What is good writing? It’s not an easy-to-answer question.
There is no trick to writing good essays. Many different types of writing are recognized as good writing for different purposes.
However, every good piece of content requires five things: development, focus, unity, correctness, and coherence.
Are these five things enough to make a great essay? You can not start writing great essays in one day; all you need is practice.
But, practice what and how? Read the techniques mentioned below, follow and practice them consistently to get the best results.
Know what you want to write
It’s essential to know what you want to write before you start writing.
Why? When you know what to write and make an outline, it helps you narrow down your thoughts and gather arguments to start the essay.
Usually, the basic structure of an academic essay includes these three sections as follows.
- Introduction
- The body of the essay
- Conclusion
The introduction tells the reader about the arguments that are covered in the essay and the main thesis.
Then comes the essay’s body, which is generally covered in two to three paragraphs and includes the main research or evidence that supports the argument.
Lastly, the conclusion summarises all the main points of your argument and concludes it. An excellent academic essay must include three points that support your argument directly.
After making a basic outline, you can easily decide which points to include in the introduction or other parts of the essay. It helps the reader and allows the writer to sort their points in a more structured way.
If you want to know more about specific types of essay writing structures and rules, go through our blog on How to write an argumentative essay-A step by step guide.
Avoid repeating
It might seem difficult to avoid repetition when writing a five-page long essay, but it is essential for improving your writing skills.
When you use the same words repeatedly, the reader views it as laziness or lack of research.
Here are the best tips and techniques to help you avoid repetition:
- If you think you need to keep the idea. Then changing the word and sentence structure can help you present the same idea differently.
- Use a thesaurus only to remind yourself of the words you already know but might have slipped your mind at that moment. Avoid selecting words that you are not aware of, which often leads to using words with different underlying meanings, which can be more harmful than repeated words.
- First, start by crossing out the offending repetition. Then, you can circle keywords in the sentence. Now write a fresh sentence with the circled words but discard the repeated words. This process requires you to put more thought to round out the terms, but you can improve academic writing in this manner.
When you stop the repetition, you will see your essay will become instantly more informative and fluent to read.
Read more and develop your vocabulary
Expressing your thoughts in an academic context is challenging. While writing an academic essay, you have to present your argument as an expert and present an intelligent thesis.
Using big words to sound informative can be a bad idea because it is easy to understand when someone is overcompensating their essay.
When you use obscure language, be careful, as it can take away the real meaning and attention from the main idea. Stick to using simple words, and avoid putting fluff content in your essay. Do your research before writing and make it informative.
Have a clear understanding of basic grammar
You are putting so much effort into research, but a simple spelling error in the first paragraph or missing a comma in a sentence can make all your hard work go into the vein.
Before you start writing, have a basic idea of English grammar, including well-formed sentence structures, pronoun usage, proper article, verb, and subject agreement.
Besides, be mindful of the basic punctuation rules, like adding a comma when a period is required. Following these rules are essential to improve skills in academic writing.
Ensure that your sentences are crispy and concise; unnecessary wording can be confusing to the readers.
Speak your mind and breath life into your copy
When writing a college essay, there will always be a deadline. But, some writers take shortcuts to meet the deadlines. This leads them to miss fudging a statistic or forgetting to source or mention attribution.
As we know, there are no shortcuts in life. Thus, you should never skip the initial research while writing an essay. If you don’t have time, avail of essay help services, which is better than submitting a bad essay.
Write in an active voice to improve your writing skills. Writing in the active voice makes the reader feel engaged with your essay’s concept, and the overall quality of your writing improves.
Understand the topic and arguments
Sometimes students forget the main argument in the process of writing the essay.
It can feel tempting to go off on a tangent and add a contradicting side note about the topic, but it can make your whole essay look less concise.
Before adding any thesis to the essay, question yourself. If it doesn’t support your point, then don’t add.
You need a strong point to back up your thesis and try to be thorough while choosing the right evidence.
Everything you decide to write down in your essay must have a connection with your topic. Having a better understanding of the topic and reading more are the basic ways to improve your writing.
Never skip editing
Editing can be a challenging job for new writers because they put a lot of effort into writing. But, they don’t know that rewriting is the main part of writing.
This is the section where the hard and cold eye of an editor comes to play. You can’t develop good editing skills in one day. When you start revising your work regularly, you will feel more confident about your work.
Avoid using extraneous words and get to the point. If you are unsure about a sentence, then it’s best to rewrite it. Once you become your harshest critic, your work starts to improve.
If you think these tips are overwhelming, try one technique at a time, and you will see the difference in your writing.
But, consistency is the key here. If you wrote one bad essay, it doesn’t mean you can’t write. Read more vigorously and practice writing whenever you get time.
Following these tricks will help you improve your writing over time and help you become a better writer.
