How to Write Better Essays

are persistent and, if you allow them to come in too early, they will

overpower the artist.

To avoid this unwelcome intrusion allow yourself to write freely

without too much concern for style. You need to tell yourself that it

doesn’t matter if you don’t get the wording exactly right on the first

attempt. The emphasis should be on allowing your thoughts to flow

freely, while you follow your plan and develop your ideas. The key to

success here is to remind yourself that the best writing reads as though

it is talk in print. To help yourself, imagine you’re talking to a group of

friends who know about your subject, but have never seen it in exactly

the way you do.

After this, when you move into the revision stage, you can clean up

your work. Ideally, you should leave your first draft a few days. If you

revise it straightaway, you may miss things that need to be changed.

You may be so delighted to have got it out of the way, that your powers

of self-criticism may have become blunted.

Hang a question over what you write

Equally important, as you set about to write, it’s worth reminding your-

self that while you ought to have a point of view, you should avoid

telling your readers what to think. Try to hang a question mark over it

all. This way you allow your readers to think for themselves – to dis-

cover for themselves the points and arguments you’re making. As a

result they will feel more involved, finding themselves just as commit-

ted to the arguments you’ve made and the insights you’ve exposed as

you are. You will have written an essay that not only avoids passivity

in the reader, but is interesting and thought provoking.

The thesis statement

However, advising students to hang a question over what they write

can be confusing, particularly if their departments insist they write

thesis statements. While most universities have a fairly broad and

complex understanding of what they mean by a thesis statement, some

insist on a more restricted interpretation, imposing a narrow range of

expectations on students, who are told they musthave a point of view,

whichmustbe stated in the introduction and then defended through-

out the essay. As one university department puts it, ‘form your own

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