Good essay writing starts with a good essay outline. Your outline, whether it's for an academic essay or a creative writing essay, should form the structure of how you'll put your essay together. While this process will differ from student to student, there are some useful tips and advice that we'd like to share with you.
Whether you're in high school, university, or an academic, all of the following should apply to you when it comes to writing essays and creating an outline you can work from.
The Question or Prompt
In different types of essay writing, you may be given a question or prompt to work from that forms the task. In other situations, you may have some freedom to decide your essay title, the question you answer, or provide a theme for your essay.
In either case, every essay needs to have a point and it's your job to understand the assignment and what you're supposed to be writing about when you finally sit down to piece together your essay.
Read the Question
First things first. You need to read the essay question or prompt. Don't just quickly look at it, though. Read it very carefully. This is one of the most important tips for creative writing, too, so never underestimate the importance of understanding what the task is and what you're attempting to write.
The wording is hugely important when it comes to questions and prompts and misunderstanding a single word might lead you to get everything completely wrong.
If you're writing an essay during an exam or test, for example, there's a temptation to start immediately and write as quickly as possible.
Reading the question a few times to understand exactly what's being asked of you won't take much time and can make the difference between writing a good essay and getting everything wrong.
Answering the Question
Beyond reading the question or prompt, it can help to highlight or make notes on the question or prompting statement. The question word used (who, what, why, where, when, etc.) will give you information on what kind of conclusion you'll be expected to reach and the points you're supposed to be making.
If the prompt starts with "who", then your answer and conclusion need to point toward a person, character, or actor. If it begins with "how", then you'll be looking at processes, events, etc.
It's very easy under pressure to build a solid argument supporting something that the original question wasn't asking for. Make sure that you're always keeping the question or prompt in mind throughout your work, especially if you have a word or character limit.
All of the ideas in essays will need to work towards answering the question, providing an argument for the eventual conclusion, and backing up every argument with academic sources and research.
Research: The Essential First Steps in any Creative Writing Essay
Speaking of research, you can't write an essay or even start an essay outline without having done your research. After all, your research will guide you.
If the question or prompt is about something you're intimately familiar with, like the literature you've been reading in english classes near me, you may already have an idea about how you'll structure your essay without doing too much research.
However, if you're given a topic that you're not familiar with or are new to creative writing in general, you'll likely have to do a lot of research.
Do Some Background Research Before Creating Your Essay Outline
For a topic or a prompt where you don't already have a clear argument or answer in mind, you'll need to do a lot of background reading and research.
Before you put pen to paper or write a single sentence or paragraph, you'll want to read about the topic in question. This will provide you with context for your essay, offer up evidence for points you may want to make, and see what the consensus is on particular areas of the subject.
It's quite easy to find evidence to support almost any argument these days, especially with the internet being a vast resource of unsubstantiated claims.
In education and academia, you have to support an argument with good sources and your background research for any essay will give you a better idea of who the trusted sources are on a certain topic and what the prominent school of thought is on the question you're trying to answer.
This isn't to say you can't disagree with prominent authorities in an academic essay. If you have good evidence to the contrary, it can be very helpful in supporting a point you want to make. The more background research and reading you do into your given topic, the more opportunities you'll have to find good evidence.
Find Evidence to Support the Arguments You Want to Make in Your Essay
You'll likely stumble across excellent examples of evidence while doing broader research, but if you want to make any claim in an essay, you'll need to provide sources and evidence to support your claim.
Generally, the higher the level of education, the stricter your teachers or professors will be when it comes to quality evidence and reputable sources.
A student in elementary school is unlikely to be punished for reading a Wikipedia article, but a Ph.D. candidate can't base their research on low-quality or unacademic resources.
This isn't to say that certain websites like Wikipedia and other resources can't be useful when structuring an essay, but remember to provide high-quality and reputable sources to back up an argument.
Source: Who or what is the source?
Motive: Why do they say what they do?
Authority: Who wrote the story?
Review: Is there anything included that jumps out as potentially untrue?
Two-Source Test: How does it compare to another source?
A Good Essay Structure to Follow in Creative Writing Essays
Once you've understood the assignment and collected a good body of research to give you ideas and support the arguments you want to make, you can start structuring your essay paper.
It's much easier to write an essay when you have an established structure and an outline to work from. There are lots of different types of creative writing and essays are just one of them. They naturally have their conventions and structures to follow depending on the subject, level, etc., but knowing the general structure can help get you started.
After all, rather than writing hundreds or thousands of words onto a blank page, you really only need to write a sentence or paragraph in each section of the essay.
A good essay outline will help you keep all your thoughts and ideas coherent, give your essay structure, and break down an otherwise difficult task into several smaller and more manageable tasks.
Introduction
Hook, opening, and thesis statement.
Body
Arguments with well-researched supporting details.
Conclusion
Summary, reiterate the thesis, and closing.
Develop a Thesis Statement
In a paper or essay, a thesis statement is the introductory part of the work. Generally, this is the sentence or objective that the paper looks to achieve or validate.
This is the main idea that you're claiming in your essay and it should be echoed throughout the paper. This isn't to say that you have to repeat it verbatim, but almost every sentence in the essay should be working towards this goal.
Develop your Main Points
With the right amount of research, you should have established the main points that support your thesis statement.
The main argumentative points should also be backed up with good evidence because anyone can claim that certain ideas are good or valid, but in academia, not just any argument will fly if you don't provide evidence.
The Conclusion
Your conclusion generally offers a summary of the whole essay, reiterating both the thesis statement and the main points that were included in the body of your essay.
It can be tempting but don't try to introduce any new ideas or sections in your conclusion. Even if you think the idea is really good, you should consider moving it to the main body of your essay.
Don't forget that once you've finished your essay outline and started filling in the structure with your arguments, introduction, and conclusion, you still need to check, edit, and proofread your work. Fortunately, there are plenty of great tools to help you with different kinds of creative writing.
A Sample Essay Structure
Keep in mind that while the general academic essay structure is fairly fixed, there may be instructions within your prompt or essay question that also affect how your essay should be structured.
The format of the introduction, body, and conclusion is fairly fixed, but always check with a teacher, professor, or examiner if you have any doubts about the structure.
In general, however, this is the typical structure that an argumentative academic essay with three main points would take. This is when you can finally start creating your "outline" by grouping the ideas.
It's also worth noting that it can vary how much you'll be rewarded or punished for linking ideas. Some academic institutions are very strict on having every section and paragraph semantically linked through proper word choice, which means that you need to be very careful with how you begin and end every paragraph.
Here's an excellent video from YouTube on getting started with writing an essay that we think you should watch.
Get Help Writing Essays with Superprof
Writing essays is easier said than done and it's normal to still feel like a deer in the headlights when tasked with a complicated essay topic.
Every student is different, too, and while our advice here is what works for most students, you can create much better essay outlines by working with somebody who understands you, how you like to write, and the kinds of difficulties you encounter with essay planning.
This is where english tutors come in handy; where you can enroll in english classes near me, with a dedicated private tutor to focus specifically on the problems that you encounter when creating an essay outline.
If you can structure your essays but struggle with doing research, they can focus on that.
Finding it difficult to string all your ideas and arguments together? Dedicate your time to working on logical arguments, important linking words, and effectively backing up your points with the right research.
There are lots of tutors on the Superprof site specializing in academic essay writing so while an English tutor or even a creative writing tutor could be incredibly helpful, you can work solely on creative writing essay outlines.
Just search for english classes near me and you can start browsing their profiles to see what they offer, how much they charge, and if they offer the first lesson for free!
You can use these free lessons to try a few different tutors before choosing the one that's best for you and how you like to learn.
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