How to Write an Essay - Litte Guideline

Obviously, this is no extensive guideline, but I have been successful with it, so I'll post it here.




You start off an essay with the Introduction. Generally you try to make the topic sound interesting to the people, so they want to read it. I usually use some kind of example, like either from my home country, one that I read/heard about in the news and that makes people interested of what I am going to discuss throughout my topic. Sometimes (not sure if it works in this essay, haven't started writing it yet) you can refer back to your introductory story to explain your line of argument along some kind of "common knowledge" that all of your readers have.

Once you caught the interest of your readers, you tell them why you chose this type of introduction (like the story or pole or whatever you talked about in the previous paragraph) and in an academic essay you tell them what you are going to talk about. I usually try not to tell them everything, just a quick review. In an essay that's 3000 words, don't spend too much on telling what you'll talk about, coz it only costs you words.

Try to keep your introduction relatively short compared to the rest. In a 3000 words essay, I'd say no longer than 500 words (unless you need to gain words haha but then you need a good reason to make it longer).


After the Introduction write a sentence or two where you connect it to the main body. There might be examples out there, but my connections usually depend on the flow of the text.

After that comes your main body. There you discuss your argument and whatever interesting facts you found about it. Make sure you keep a coherent way of writing it. In our schools we learn:


First you write down a hypothesis (The sky is blue). Second you argue around it and tell them what you read, what you studied and which sources confirm that the sky is blue. Third you use an example that proves that you have a valid point.

Also, depending on how many arguments you have, you might consider structuring them in one of those ways:

Pro-Sky Blue-Arguments: 

Either: Weakest->Stronger->Strong->Strongest 

Or: Strongest->Strong->Stronger->Weakest

Same with the Con-Arguments - e.g. if you're for the blue sky-argument, put the con's first, so that the weakest argument is mentioned last and then start the pro's with the weakest argument.

Again, make sure you link paragraphs and arguments, so that it becomes a fluid text and not a bunch of arguments thrown together on a page.

Then you write the conclusion: Not so difficult, can be really short. Write down what you and the reader have learned from your essay, refer back to the introduction and conclude the whole thing. There's no guideline of how to do this, you'll just have to improvise and learn on the fly.

Hope this helps a little. Good luck with your work.