How to write a college essay on any topic

Writing essays on any topic in college can be easy and fun! But there are a few important steps to take while writing essays to be sure that the process is as easy and pain free as possible.

Identify the assignment

What are you being asked to write about? How long is the essay? Are there restrictions on the topic? Find out everything you can about the assignment before you get started to minimize needing to make any corrections later.

Brainstorm

Once you know the type of essay that you need to write you’re ready to start brainstorming! Brainstorming is the process of coming up with ideas and concepts for your essay. This is the time to not hold yourself back and to let any and all ideas come out so that you can take advantage of your innate creativity! Creativity works best when you don’t try to control it too much. This is why brainstorming is so essential to essay writing. Brainstorm topic ideas, main themes, or even important questions that you’d like answered in the field you’re exploring.

Organize

Once you have your essay topic idea settled it’s important to organize the essay. First establish how long the essay needs to be and work backwards from this. If the essay is 10 pages, you’ll likely need at least 3-4 subsections in the essay in order to make the essay flow and make sense. But if your essay is only 3 pages long then you may not need subsections or one or two subsections might make your main themes really stand out.

Next, decide on the main themes of your essay. Hopefully you’ve established this during the brainstorming. But if you haven’t then you can break down the topic to determine what logical topics would need to be covered in order to explore your topic in sufficient detail. The length of your essay is important as it will establish how many themes to explore and in how much depth.

Outline

Finally, put your main topic idea at the top of an outline and put each main theme as the points under that main topic. Then expand each main theme in more detail by providing 2-3 points under each main theme that are important to discuss in order to understand this main point.

Connect The Dots

Once the brainstorming, organization, and outline are complete you’re almost done! All you need to do to complete the essay is fill in words that connect the main points that you’ve established in your essay! You might even explore each main point while keeping your work in outline form to keep it organized. Once each of the points in your outline has been more fully explored then you can remove the outline framework and put in any transition statements that help the essay flow from paragraph to paragraph.