Do you struggle with kick-starting your essay? Let me help!

With just ten steps, you will be on your way to success! 

1. Follow the rubric. Most instructors will provide you with a rubric for your writing assignments. Make sure you read rubrics carefully and follow them throughout the writing process, as they are referred to by your instructor when they are grading your paper.  For clarifications on the rubric, be sure to contact your instructor. 

2. When it comes to research, do it all before! Writing down important ideas and quotations from sources, as well as citing them, before you get into writing your essay, will help lead to a clear and direct path. Make sure your arguments are supported by your research!

3. Write out your thesis, claims, and arguments. Planning out the skeleton of your essay will help solidify it while also motivating you. In this step don't worry about grammar or vocabulary. Just making sure that the structure is solid will create a natural gateway to fill the fancy stuff out later. (More information on outlines will be posted soon!) 

4. Start with your body paragraphs. Starting with the intro of your essay can be hard if you don't have an actual paper to introduce. As long as you have your thesis, writing the body paragraphs will give you the road map you need (and know inside and out) to write a good introduction. In the process of writing you will rewrite, cut, add and do it all over. If you have an intro for an unfinished essay, you'll end up changing it just as much! Save time and energy, start with the body paragraphs. 

5. Tie EVERYTHING back to your thesis statement. Every claim should support your thesis statement and every argument should support the claim AND link back to the thesis. Clearly stating why an argument matters and supports your thesis is not a bad strategy. 

6. Read your essay OUT LOUD! ALL students, myself included, make mistakes, and that's okay! Whether it's awkward grammar, funny word choice, spelling errors, choppy or run-on sentences, reading out loud will save the day! We don't always recognize mistakes when we read silently to ourselves because our minds fill in the blanks. Reading aloud takes more concentration and focus and mistakes will become much more obvious!

7. Get a friend to read it over. Even reading aloud to ourselves, we won't always notice our own mistakes. To us, a statement or argument's purpose may be obvious but an outsider may be confused. Getting your friends to read over your essay will ensure that your intentions are clear to outside parties.

8. Edit, and then re-edit, and edit some more! In the process of writing you may change your mind, find something that doesn't work, come up with a new argument, find a new source, and everything in between. Writing is about completing a process and then redoing it all over again. You aren't ever fully done with a paper. Even after you hand it in you'll think about what you could have done better or differently, and that is completely okay! All you can do is your best and remembering that editing is an integral part of writing will help you achieve that. 

9. Conclude with a Cause! Conclusions can often feel repetitive but they are an important part of your essay to reiterate why your ideas and arguments matter in a broader context.  Be sure to reword your thesis and main claims. In the end, calling for further research, action, or applications with an inspiring tone (depending on your topic) will appeal to readers.

10. Come visit us at the Augustana Writing Centre! We are here to aid you in your writing process and while we can't write the essay for you, we can provide more personal strategies that will help you get your essay started! Click here to book an appointment!