Over the semester I have wrote many essays that weren’t perfect but I have learned a lot from them. Since I have written so many essays I have a plan on how I write them, which I’m going to share with you.

First you need to figure out what the topic of your essay is whatever it may be. For example I’m going to use my favorite book I have read this year 20,000 Leagues Under the Seas which I have written about before. When writing an essay you need material to write about so make sure you do enough research and take notes about your topic.

The next step to writing an essay is to figure out your outline. An outline is where you plan out what order you put all your information to go in without going into to much detail. It can either be written out or just in your head because they take about 5 mins to make. Since I picked a book as my topic I would first introduce the story and characters, then the author, the main events in the story, and the ending. Writing an outline is very helpful because you have all of your information organized. Another way you can plan out your essays is using a mind map. Mind maps are normally for bigger essays but can be used on small ones too. A mind map is where you have your topic in the middle with different branches with all of the info you want to put in your essay.

The final step is to write the essay, it doesn’t have to be perfect that is what rough drafts are for. The goal is just to put your thoughts on paper and to perfect it after. When writing a rough draft all you need to do is write down the information you want in the essay and then you go back to clean up the smaller details. Writing essays can be pretty boring but you learn a lot from them and they make you smarter.