start writing your composition. Don’t worry too much about grammar , spelling, or punctuation at this stage. Just focus on getting your ideas down on paper.

• Start with a strong introduction that grabs the reader’s attention
• Use your outline to guide your writing
• Write in paragraphs, using transition words and phrases to connect your ideas

Remember, your first draft won’t be perfect. That’s okay! You can always revise and improve it later.

Step 4: Edit & Proofread

The final step is to edit and proofread your composition. This is where you review your writing for errors and make sure it’s the best it can be.

• Read your composition out loud to catch any awkward phrasing or unclear sentences
• Check for grammar, spelling, and punctuation errors
• Make sure your writing is clear, concise, and engaging

By following these four step writing process, you can write a composition that effectively communicates your ideas and showcases your writing skills.

Happy writing!

Frequently asked questions about composition writing

What is composition.

Composition is a type of writing that expresses your thoughts, ideas, and opinions on a particular topic. It’s a way to communicate your ideas in a clear and organized manner.

What are the main types of composition?

There are four main types of composition: Description, Exposition, Narration, and Argumentation. Each type has its own unique purpose and style.

How is composition writing structured?

Composition writing typically includes an introduction, body paragraphs, and a conclusion. The introduction introduces the topic, the body paragraphs provide supporting details, and the conclusion summarizes the main points.

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Learning Objectives

• Determine the purpose and structure of the classification essay
• Understand how to write a classification essay

The Purpose of Classification in Writing

The purpose of  classification  is to break down broad subjects into smaller, more manageable, more specific parts. We classify things in our daily lives all the time, often without thinking about it. Cell phones, for example, have now become part of a broad category. They can be classified as feature phones, media phones, and smartphones. Smaller categories, and the way in which these categories are created, help us make sense of the world. Keep both of these elements in mind when writing a classification essay.

The Structure of a Classification Essay

The classification essay opens with an introductory paragraph that introduces the broader topic. The thesis should then explain how that topic is divided into subgroups and why. Take the following introductory paragraph, for example:

When people think of British Columbia, they often think of only Vancouver. However, British Columbia is actually a diverse province with a full range of activities to do, sights to see, and cultures to explore.  In order to better understand the diversity of the province of British Columbia, it is helpful to break it into seven separate regions : the Lower Mainland, Vancouver Island, the North and Central Coast, Northern British Columbia, Canyons and the Cariboo, the Thompson-Okanagan, and the Kootenays.

The underlined thesis in this example explains not only the category and subcategories but also the rationale for breaking it into those categories. In this classification essay, the writer hopes to show readers a different way of considering the province.

Each body paragraph of a classification essay is dedicated to fully illustrating each of the subcategories. In the previous example, then, each of the seven regions of British Columbia would have its own paragraph.

The conclusion should bring all the categories and subcategories together again to show the reader the big picture. In the previous example, the conclusion might explain how the various sights and activities of each region of British Columbia add to its diversity and complexity.

Self-Practice Exercise 4.4

H5P: Classification Writing Practice

Exercise Preamble

Pick one of the following categories to use for this practice exercise (or pick something else that interests you more):

• Colleges and universities

Give three options for how you might classify items within this category. Consider classification strategies that think a little bit “outside the box.” For example, breakfast cereals could be classified by target market, or by mascots and spokespeople, or by sugar content.

Once you’ve found three options, choose the one you think will make for the most interesting essay and break your category into its classifications.

Write a paragraph explaining why you chose this classification and why it helps the reader understand the category. For example, classifying breakfast cereals by sugar content can help consumers make healthier choices. If you were developing this into a full essay, this exercise would help you develop a thesis statement.

Writing a Classification Essay

Start with an engaging opening that will adequately introduce the general topic that you will be dividing into smaller subcategories. Your thesis should come near the end of your introduction. It should include the topic, your subtopics, and the reason you are choosing to break down the topic in the way that you are. Use the following classification thesis equation:

topic + subtopics + rationale for the subtopics = thesis.

The organizing strategy of a classification essay is dictated by the initial topic and the subsequent subtopics. Each body paragraph is dedicated to fully illustrating each of the subtopics. In a way, coming up with a strong topic pays double rewards in a classification essay. Not only do you have a good topic, but you also have a solid organizational structure within which to write.

Be sure you use strong details and explanations for each subcategory paragraph that help explain and support your thesis. Also, be sure to give examples to illustrate your points. Finally, write a conclusion that links all the subgroups together again. The conclusion should successfully wrap up your essay by connecting it to your topic initially discussed in the introduction. See  Appendix 1: Readings: Examples of Essays  to read a sample classification essay.

Key Takeaways

• The purpose of classification is to break a subject into smaller, more manageable, more specific parts.
• Smaller subcategories and the way in which they are created help us make sense of the world.
• A classification essay is organized by its subcategories.

ENGL Resources Copyright © by Tara Horkoff. All Rights Reserved.

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Rare G.K. Chesterton essay on mystery writing is itself a mystery

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NEW YORK (AP) — When he wasn’t working on mystery stories, and he completed hundreds, G.K. Chesterton liked to think of new ways to tell them.

Detective fiction had grown a little dull, the British author wrote in a rarely seen essay from the 1930s published this week in The Strand Magazine, which has released obscure works by Louisa May Alcott, Raymond Chandler and many others. Suppose, Chesterton wondered, that you take an unsolved death from the past, like that of the 17th century magistrate Sir Edmund Berry Godfrey, and come up with a novel that explores how he might have been murdered?

“I suggest that we try to do a little more with what may be called the historical detective story,” Chesterton wrote. “Godfrey was found in a ditch in Hyde Park, if I remember right, with the marks of throttling by a rope, but also with his own sword thrust through his body. Now that is a model complication, or contradiction, for a detective to resolve.”

Chesterton’s words were addressed to a small and exclusive audience. He remains best known for his Father Brown mysteries, but in his lifetime he held the privileged title of founding president of the Detection Club, a gathering of novelists whose original members included Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers and AA Milne among others. They would meet in private, at London’s Escargot restaurant; exchange ideas and even work on books together, including such “round-robin” collaborations as “The Floating Admiral.”

The club, established in the late 1920s, is still in existence and has included such prominent authors as John le Carre, Ruth Rendell and P.D. James. Members are serious about the craft if not so high-minded about the club itself. Among the sacred vows that have been taken in the past: No plots resolved through “Divine Revelation, Feminine Intuition, Mumbo-Jumbo, Jiggery-Pokery, Coincidence or the Act of God” and “seemly moderation” in the use of gangs, conspiracies, death-rays and super-criminals.

According to the current president, Martin Edwards, the Detection Club meets for three meals a year — two in London, and a summer lunch in Oxford, and continues to work on books. In 2016, the club honored one its senior members, Peter Lovesey, with “Motives for Murder,” which included tributes from Ann Cleeves, Andrew Taylor, Catherine Aird and David Roberts.

Next March, it will release “Playing Dead: Short Stories by Members of the Detection Club,” with Edwards, Lovesey, Abir Mukherjee and Aline Templeton listed as among the contributors.

Asked if new members are required to take any oaths, Edwards responded, “There is an initiation ceremony for new members, but all I can say is that it has evolved significantly over the years.”

No one ever acted upon Chesterton’s idea for a book if only because no evidence has been found of any response to his essay or that anyone even had a chance to read it.

In a brief foreword for the Strand, written by the president of the American Chesterton Society, Dale Ahlquist sees the document’s journey as its own kind of mystery. One copy was found in the rare books division of the University of Notre Dame, in South Bend, Indiana. Another is included among Chesterton’s papers in the British Museum, with a note from the late author’s secretary, Dorothy Collins, saying that his work had sent on to “The Detective Club Magazine.”

There was no Detective Club Magazine.

“So the original manuscript was sent to a magazine that never existed. But how did it end up in the Special Collections at Notre Dame? Another mystery,” Ahlquist writes. “Obviously, Dorothy Collins sent it somewhere. She probably meant ‘Detection Club’ in her note but wrote ‘Detective Club.’ Some member of the Detection Club or hired editor received it, but since the magazine never materialized, whoever held the manuscript continued to hold it, and it remained in that person’s papers until it didn’t.”

“After Chesterton’s death (in 1936),” he added, “it was either sold or given away or went into an estate through which it was acquired. Collectors acquire things. Then, either before they die or after they die, their collections get donated. At some point it was donated to Notre Dame. A real detective ... would track all this down.”

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Accountant General (Audit) Bihar, Patna

Indian Audit & Accounts Department

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Copyrights © 2020 All Rights Reserved By Comptroller and Auditor General of India

I Was Writing About a Medical Mystery. Then I Experienced My Own

M y left eye performs magic tricks: now you see it, now you don’t. My daughter disappears beside me on the shoreline of a beach, where the murky Gulf foams, darkens the sand, rears back to colder depths. I hold up my arm: beyond my wrist, my hand is gone, though its shadow remains—a phantom dismemberment. My husband steps into the blind spot, and he has no head.

There is a gap between what I see and what I know.

It began the way many life-changing things do: almost imperceptibly. On December 6, 2023, I woke up with a dull headache. My left brow and eye felt tender as a bruise. And in the center vision of that eye was a tiny dark spot I could neither blink away nor see past.

The morning made its demands: cutting waffles, searching for kids’ shoes, yelling, “Outside, both of you,” to the two new puppies who’d once again peed on the curtains. I dropped off my daughter at kindergarten and my son at preschool. At a red light, I stared at a bumper sticker on the car in front of me. A white oval read, inscrutably, Boost Inside , but with the left eye, I could only see the word Inside . Boost simply . . . disappeared, covered with a pixelated mosaic blur like an identity might be concealed in a documentary.

Unnerved, I made an optometry appointment, then met the mom of one of my daughter’s classmates at a nearby coffee shop. She’s a nurse, and I’d asked to interview her for my new novel, which features a live-in nurse caring for a woman with mysterious, unnamed ailments. During our conversation, I tried to pretend her nose wasn’t a smeared absence on her face.

The optometrist was young, with a dark mustache and a scab between his eyebrows. I say young; I mean around my age, 39, and is that young? It feels that way most of the time, until I’m confronted with actual youth—my children, a grocery-store cashier calling me “ma’am,” 20-year-olds giving makeup tutorials on Instagram—or experts who seem to be my age or younger, instead of decades older as I would expect them to be. Then I’m forced to reassess, to ask myself what youth means to me when I’m on the cusp of 40, an age I used to see as decidedly middle, humdrum, with the best, most exciting parts of life behind you. 

This maybe-young, maybe-middle-aged optometrist showed me two photos. In the images, my retinas were smoggy yellow orbs, threaded with red veins like the spindly branches of dead trees. He pointed to a glowing circle, like a headlight, on the right eye: my optic nerve. Showed me its clean, defined borders. Then pointed to the left eye, where that headlight was more like an explosion, large and messy and spreading, lava from a volcano.

“It’s called optic neuritis,” he said—or inflammation of the optic nerve, which is responsible for carrying messages from the eye to the brain. “It could be idiopathic . . .” The silent but reverberated around us. I asked him what might cause it if there were a cause.

The optometrist gave a nervous laugh. “That’s above my pay grade.”

He told me I should see a neuro-ophthalmologist, but the only one in San Antonio was semi-retired, had an established patient list, and “would laugh if he received a referral from me.” My mind snagged on the word neuro. The optometrist asked me to return to the lobby while he made some calls.

While I waited, surrounded by racks of gleaming eyeglasses, I Googled. Symptoms of optic neuritis include pain when moving the eye and a hole in the center of your vision. Optic neuritis can be idiopathic and resolve within a year. But it’s also often the first sign of muscular sclerosis.

There’s a 50% risk of developing MS within 15 years of an episode of optic neuritis . That risk balloons to 72% if an MRI—the recommended next step after a diagnosis of optic neuritis—shows lesions on the brain. Women are two to three times more at risk than men of developing relapsing forms of MS and often diagnosed between the ages of 20 and 40.

My hands shook as I texted my husband. I felt unmoored in my body, as if I’d awoken in a different house than the one where I’d fallen asleep, or perhaps the same house, only in the morning it was missing a roof. A sudden sense of unreality, the familiar overlaid with strange, the uncanny valley between what had been and what might be.

I pictured my children in their classrooms and ached with bittersweet gratitude that nothing had changed for them. Perhaps it wouldn’t. Then the optometrist hurried out with a name, phone number, and address scrawled on a sheet of printer paper. He’d referred me to an ophthalmologist, and the appointment was set for Friday, two days later. Never had a doctor made a referral appointment for me, on the spot, scheduled with such glaring immediacy.

By Friday, the tiny central blind spot had shifted to the left and expanded like a black hole, my pupil blown out and unresponsive to the light I shone on it in the mirror. I went for a walk in the mild winter chill and couldn’t see the houses to my left. My husband, Adrian, returned from taking the kids to school and insisted we go to the emergency room. If an MRI was likely the next step, maybe we could get it done before my appointment with the ophthalmologist that afternoon.

He drove us, and I clutched his hand. The last time I’d truly panicked had been after taking a wrong turn on a solo hike in West Texas, ending up flush against the side of a mountain, which was too steep to keep climbing down or, seemingly, back up. I had whimpered and panted, struck by my absolute aloneness. There was one rock I could possibly use as a foothold, but if it gave, I’d fall. I felt that way now, in the car. Panicked, on the verge of falling.

“I can’t see you,” I said to Adrian. “I can’t see you.”

He gripped my hand back hard, grounding me. I wasn’t alone this time.

My bloodwork and CT scan came back normal, but they couldn’t do an MRI without a referral because this is America and nothing in health care can be straightforward. We left the ER hours later, in time to pick up the kids from school. I wanted to protect them from the fear we were feeling, the uncertainty about the ways our lives might change. I wanted them to remember me the way I’d been instead of the way I might become. I was already thinking in terms of their memories of me, and mine of them. Since we didn’t have childcare, we decided Adrian would stay with them while I went to my appointment. They were on the backyard swings when I waved and called, “See you guys in a little bit!” I didn’t even hug them goodbye before walking out to my Uber.

A packed, dim waiting room. Bluey on the wall-mounted TV. Dilated eyes. Hours after I arrived, the ophthalmologist, another white man my age, took my eye pressure and showed me more photos of my retinas. Impassively, he told me I had papilledema, optic-disc swelling caused by increased intracranial pressure.

“There’s pressure in my brain ?” I said, aghast.

He Googled a phone number, picked up his cell phone. “I’m going to call over to the emergency department and tell them to expect you.”

It was 6 p.m. on a Friday. Time for the kids’ dinner, bath, bed. The nightly ritual I’ve performed most of the days of their lives. Instantly I regretted all the times I’d counted down till they were asleep, so eager for a few hours of adult time. One day, they say, you’ll put your child down and never pick them up again. There’s a last time for everything, and mostly we never see it coming. Some kind of line was being drawn, a before and after. I could feel it, and shuddered against its coldness.

“I have to go right now?” I asked. “I mean—it’s that urgent?”

“Yes,” the ophthalmologist said flatly, phone to his ear, though with enough pity that I sat up straight and ordered another Uber.

The MRI machine was loud. I lay still, eyes closed, a warm blanket over my legs and pillow beneath my knees as it clanked and groaned. With each metallic bang of a captured image, I imagined other snapshots: my kids on the swing set, the way I’d casually waved as I left. My son mixing pancake batter, his dimpled knuckles . My daughter grinning in her rainbow goggles. Floating with Adrian in a calm ocean. Family lunch at my parents’ house. The Australia trip we’d planned in April to see Adrian’s family. Past and future, fear and yearning, tangled and knotted. The secrets we keep from our children about the capriciousness of loss and violence, the never-guaranteed tomorrows. Please, I thought, over and over again. Please.

Adrian asked a friend of ours to stay with the kids while he joined me at the hospital. I spent the night in a cot in the triage room, where cold saline dripped into an IV and I was given painkillers for the headache. Early the next morning, a kind, red-bearded nurse told me the MRI showed brain lesions. But, he added, they were inconsistent with MS lesions. “Do you get migraines?” he asked, and I shook my head. Well, he told me, a hospitalist would be in soon, followed by a neurologist. A room had opened up on the neurology floor, and I’d be taken there soon for more tests and a five-day course of IV steroids to try to reduce the inflammation in my optic nerve.

“Five days?” I exclaimed. “Am I going to be here for five days ?”

The nurse was sympathetic. “The doctors will have more answers than I do.”

But they didn’t. “An interesting case,” they said. “An anomaly.” My left arm blossomed black with bruises from the multiple daily blood draws. A second CT scan, two more MRIs. A lumbar puncture. Mornings of IV steroids, flushed cheeks and pounding heart. A patch over my eye, pirate jokes. My vision was so unbalanced that I felt dizzy with my eyes open. I couldn’t watch TV or read. I wondered, if it came to it, if I could learn to see with my hands, use them to trace the changing contours of my family’s faces, comprehend a language of raised dots. I scrawled notes for myself, for my novel, an act of hope. Joked that this was all elaborate field research, anything for the art!

I heard patients in the rooms on either side of me coding. Imagined leaving my children without explanation or goodbye, not getting to watch them grow up, answer their questions about the world, hold them through their own joys and sorrows. I imagined Adrian raising them alone. Imagined them forgetting me. That was the one truly unbearable thought.

My mom and sister drove from Laredo to San Antonio. Friends rotated with Adrian for childcare. My brother and sister-in-law brought my baby niece, a jolt of purity and joy. My dad filmed increasingly elaborate skits starring himself as a character he named Rodeo Popo, which made me laugh until I cried.

There were no apparent masses or clots in my brain. The markers for various autoimmune diseases, including MS, trickled in slowly, all negative. No one could tell me why this was happening.

“You’re in your Medical Mystery Era,” my brother joked.

Friends gifted me audiobooks, sent care packages, earned honorary MDs from the Google School of Medicine. I asked for my IUD to be removed after a friend read that it might be linked to an elevated risk of something called pseudotumor cerebri, or increased pressure in the brain that can cause symptoms of a brain tumor, like papilledema. An actual doctor friend made calls and did research. My sister started watching episodes of House on the off chance some TV writers had scripted a situation like this. I used to love that show, much in the way I loved Law & Order: SVU or murder docuseries. The terrible thrill of knowing a particular fate hasn’t befallen us, so therefore we are safe, and perhaps we, along with the doctor or detective, might solve the crime of other bodies’ betrayals. It’s different, of course, when the body in question is your own.

The morning before my lumbar puncture, when spinal fluid would be removed and examined for markers of brain and spinal cancer; increased pressure in my brain; bacterial, fungal, and viral infections; and autoimmune diseases like MS, there was a brief snafu when my favorite nurse said, “Hey, Katie, random question: you’re not pregnant, are you? ‘Cause Bill from Radiology put a big banner on one of your images saying we need to confirm how far along you are.” I was not, in fact, pregnant – Bill had simply mislabeled me – but briefly I hoped I was, that this was all somehow the beginning of a new life, instead of the possible end of mine.

I’d had 39 years of mostly good health. So many and too few. Right before all this happened, I’d been contemplating the fine lines on my forehead, the deep crinkles beside my eyes when I smiled. I’d been thinking about these “visible signs of aging,” wondering if I should make a Botox appointment. As if aging were a curse I could reverse with the right skin care. Now I wished for more lines, more years.

Inside, I felt close enough to touch all my selves: the 5-year-old stroking ladybugs on a chain-link school fence; 17 and going 95 on the highway because grown life was just starting and I was immortal; 27 and separated, crying in my parents’ bed; 33 and remarried, first child hot and wailing on my chest; 35, a second baby in a pandemic; child, woman, wife, mother, daughter, sister, friend. In the hospital, all my selves held hands inside me, waiting.

I missed my daughter’s school Christmas pageant. She was a sheep. On FaceTime, she asked, “Mommy, are you going to die? Because my friend’s aunt went to the hospital and no one took care of her and she died. ”

“No, baby,” I said. “I’ll be home soon.”

I raised my arm, watched my hand disappear. Tilted my head and lost the air-conditioner vent. My sister slipped into the blind spot and vanished.

At night I wondered how I’d found myself in the kind of doom scenario that, ever since having children, has sometimes loomed over me like a dark wave, pulled back silently from the shore to collect on the empty horizon and curve back around, a watery scythe. I wondered if my daughter would ever forgive me if my hope turned out to be a lie.

After five days, I was discharged with no answers.

I should see a neuro-ophthalmologist, they said. Plus a regular ophthalmologist, a neurologist, and, if I was worried, perhaps an oncologist. Would they help make those referrals? I asked. No, they said, and handed me a long printout of names I couldn’t read. I’d need to figure out which specialists were in-network, then ask my primary-care doctor to make referrals, then wait for my HMO insurance to authorize them, and then finally set the appointments, quite possibly for months in the future. I felt stunned and overwhelmed, shunted back to the start as Adrian walked me slowly to our car.

The next morning, my vision deteriorated with shocking swiftness, as if a pane of frosted glass had descended, thick and impenetrable. “I think I’m going blind,” I told Adrian, trembling so violently I could feel my neck stiffening, on the cusp of a debilitating muscle spasm. My parents had driven up, and they stayed with the kids while Adrian took me for an emergency ophthalmology appointment. By that time I could hardly move my head. Could hardly see anything from my left eye at all.

It was a different doctor that day, an older man with Christopher Lloyd Back to the Future hair. He took one look into my eye and diagnosed me with a corneal infection and pseudotumor cerebri—the false brain tumor with a possible link to the IUD I’d had removed. Adrian and I looked at each other in shock. It could be treated, he said, and I’d get my vision back. We laughed and cried, and the doctor was out of the room on the tail of the same whirlwind that had blown him in.

I started taking the diuretic and antibiotic eyedrops he’d prescribed. The next morning, the frosted-glass effect had lifted from my central vision. I was no longer as dizzy or off balance, though the blind area remained. I crashed into Adrian’s arms, weeping as I told him it was better. I was better. I’d never been so happy to brush my children’s tiny pearl teeth, to help them pull uniforms overhead and socks over uncooperative feet. All those beautiful, banal moments I had missed so desperately.

Then the neck and head pain descended again, paralyzing in its intensity. It was the kind of pain that made me rank my worst pains, starting with childbirth, and wonder if this was worse. Adrian drove the kids to school and I went back to bed. Strangely, the pain disappeared completely as soon as I lay down. Not a muscle spasm, after all, but a post lumbar puncture headache. My spinal fluid was leaking. I needed to return to the hospital.

I did not have pseudotumor cerebri. Nor was it ocular shingles, my next diagnosis, by the ophthalmologist who’d first sent me to the ER.

In the days, then weeks, after the hospital, I reviewed every word of hospital paperwork, more than 100 pages, as if I might find something the neurologists didn’t. A pattern, a clue. The possible diagnoses that first night had included stroke, aneurysm, and brain tumor. It was strangely validating: I’d had reason to be so afraid. To give Adrian my passwords, remind him of the letters I occasionally write to our kids and how to find them. To mourn my unfinished book. My unfinished life.

Every time I caught myself asking how this, whatever “this” was, could be happening to me, I answered myself back: I am not special. A pleasant woman who appears stated age. A generic description I saw over and over in my hospital notes, worried like a stone between my fingers. I am anyone, everyone, a soul within a body that is temporary, fragile, finite. The body’s loss happens to us all, but doesn’t the soul always perceive it as a tragedy?

The doctor who put us on the path to real answers was, improbably, our kids’ pediatrician, Dr. Yvette Almendarez.

It was the week before Christmas, and both kids had gotten sick. Adrian, who’d been single-handedly keeping our family going for weeks, took them to Dr. Almendarez, a family friend who asked if I’d like a second opinion on the shingles diagnosis. Her close friend was an ophthalmologist and she’d be happy to put in a call.

I went to see Dr. Teresa Treviño Whitney two days later. She spent nearly two comprehensive, gentle hours with me. The optic nerve was still enormously swollen despite the five-day course of IV steroids. It was also white and fuzzy when it should be pink and smooth, and there was inflammation in the uvea, the middle layer of the eye, which no one had noted yet. She referred me for bloodwork and promised to find me a specialist in uveitis. When I left, she said, “I may not have all the answers, but we’re going to figure this out.”

Of all the doctors I’d seen, she was the first to say those two simple things. A new space opened up between the known and unknown, a place to rest. I had a teammate now. A we.

In the weeks since leaving the hospital, MS had not been entirely ruled out. It seemed less likely, based on test results, but I was intermittently convinced it was the answer since the one thing everyone agreed on was optic neuritis. Plus, those brain lesions, however small and atypical. At night, my arm and leg began jerking, waking me from uneasy sleep.

The horror I’d initially felt at the possibility shifted into something quieter—the understanding that I could live with an MS diagnosis because I would still be living. As my blind spot remained, unchanged, a different lens sharpened and clarified. We all have to find ways to live in our bodies as they age and change. I would find a way to live in mine, and I would be grateful, because I’d heard the alternative in those hospital rooms coding beside me. I would accept anything, anything that let me stay in my life, however redefined it might become.

Three days after Christmas, Dr. Mamta Agarwal, the uveitis specialist Dr. Whitney had found for me, examined me in near silence. She was cool, almost aloof, as she softly directed my dilated gaze. When it was over, she said, “It’s toxoplasma chorioretinitis.”

Adrian and I exchanged dumbfounded glances.

“A toxoplasmosis infection,” she said. “Do you have cats?”

I shook my head. Only those two curtain-destroying puppies, then three months old, who may or may not have been the culprits. Dr. Agarwal told us toxoplasmosis is very common, caused by a single-celled parasite in animal-to-human contact or contaminated food or water. It infects approximately a third of people worldwide , and about 11% of Americans have had the infection. Most infections present as a cold, if there are any symptoms at all. Only 2% occur in the eye , and only a small percentage of those are symptomatic. When the infection is acquired as opposed to congenital, it’s usually unilateral . Dr. Agarwal saw this all the time in India, where she’d worked for nearly 20 years before moving to Texas.

“So . . . I don’t have optic neuritis?” I asked.

She shook her head. “No.”

I couldn’t speak. Couldn’t believe how quickly and firmly she’d just dislodged the foundation undergirding everything that followed: the excruciating hospital stay, the terror of sudden death, the crushing disappointment of misdiagnoses.

We’d need bloodwork to confirm, but she wanted me to start medication immediately: oral steroids, two antibiotics, two eyedrops, an antacid, and calcium. Nearly 20 pills a day for the next six to eight weeks.

“So—” I hesitated. “I’m going to be OK?”

She smiled. “You’re going to be OK.”

One week later, my bloodwork came back positive for toxoplasmosis.

Treatment ended up lasting five difficult months. On the first day I finally took my son to school, he tripped and I tripped over him; then I fainted. Five weeks into treatment, a rash spread across my body like an acid burn, requiring a biopsy. Dr. Agarwal told me to stop the medication in case I was having a reaction to it. The rash faded and I restarted the medication. One dose and I woke up scratching hard, my skin mottled and scalded. Every pause in treatment meant the infection had time to rebound. In addition to the blind spot, I developed a filmy haze and amoeba-like floaters in my left eye that remain even now.

Finally, in early summer, Dr. Agarwal told me the infection was no longer active. Toxoplasmosis can’t be cured, only controlled, and recurrence rates for ocular infection are between 40% to 79%. She would keep a close watch on me for the next year. After months of sometimes weekly appointments, I no longer saw her as cool or aloof but deeply caring, even calling me personally for updates during that allergic reaction. It does not escape me that the three doctors, of the very many I saw, who treated me as a human being, and for whom I didn’t need to perform pleasant competence, were young—or rather, my age—women of color.

Throughout the course of those long months, I often wondered where I was in the medical -mystery narrative: were these new, unruly symptoms the beginning, or did they preface a sudden end? Were the false promises of the first diagnoses the murky middle, soon to give way to a satisfying denouement of recovery and healing? Or was I, actually, still at the start, the way some illnesses never go away but become part of us, invisible and chronic? Any attempt to write the narrative in my own mind failed because I never knew where I stood in it.

Now I see that medical mysteries resist linear storytelling. My recovery looks the same as the initial illness, when all the houses fell off the world to my left. Optic nerves don’t regenerate. Way in the back of my eye a bridge has fallen between what my eye perceives and what my brain interprets. The only difference is back then I thought I was dying. Now I know this is life. This is living.

Sometimes, when I bump into something or lose sight of my child, I still think about my vision in terms of loss, of lack. Other times it strikes me as a strange and lucky wonder, to know something exists but watch it disappear. A Dalían world, my own mind’s eye. A jester, a trickster. A new kind of sight, to be able to hold what I know in spite of what I can’t see. Every day a reminder that here, in what I now hope turns out to be the early middle, with so much still before me, anything can happen next.

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• The four main types of essay | Quick guide with examples

The Four Main Types of Essay | Quick Guide with Examples

Published on September 4, 2020 by Jack Caulfield . Revised on July 23, 2023.

An essay is a focused piece of writing designed to inform or persuade. There are many different types of essay, but they are often defined in four categories: argumentative, expository, narrative, and descriptive essays.

Argumentative and expository essays are focused on conveying information and making clear points, while narrative and descriptive essays are about exercising creativity and writing in an interesting way. At university level, argumentative essays are the most common type. 

In high school and college, you will also often have to write textual analysis essays, which test your skills in close reading and interpretation.

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Table of contents

Argumentative essays, expository essays, narrative essays, descriptive essays, textual analysis essays, other interesting articles, frequently asked questions about types of essays.

An argumentative essay presents an extended, evidence-based argument. It requires a strong thesis statement —a clearly defined stance on your topic. Your aim is to convince the reader of your thesis using evidence (such as quotations ) and analysis.

Argumentative essays test your ability to research and present your own position on a topic. This is the most common type of essay at college level—most papers you write will involve some kind of argumentation.

The essay is divided into an introduction, body, and conclusion:

• The introduction provides your topic and thesis statement
• The body presents your evidence and arguments
• The conclusion summarizes your argument and emphasizes its importance

The example below is a paragraph from the body of an argumentative essay about the effects of the internet on education. Mouse over it to learn more.

A common frustration for teachers is students’ use of Wikipedia as a source in their writing. Its prevalence among students is not exaggerated; a survey found that the vast majority of the students surveyed used Wikipedia (Head & Eisenberg, 2010). An article in The Guardian stresses a common objection to its use: “a reliance on Wikipedia can discourage students from engaging with genuine academic writing” (Coomer, 2013). Teachers are clearly not mistaken in viewing Wikipedia usage as ubiquitous among their students; but the claim that it discourages engagement with academic sources requires further investigation. This point is treated as self-evident by many teachers, but Wikipedia itself explicitly encourages students to look into other sources. Its articles often provide references to academic publications and include warning notes where citations are missing; the site’s own guidelines for research make clear that it should be used as a starting point, emphasizing that users should always “read the references and check whether they really do support what the article says” (“Wikipedia:Researching with Wikipedia,” 2020). Indeed, for many students, Wikipedia is their first encounter with the concepts of citation and referencing. The use of Wikipedia therefore has a positive side that merits deeper consideration than it often receives.

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An expository essay provides a clear, focused explanation of a topic. It doesn’t require an original argument, just a balanced and well-organized view of the topic.

Expository essays test your familiarity with a topic and your ability to organize and convey information. They are commonly assigned at high school or in exam questions at college level.

The introduction of an expository essay states your topic and provides some general background, the body presents the details, and the conclusion summarizes the information presented.

A typical body paragraph from an expository essay about the invention of the printing press is shown below. Mouse over it to learn more.

The invention of the printing press in 1440 changed this situation dramatically. Johannes Gutenberg, who had worked as a goldsmith, used his knowledge of metals in the design of the press. He made his type from an alloy of lead, tin, and antimony, whose durability allowed for the reliable production of high-quality books. This new technology allowed texts to be reproduced and disseminated on a much larger scale than was previously possible. The Gutenberg Bible appeared in the 1450s, and a large number of printing presses sprang up across the continent in the following decades. Gutenberg’s invention rapidly transformed cultural production in Europe; among other things, it would lead to the Protestant Reformation.

A narrative essay is one that tells a story. This is usually a story about a personal experience you had, but it may also be an imaginative exploration of something you have not experienced.

Narrative essays test your ability to build up a narrative in an engaging, well-structured way. They are much more personal and creative than other kinds of academic writing . Writing a personal statement for an application requires the same skills as a narrative essay.

A narrative essay isn’t strictly divided into introduction, body, and conclusion, but it should still begin by setting up the narrative and finish by expressing the point of the story—what you learned from your experience, or why it made an impression on you.

Mouse over the example below, a short narrative essay responding to the prompt “Write about an experience where you learned something about yourself,” to explore its structure.

Since elementary school, I have always favored subjects like science and math over the humanities. My instinct was always to think of these subjects as more solid and serious than classes like English. If there was no right answer, I thought, why bother? But recently I had an experience that taught me my academic interests are more flexible than I had thought: I took my first philosophy class.

Before I entered the classroom, I was skeptical. I waited outside with the other students and wondered what exactly philosophy would involve—I really had no idea. I imagined something pretty abstract: long, stilted conversations pondering the meaning of life. But what I got was something quite different.

A young man in jeans, Mr. Jones—“but you can call me Rob”—was far from the white-haired, buttoned-up old man I had half-expected. And rather than pulling us into pedantic arguments about obscure philosophical points, Rob engaged us on our level. To talk free will, we looked at our own choices. To talk ethics, we looked at dilemmas we had faced ourselves. By the end of class, I’d discovered that questions with no right answer can turn out to be the most interesting ones.

The experience has taught me to look at things a little more “philosophically”—and not just because it was a philosophy class! I learned that if I let go of my preconceptions, I can actually get a lot out of subjects I was previously dismissive of. The class taught me—in more ways than one—to look at things with an open mind.

A descriptive essay provides a detailed sensory description of something. Like narrative essays, they allow you to be more creative than most academic writing, but they are more tightly focused than narrative essays. You might describe a specific place or object, rather than telling a whole story.

Descriptive essays test your ability to use language creatively, making striking word choices to convey a memorable picture of what you’re describing.

A descriptive essay can be quite loosely structured, though it should usually begin by introducing the object of your description and end by drawing an overall picture of it. The important thing is to use careful word choices and figurative language to create an original description of your object.

Mouse over the example below, a response to the prompt “Describe a place you love to spend time in,” to learn more about descriptive essays.

On Sunday afternoons I like to spend my time in the garden behind my house. The garden is narrow but long, a corridor of green extending from the back of the house, and I sit on a lawn chair at the far end to read and relax. I am in my small peaceful paradise: the shade of the tree, the feel of the grass on my feet, the gentle activity of the fish in the pond beside me.

My cat crosses the garden nimbly and leaps onto the fence to survey it from above. From his perch he can watch over his little kingdom and keep an eye on the neighbours. He does this until the barking of next door’s dog scares him from his post and he bolts for the cat flap to govern from the safety of the kitchen.

With that, I am left alone with the fish, whose whole world is the pond by my feet. The fish explore the pond every day as if for the first time, prodding and inspecting every stone. I sometimes feel the same about sitting here in the garden; I know the place better than anyone, but whenever I return I still feel compelled to pay attention to all its details and novelties—a new bird perched in the tree, the growth of the grass, and the movement of the insects it shelters…

Sitting out in the garden, I feel serene. I feel at home. And yet I always feel there is more to discover. The bounds of my garden may be small, but there is a whole world contained within it, and it is one I will never get tired of inhabiting.

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Though every essay type tests your writing skills, some essays also test your ability to read carefully and critically. In a textual analysis essay, you don’t just present information on a topic, but closely analyze a text to explain how it achieves certain effects.

Rhetorical analysis

A rhetorical analysis looks at a persuasive text (e.g. a speech, an essay, a political cartoon) in terms of the rhetorical devices it uses, and evaluates their effectiveness.

The goal is not to state whether you agree with the author’s argument but to look at how they have constructed it.

The introduction of a rhetorical analysis presents the text, some background information, and your thesis statement; the body comprises the analysis itself; and the conclusion wraps up your analysis of the text, emphasizing its relevance to broader concerns.

The example below is from a rhetorical analysis of Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech . Mouse over it to learn more.

King’s speech is infused with prophetic language throughout. Even before the famous “dream” part of the speech, King’s language consistently strikes a prophetic tone. He refers to the Lincoln Memorial as a “hallowed spot” and speaks of rising “from the dark and desolate valley of segregation” to “make justice a reality for all of God’s children.” The assumption of this prophetic voice constitutes the text’s strongest ethical appeal; after linking himself with political figures like Lincoln and the Founding Fathers, King’s ethos adopts a distinctly religious tone, recalling Biblical prophets and preachers of change from across history. This adds significant force to his words; standing before an audience of hundreds of thousands, he states not just what the future should be, but what it will be: “The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges.” This warning is almost apocalyptic in tone, though it concludes with the positive image of the “bright day of justice.” The power of King’s rhetoric thus stems not only from the pathos of his vision of a brighter future, but from the ethos of the prophetic voice he adopts in expressing this vision.

Literary analysis

A literary analysis essay presents a close reading of a work of literature—e.g. a poem or novel—to explore the choices made by the author and how they help to convey the text’s theme. It is not simply a book report or a review, but an in-depth interpretation of the text.

Literary analysis looks at things like setting, characters, themes, and figurative language. The goal is to closely analyze what the author conveys and how.

The introduction of a literary analysis essay presents the text and background, and provides your thesis statement; the body consists of close readings of the text with quotations and analysis in support of your argument; and the conclusion emphasizes what your approach tells us about the text.

Mouse over the example below, the introduction to a literary analysis essay on Frankenstein , to learn more.

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is often read as a crude cautionary tale about the dangers of scientific advancement unrestrained by ethical considerations. In this reading, protagonist Victor Frankenstein is a stable representation of the callous ambition of modern science throughout the novel. This essay, however, argues that far from providing a stable image of the character, Shelley uses shifting narrative perspectives to portray Frankenstein in an increasingly negative light as the novel goes on. While he initially appears to be a naive but sympathetic idealist, after the creature’s narrative Frankenstein begins to resemble—even in his own telling—the thoughtlessly cruel figure the creature represents him as. This essay begins by exploring the positive portrayal of Frankenstein in the first volume, then moves on to the creature’s perception of him, and finally discusses the third volume’s narrative shift toward viewing Frankenstein as the creature views him.

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At high school and in composition classes at university, you’ll often be told to write a specific type of essay , but you might also just be given prompts.

Look for keywords in these prompts that suggest a certain approach: The word “explain” suggests you should write an expository essay , while the word “describe” implies a descriptive essay . An argumentative essay might be prompted with the word “assess” or “argue.”

The vast majority of essays written at university are some sort of argumentative essay . Almost all academic writing involves building up an argument, though other types of essay might be assigned in composition classes.

Essays can present arguments about all kinds of different topics. For example:

• In a literary analysis essay, you might make an argument for a specific interpretation of a text
• In a history essay, you might present an argument for the importance of a particular event
• In a politics essay, you might argue for the validity of a certain political theory

An argumentative essay tends to be a longer essay involving independent research, and aims to make an original argument about a topic. Its thesis statement makes a contentious claim that must be supported in an objective, evidence-based way.

An expository essay also aims to be objective, but it doesn’t have to make an original argument. Rather, it aims to explain something (e.g., a process or idea) in a clear, concise way. Expository essays are often shorter assignments and rely less on research.

The key difference is that a narrative essay is designed to tell a complete story, while a descriptive essay is meant to convey an intense description of a particular place, object, or concept.

Narrative and descriptive essays both allow you to write more personally and creatively than other kinds of essays , and similar writing skills can apply to both.

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Friday, 20 September

REVIEW | The Creative Arts: How writing about writing sparks academic innovation

BOOK: The Creative Arts: On Practice, Making and Meaning edited by Sally Ann Murray and Michèle Betty (Dryad Press)

If the term “creative arts” can feel like a tautology (which arts are not creative?), the new term we are supposed to use, “creative and cultural industries”, could feel like an oxymoron. Besides the “creatives” of the advertising business, cultural producers can be resistant to the idea that they are part of an industry because their sense of themselves as artists is based on the Romantic model of what an artist does – exploring the self, being awed by nature, contesting social expectations, and so on. This volume of essays considers how such creatives, broadly defined, can develop their work within academia.

As Gabeba Baderoon notes in her introduction, creative writing came to the academy rather late compared to drama, music and the fine arts, which have long had university departments teaching students how to make such work. Perhaps there was a sense that these disciplines had technical stuff to master. Hence, solid training was required, whereas writing should really just come naturally, its techniques having been picked up by osmosis while reading. Certainly, reading drives writing but beyond the lonely Romantic struggle, academia can provide guidance, feedback and discipline.

Thus, creative writing in academia is the chief focus of The Creative Arts: On Practice, Making and Meaning . Most of the pieces here are about writing, albeit writing in many different forms: poetry, criticism, fiction, playwriting, writing for podcasts, and academic writing.

Several writers here write about poetry. Kobus Moolman writes about the dichotomy between his own practice and his work teaching writing in academia: burying the work, as it were, to let it develop in a yeast-like kind of way versus exposing it, even when it’s in progress, to the fresh air of collegial response. Moolman shows how the creative writing workshop process can stimulate students’ work, and this piece will be very useful for anyone teaching such a course or learning from it. There are some references here I’d like to follow up and I finished my creative writing MA in 2005.

Vonani Bila’s essay is an intriguing piece on the role of “place” in poetry, putting a new spin on an issue that has long been a key trope in verse, though it’s obviously also relevant to prose – in fiction and not just travel writing, say. It would be fascinating to compare different approaches to negotiating “place” in these media. Uhuru Portia Phalafala and Vangile Gantsho both centre the body in their poetic practice, as described in their essays and then spiral out into linguistic concerns and take on issues such as land.

Simon van Schalkwyk’s account of the overlap of (or strange limbo between) academic and poetic work is less illuminating of the former than the latter. His rubric is “the writer as reader”, which could ramify in many fruitful directions but is constrained here by the fact that this reader is reading in a way informed by academic criticism and analysis. Just as Van Schalkwyk teases at the “limits of the legible”, I’d wonder about the limits of interpretation, about people reading poetry outside academia or without the techniques of reading taught there. 

It’s not within Van Schalkwyk’s remit here, but his essay does point towards the kind of questions Kelwyn Sole, for one, raises: Where is the critical space in South Africa into which poetry can emerge and find a meaningful response? It seems that, nowadays, critical-interpretive space continues to exist only in academia, and who really wants to read much academic critique if you’re not an academic? How, then, is poetry to be evaluated? How much pre-education, so to speak, does one require if one is to read and understand poetry (never mind write it)?

These are perhaps questions about translatability, about the to-and-fro between one discourse and another, one “signifying regime” and another. That may sound arcane, but I think it’s at the core of how we read, how we write, and how we critique (if we critique); this is surely the mandate of academia, but I’m not convinced it necessarily illuminates more than it obscures.

Wamuwi Mbao’s piece, Reviewing as Attentive Praxis , is the only essay here to tackle criticism directly, taking on the process of reviewing – and it’s a sensitive, nuanced piece that indicates why Mbao is such a good critic and reviewer himself. You’d have thought academia would produce more such reviewers, “critical thinking” being its stock in trade, but nowadays, there seem fewer than before. Perhaps the problem is with the public literary space mentioned above, how it works and grows or shrinks, but that’s an impossibly large issue to traverse outside of, say, a sociology PhD. Still, what Mbao says will resonate with anyone who wants to be as good a reader as possible. 

Other pieces in the book revolve closely around the writer’s own practice, describing aspects of the process that, for each of them, takes the writer from idea to artefact and beyond to public reception. These include the personal history that drives and informs the poetry of Phillippa Yaa de Villiers and her play Original Skin , Stephanus Muller’s work of musicology, biography and more, Nagmusiek  and Masande Ntshangase’s account of his dealings with technology and dystopia that inform his SF novels. Each of these pieces is deeply interesting and compelling in the way they show writers at work and reflecting on their processes. This kind of thing can be very illuminating and encouraging for emerging writers.

Sally Ann Murray’s piece about breaking the conventions of academic writing is particularly interesting to me because in my experience (including that creative writing MA, supervising journalism MA students, external examining, and helping to edit academic works), the strictures of that mode of discourse are firmly in place and are insisted upon, framing as they do any actual creative writing and legitimating it in academic terms. Creative writing may have found a space in academia, but that space is fenced off. 

Baderoon argues that this kind of academic work can be done in a new way, and this very stimulating book as a whole is replete with pointers towards such innovation. Murray’s essay and many others in the book demonstrate how those boundaries can be undermined, and one would dearly like to see more such hybridised forms of writing that truly jump the generic fences.

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Essay Writing Competition on My Preparedness for Heat Wave

National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA), in collaboration with MyGov, invites students/citizens for an essay writing contest for all age groups to encourage the citizens to ...

National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) , in collaboration with MyGov , invites students/citizens for an essay writing contest for all age groups to encourage the citizens to share their ideas about how citizens are prepared for Heatwave.

In recent times, there has been a noticeable rise in the frequency, duration, and intensity of heat waves throughout the nation. Even in states that were previously thought to be particularly unlikely, heat wave incidents have been reported. This campaign intends to mobilize people to act by raising awareness about Heatwave and how disaster risk reduction.

Put on your creative cap and showcase your thoughts and knowledge. Essays will be judged based on your knowledge of heat wave and its preparedness. The essays should meet the word limit of 1000 words and should be in a pdf format.

The theme for this essay writing competition is “My Preparedness for Heat Wave / ग्रीष्म लहर (लू) के लिए मेरी तैयारी”

GRATIFICATION - 1st prize: Rs.10,000/- - 2nd prize: Rs.5000/- - 3rd prize: Rs.3000/- - 3 Consolation Prizes of Rs.1000/- each.

Click here to read the Terms & Conditions (PDF: 33KB)

• Turtle Truths about Writing

Photo by Jakob Owens on Unsplash If you’d like to receive my blog in your in-box each week, click  here .

I heard a memorable analogy this week about life: that most of us approach it as if we are captaining a superyacht, mastering the unpredictable seas and going wherever we like, whereas really we’re all simply on a kayak at the mercy of the wind and the waves.

“To be human, according to this analogy, is to occupy a little one-person kayak, borne along on the river of time towards your inevitable yet unpredictable death. It’s a thrilling situation, but also an intensely vulnerable one: you’re at the mercy of the current, and all you can really do is to stay alert, steering as best you can, reacting as wisely and gracefully as possible to whatever arises from moment to moment.” 

In a delightful synchronicity, I read this while vacationing in Antigua this past week spending every morning kayaking over the Caribbean. (Please do feel free to be envious, as the trip was every bit as paradisical as you might imagine, but do know that it’s my first real vacation in years and it was much needed.)

The analogy was from Oliver Burkeman’s newsletter , one of my favorites, by one of my favorite writers on productivity and approach to life ( Four Thousand Weeks ), and it lingered with me as I paddled every morning over waters that, yes, really were this turquoise.

Every morning I checked out my kayak from the dive shop with a mission: I wanted to see some sea turtles.

The First Writing Lesson

Years ago I volunteered with an organization called Turtle Time , dedicated to the recovery and protection of marine turtles, and I’ve been enamored of these magnificent creatures ever since.

While out on a Hobie Cat one afternoon with one of the employees at the resort where we were staying, we learned that there were sea grasses along a certain stretch near this cliff where the turtles could often be found feeding, so each morning I paddled about 30 minutes to get there and then just let my kayak drift around the area for another 30 or 40, waiting to see some turtles.

And waiting. And waiting.

On day two I heard another resort guest drifting by on a paddleboard 20 yards away crow delightedly to her companion about the turtle that had just swum up alongside her board. My brother, with whom I was vacationing (long story involving a divorce and one very lucky sister) came back from his daily dive trips reporting on the ones he’d seen.

One morning I saw a flipper pop up, long gone by the time I paddled the 25 feet to where it was. Another morning I saw a head surface, a beautiful gentle Nessie quickly submerged before I got anywhere in the vicinity.

On my third day out, still free of the gentle, peaceful communing with a passing turtle that I craved, I realized that I was spending so much time searching for the turtles that I wasn’t letting myself simply enjoy everything else I was experiencing on the water: the sparkling sea beneath me, its gentle splash against the hull of my kayak, the pleasure and satisfaction of exercising my muscles to pull me across the stretch of shoreline. The sun on my shoulders, the breeze across my skin. The many other sights to see, like the way the water funneled through the rocks at the base of the cliff where I drifted, the graceful squid darting through the shallows, the silver mullet that burst from the water and danced 10 yards across its surface while I enjoyed the show and the enchantment of it.

My writing lesson from this: Sometimes you can get so focused on your goals that you forget to simply enjoy the pleasure of what you’re actually doing.

The Second Lesson

As calm as the Caribbean was on our side of the island, once you paddled past the windbreak of the cliffs the wind was pretty potent. I found it took every bit of strength my trainer and I have spent five years developing in my upper body for me to get the kayak where I wanted to go.

One of my dive-shop buddies watched me manhandle (or womanhandle, more accurately) the craft back to shore as I came in one day, and told me to stop fighting the wind. I was wearing myself out, he said, whereas if I followed the wind more it might take me longer to get where I wanted to go, tacking back and forth with it rather than in the straight line I was insisting on, but I would maintain much more of my energy.

When I followed his advice on subsequent days he was right, of course. Even though tacking extended my time paddling, I could do it much longer and much more easily if I stopped fighting where the wind was pushing me and instead took the zigzagging path it dictated. I still got where I wanted to go, and I didn’t wear myself out on the journey.

My writing lesson from this: In writing, and in a writing career, there are often plenty of forces pushing against you as you push toward where you want to go. Trying to fight them head on is only going to wear you out so you can’t complete the journey. Let yourself be pushed “off course” a bit if it lets you use those forces to help propel you. Even if it takes you longer than you hoped, you’ll be able to maintain your strength to stay the course long-term.

The Third Lesson…?

One day, chatting with one of my new local buddies, he mentioned a bay he knew of where turtles frequently came to feed, and offered to take me there.

So that day, instead of my usual vigil at the sea grasses near the cliffs, we traveled across the island to a quiet and beautiful inlet we mostly had to ourselves, and plunged right into the water with our snorkels and fins.

For 15 minutes or more I swam behind my friend, no turtles to be seen. But I’d learned my lessons well by that point. Even if we didn’t see one, I decided, I’d let myself enjoy the experience.

We saw a couple of stingrays burrowing into the sand, watched them glide away as we neared. Schools of fish darted by and along my body, unconcerned as I joined their group for a little way. The grasses in the relatively shallow water swayed in the green sea, and I let myself relish the feeling of finning smoothly through it as if I were one of the sea creatures surrounding me, feeling happy and satisfied.

And then, out of the soft green haze around us…a turtle, hovering over a patch of grass and calmly regarding us as we swam nearby.

As he pushed himself along through the water with impossible grace, I followed along behind, my new turtle friend content to allow me to swim along in his wake.

A little later, another one, and another—none of the turtles seeming to mind us swimming nearby. As I finned along behind one, we rose to the top together, our heads surfacing simultaneously and then dipping back down below, until I ran out of air and went back to the surface and he swam on alone. (You can watch my video of it on Facebook or Insta .)

I suppose there’s a lesson here about being willing to try new waters if the ones you are rowing don’t offer what you hoped for…or maybe about accepting what you get for its own pleasure, whether or not it matches what you were so hungry for.

But at that point my heart was too full to worry about lessons. I was grateful for all of it: every day I’d spent kayaking in fruitless search and yet enjoying every moment; every time I shared the underwater world for a brief time with those who lived in it on each of our several snorkel trips that week; the new friendships formed on my quest…and the magic timeless moments swimming with the turtles.

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8 Comments . Leave new

The Real Person!

Author Pat Mastors acts as a real person and passed all tests against spambots. Anti-Spam by CleanTalk.

Lovely, lovely. Your words brought me there with you, and your spot-on analogies will linger. Thank you for sharing your insights; as a writer and a human, I truly look forward to your posts.

Author Tiffany Yates Martin acts as a real person and passed all tests against spambots. Anti-Spam by CleanTalk.

That’s so nice to hear–thanks, Pat. Glad you enjoyed!

Author HEATHER MARTIN acts as a real person and passed all tests against spambots. Anti-Spam by CleanTalk.

Sounds dreamy! Glad you finally got a vacation, and that you brought us back some turtle wisdom.

I think I left half my mind in Antigua–it was so lovely. 🙂 Thanks, Heather.

Author Aline Soules acts as a real person and passed all tests against spambots. Anti-Spam by CleanTalk.

To paraphrases the author and teacher Ryan Hardy, backstory is comparable to swimming. You swim along the surface of the water, then dive down into backstory, then come back up to the surface. This analogy works because a) it implies there’s “something” underneath you need to bring to the surface, b) you can only stay underwater so long, so you can’t make your backstory too long, and c) if you dive into backstory, you have to come back to the present story.

That is a fantastic analogy–a great reminder that backstory isn’t the story (even though it underlies everything in the story). I’m borrowing that imagery! 🙂 Thanks, Aline.

Author Sharon Wagner acts as a real person and passed all tests against spambots. Anti-Spam by CleanTalk.

I jumped off a boat in Belize and landed too close to a giant sea turtle. I thought I’d hit the thing kicking away, so I froze while it swam by me, reaching its head to nip at me. It missed! Since I didn’t get bit, it was an unforgettable experience. I’m going to Cano Island near Costa Rica to snorkel in January.

Oh, wow…! Hope you have a wonderful time in Costa Rica–I lived there for a summer many years ago and fell in love with all of it.

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How Writers Revise–The Early Days

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