There are many important steps in writing an essay. Essays are a significant part of any student’s grade in most English classes, whether in high school, college, or even those studying for Masters and a PhD. Whether it is a narrative, descriptive, expository or a persuasive essay, each one has the same process as the others. Although depending on the class level one is at, the writing process might be more or less complex. For example, if one is writing a research paper in a Composition class at a university, he or she will probably need to do a deeper, more detailed research than someone in a first level English class in high school would need to do when writing a research paper. There are many steps when writing a paper, from picking a topic, to typing out the final draft. First, the writer must pick a topic, unless the topic is already assigned by the professor. Choosing a topic for an essay is one of the most important parts of writing an essay. The writer must keep in consideration the audience and the type of essay that has been assigned.
For example, if the essay assigned is a persuasive one, the ideal topic would be one that the writer strongly agrees on. In a narrative essay, the writer would have to write about a real-life experience. For a process analysis essay, like this one, the writer will need to have good background knowledge on the topic chosen. Next step, the writer will generate some ideas, and then organize those ideas. There are many different ways to come up with ideas for an essay. The writer can free write, which means writing whatever comes to mind to the writer, then organizing the ideas later. Another very good method is brainstorming. The writer will write all of the ideas that they can come up with; usually when one brainstorms, he or she makes a list when coming up with the ideas. Clustering is similar to brainstorming, only more organized because a diagram is constructed to show an idea branch off from another, then the writer may make an outline of the essay, which will arrange ideas into order, including main ideas, and supporting points. A very good way to organizing the ideas is coming up with an outline for the essay.
Once the ideas are structured well on to the outline, the writer is ready to write the first rough draft. After organizing ideas, they are formed into complete paragraphs when writing the rough draft, according to how the outline is set up. It’s common for students to write the rough draft first on paper. That way the writer can easily erase, make notes, and move sentences around. The intro paragraph of the essay will state the main idea of the essay, and will also usually contain the thesis statement. The paragraphs to follow will contain the main ideas, and usually one main idea of the topic is enough for one full paragraph. Within the paragraphs there will be major supporting sentences and minor supporting details, creating a very well thought out paragraph. While writing the rough draft, the writer shouldn’t worry too much about grammar, spelling, or sentence structure. When the first draft is all done, a writer usually finds someone else to revise that rough draft. Once a writer has some suggestions on how to make the rough draft even better, he or she might make a second rough draft.
The writer then focuses a little more on the sentence structure, coming closer to what the final draft will look like. After the final rough draft is written, the writer will start on the final revising step. Revising consists of two important parts: Proofreading and editing. The writer can chose someone like a teacher, classmate, or someone outside the class, to revise the final rough draft and look for bad grammar, spelling, and sentence structure. The proofreader must make sure that the essay follows the main essay structure, and that it supports the main idea. The person revising the essay must look for words that are misspelled and punctuation marks not used properly. If they see any, they should edit the mistakes so that the writer is ready to type the final draft. The person revising the essay will want to let the writer know if the essay does not follow the proper organization, or even if the flow of the essay can be better.
Also when revising, the reader will want to look for unclear or confusing ideas or sentences. The proofreader will want to cut out misused and extra words in the essay. The last step is doing a citation page. Most teachers or professors will make students create a citation page when doing any type of research for the essay. The most common format that a professor will ask the writer to write in is the MLA style. The citation page for MLA is quite simple. First the writer will create the citation page on a separate page after the essay. When doing the page, the writer usually will name it “Works Cited”, and he or she will center this title at the top of the page. When making a citations page, most students will take the URL of a webpage, copy it, and then paste it on an online citation generator such as EasyBib.
Then the writer takes that creation and will put it on the citations page giving credit to where it’s due. The writing process is a very important part in writing an essay for English or writing classes that will be needed in any school at any level. Choosing a topic, organizing ideas, preparing a rough draft, revising an essay, and creating a citation page are the main steps for writing that will allow a writer to create a well-developed essay. During the writing process every step is as important as the last. If a student follows this process constantly, they will write grade “A” papers on a regular basis and will be able to impress the teacher/professor.