How to Write Better Essays

Rehearsing the detail before you write

But it’s not just a clear logical sequence that’s created in planning:

we’re also able to sort out the main ideas and the important details we

need in order to explain, illustrate and develop them. Doing so reduces

the risk of omitting an important section or argument that is central

to the issues raised by the essay.

Even so, it would be unwise to be so rigid that you cannot move

away from your plan. Some new idea or relationship may occur to you

and you might need to re-organise your material to include it. But be

careful that this is really useful material for your argument, and not

just irrelevant padding. Ultimately, the test of good planning comes

when you rehearse your arguments in detailed note form before you

write. At this point you make sure you’ve predicted what you need and

you’ve rehearsed how you’re going to use it, so there should be no

last-minute changes.

Nevertheless, beyond the need to get high marks for your essay, plan-

ning has a still more important role to play: it’s indispensable if you’re

to understand the subject. This is the opportunity to rehearse your argu-

ments in note form so you can see how well you’ve understood the ideas.

It always surprises me to find how many students still choose not to

plan, and therefore force themselves to do the two most difficult things

in writing, both at the same time: that is, to summon up the ideas and

plan the order in which they ought to be developed, and at the same

time to search for the right words to convey them with just the right

strength and nuance, in order to develop the argument in the direction

they’ve chosen. This is a task that is virtually impossible for all but the

most familiar subjects that we’ve written about many times before.

Rehearsing your arguments in linear form

Rehearsing our ideas in the plan calls for different skills and techniques

from those used in the brainstorming stage. As a result, some students

feel more comfortable rehearsing their ideas in linear form, rather than

the pattern-note form they used in the interpretation stage. Even so,

in all the seminars I’ve run, in general, students appear to be equally

divided between linear and pattern notes for the planning stage.

Nevertheless, there are clear differences between the two stages.

Rehearsing ideas is a deliberate step-by-step process, unlike the

imaginative flow of ideas in brainstorming, so if you feel more

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