Be it work or study, writing a good essay is a skill in high demand. People usually start mastering it in primary school to never finish. As years pass, the complexity of the task grows, but proficiency advances too. To create a successful essay, an author should possess both good imagination and solid writing abilities. A proper approach plays a key role too.

What Is an Essay

You can hardly succeed with something when you do not understand what you are doing and what the requirements are. So the first thing you have to know about writing an essay is actually the definition of this kind of work.

An essay can be defined as a written piece of work presenting the author’s opinion and reasons on a subject under discussion. Specific requirements may vary depending on the purpose, but features like a strictly logical structure, persuasiveness and a research approach are universal.

Essay Types

Depending on the purpose and the author’s occupation, essays can be categorized into different types, such as:

• Argumentative essays: With this kind of paper, an author is expected to provide their opinion on the proposed subject, which is to be supported by a short research.
• History essays: This kind of work deals with examination of particular historic processes or events.
• Descriptive essays: This is probably the most subjective type of essay where the author describes their perception rather than conducts an in-depth research.
• Reflective essays: In this work, an author can show their analytical skills to the full extent. This is where research and reflection meet.

Major Steps of Essay Writing

In general, your way to a successful essay has to go through these steps:

• 1. Good preparation provides a basis to build your success upon. Choose the right topic which is really interesting to you. Later, this will facilitate research and save you efforts. Also, find out relevant sources to derive reliable and unique facts from.
• 2. Once the topic and the research scope are defined, draw up a plan of your work. The thesis statement and the literature research are also to be completed during this stage. Think about what you are going to write in the introduction, body and conclusion. With a clear idea of the content, writing will go much easier.
• 3. Now, get down to writing the full text of your essay. This is a drafting stage, so focus more on the content than on finding exact words. Make sure your thoughts are logical, while the conclusion naturally results from the facts and reasoning provided in the main section.
• 4. Once done, revise your paper. Don’t hesitate to make radical changes to your work provided that the general logic is observed. If reading reveals some reasoning gaps or insufficient factual support, eliminate the drawbacks.
• 5. Fine proofreading is what you have to do next. Now, it’s time to make sure you have selected the best words and made no spelling or punctuation mistakes. Put simply, this stage is about making your paper perfect.

Once done, print your essay and submit it confidently.