Process Essay

The process essay guides readers through the stages of completing a task successfully.  It is certainly among the most common forms of written discourse.  Think of the number of self-help books, cookbooks, textbooks, and guidebooks for doing nearly every activity you can think of. In school subjects, the process essay is also a common assignment. Explain how a bill becomes a law; how do you determine the theme of a poem; how do trees produce oxygen; how does company X market its product; how does a hydroelectric dam produce electricity; how do you serve a tennis ball?

The template for a process essay is usually straightforward. The introductory paragraph provides some context and presents the thesis. After that comes a series of body paragraphs, each one explaining a step in the process. The conclusion confirms the usefulness of the process that has been provided.

Techniques

1. Determine the target audience. Who is the target reader? Check the assignment instructions about who your explanations are supposed to target. Typical targets include classmates or the instructor, but it's possible you could be focusing on another group of people. If you're writing about how to use a cellphone app, for example, the instructions you'd give to your friends are probably quite different than those you'd give to your friends' grandparents.

2. Plan. Decide if you want to follow chronological order, address the simple to the complex, or proceed from the known to the unknown.

3. Create a list of directions. You’re telling your reader how to do something. Provide a path to the goal.

4. Include everything important. Take some time away from your list of steps and revisit it with fresh eyes to be sure that you didn’t miss anything significant. You already know how to do the thing you’re explaining, but the reader knows much less. So you want to be thorough. At the same time, if you include too much information, the reader will get bored, and you'll exceed the word limit.

5. Don’t confuse your reader. Don’t include unnecessary information. Never backtrack, because this will frustrate your reader.

6. Keep the reader interested. You’re writing an essay, not a manual. Show some personality and catch your reader’s interest.

References

• Process Essay. (2023). Excelsior Online Writing Lab, Excelsior University. Retrieved 2024. CC BY-SA 4.0. Some of the above content was copy/pasted from here.

• Meyers, A. (2013). Longman Academic Writing: Essays to Research Papers. Pearson.

• Sexton J. and Soles D. (2019). The Process (“How to”) Essay. B.C. Open Textbook Collection. CC BY 4.0. Some of the above content was copy/pasted from here.