How to write a good essay (step by step)

How to write a good essay. To make a good essay it is very important that you eliminate the idea that writing is too complicated.

To get started, think about the topic of the essay and make a note of all the ideas that come to your mind. Write down everything you remember, without worrying about putting it on paper in a very elaborate way. Later on, these ideas will be organized.

Also think of a quote or historical fact that can be referenced. This shows that you have general knowledge. Once you have written down everything that comes to mind, develop your initial ideas. Thus, the first paragraphs of what were once just loose ideas begin to emerge.

In the next step, structure your essay thinking carefully about how you will introduce ideas, develop your arguments, and come to a conclusion that proposes a solution.

Now that most of the work is done, use connectives and ensure that your text is cohesive and, above all, coherent, thus convincing your reader.

Finally, review what you wrote by doing a careful reading. This reading allows you to correct small inattention flaws that can harm your text, so it is very important.

• Reflect on the essay topic
• Develop initial ideas
• Structure your writing
• Use Connectors and Be Consistent
• Review what you wrote. 

1. How to write a good essay – Reflect on the topic of the essay

Reflect on the topic being proposed and make an outline, even mental, about what you know about it. If you have the time, sketching and enumerating the main ideas is a good way to start.

Asking questions and answering them is an exercise that can help you put together an outline.

Example:

• What? Violence in schools.
• How does it happen? Frictions between students or between students, faculty and staff.
• Why does it happen? Lack of respect, boundaries, etc.
• When or since when does it happen? There are more and more cases of violence in schools.
• Where does it take place? It happens inside or outside schools.
• What can be done? The school must involve the school community for moments of awareness that encourage respect for people. 

In this way, you define your approach and, with that, you are able to present convincing arguments about the points you intend to expose in your text.

In addition, this organization allows you not to run the risk of straying from the topic and to be able to better control your time.

Take the opportunity to think of examples, historical data or a quote that are related to the topic of the essay. Use them throughout your text and enrich it.

There is one important thing that is to understand the difference between theme and subject. Theme is an approach that can be taken to a subject. In the example above, we have

Subject: school violence

Theme: the role of society in combating violence in schools

Other possible themes: training teachers to face violence in schools, factors that lead students to be violent at school.

2. Develop initial ideas

Once you have organized your ideas in the previous step, writing your text becomes much easier.

In this step, your mental outline, or draft, begins to turn into paragraphs with developed ideas. Add the examples, historical data, or quote you were able to gather. All of them are resources that highly value a text, in addition to showing that you have knowledge.

Example:

Violence in schools happens between students or between students, teachers and staff. This problem has been increasingly frequent and, therefore, requires a close look at its causes. The lack of limits of students in the family environment is one of them.

Victims of school violence are often attacked at school, but also outside of it. An example of this is social networks, in which aggressors take advantage to pressure victims and, with that, leave them increasingly fragile.

The school must involve the community for moments of awareness that encourage respect for people. With this initiative, it may be possible to sensitize the population to the need to commit to ending this type of violence, which is a problem for each of us.

3. How to write a good essay – Structure your writing

Most of the essays you write are argumentative-essay. This is the type of writing required in the Enem.

The essay-argumentative writing is the one in which you defend an idea through arguments. In its structure it should contain introduction, development and conclusion.

1. The introduction is used to contextualize the reader on the topic of the essay, that is, after reading the introduction, the reader will know the ideas that will be addressed in your text.

The introduction doesn’t have to be long, after all, you just have to make your ideas clear to the reader, without exposing your arguments.

2. Development is used for you to argue about each of your ideas. The ideal is to present data that show your knowledge, as this is a way to convince the reader.

Development is the longest part of writing, as this is where you will defend your ideas with arguments.

3. The conclusion is used to present the reader with what can be concluded from the ideas you put forward in the development. To do so, you must gather ideas and propose a solution.

The conclusion shouldn’t be long. On average, it usually has the same number of paragraphs as the introduction.

4. How to write a good essay – Use connectives and be consistent

Good writing needs to present a logical sequence. For this, we use connectives to ensure that ideas do not get loose and that the text is not a simple tangle of sentences.

Thus, however, in this way, but are terms used to offer the text a greater connection between sentences and ideas.

In addition to presenting a logical sequence, your text must be coherent, that is, it cannot present ideas that contradict each other. If you are contradictory, you will not be able to defend your ideas, and your text will be confused and incoherent.

5. Review what you wrote

Finally, reread your text. This is very important, because with the final reading you can identify agreement errors, lack of punctuation, or any mistake made by lack of attention.

The final review gives you the opportunity to correct certain mistakes and thus not lose points in the writing due to oversights.