An essay is a written composition on any subject. Writing is a way of communicating. We communicate when we feel the need to share an idea with others. Organizing our thoughts and structuring the way we express them will help us to be better understood. So, in my opinion, when we use an essay to communicate an idea we should carefully choose our words and structure the text such that each paragraph contains no more than one idea.
To explain this opinion I would like to give an example. Say, I was writing an essay about going to the beach. But first let me tell you that my neighbor bought a new bicycle today. His sister mentioned that it was cold outside for this time of the year. My mother says she likes grapefruit but I like chocolate: Even though all of these sentences might be true, putting them all together in one paragraph will have you confused in no time, and wondering what all of this has to do with me wanting to go to the beach. I hope you agree by now, that it’s better to limit yourself to one idea per paragraph.
It is safe to assume that by the time you write an essay you have already made up your mind what it is you are going to write about. Even though you already have a conclusion you would still better start the essay with a beginning, continue to the middle and put your conclusion at the and.
We probably agree that for the sake of clarity we start at the beginning and end at the end. This is rather obvious. Therefore, it makes for great effect if we sometimes deliberately turn this around. You could start an essay at the end and then go back to the beginning. Also, you could interrupt the flow of a story with short episodes of the past. This is typically used in movies and is called a “flash-back”.
How do you prepare for writing an essay? Well, first you decide what the topic should be. An essay could be fiction, as in a short story, it could be historical, it could be scientific. Once you’ve chosen the topic you do some research, trying to learn lots of facts and different perspectives on what it is you want to write about. Next, you write a first draft, you read it back, you don’t like it, you throw it away and you start all over again. You repeat these steps until you think you can do no better. At that stage it is usually very helpful to ask somebody else to read your essay. You want to make sure that what is clear to you is actually also clear to the reader.
In conclusion, writing an essay starts long before you put the first sentence on paper. The writing starts only after you really know what it is you want to write about and how you want to write about it. In other words: hard work and lot’s of fun!
