How To Write A Kickass Paper/essay

How to write a kickass paper/essay

Because sooner or later, you will have to do it. You won’t get through high school and/or college without doing it. Here’s how to get a good grade on the first try.

1. This isn’t the same thing as writing a story. In fiction writing, bending grammar rules and stuffy writing conventions is okay. In academic writing, it’s not. Get the facts across first and worry about character later. Academic writing is kind of boring, I know. Act like you know what you’re talking about. Don’t abuse the thesaurus until you sound like a post from r/iamverysmart, but try to sound educated.

2. Pick a specific topic. One of my essays from high school was a comparison of youth activism against violence, in the 1960s versus the 2010s. Ridiculously specific? Not ridiculously. If you pick a topic that’s too broad, you’ll end up pulling your brain every which way and overwhelming yourself. You might have some hits and misses with this, but it’s an important part of writing. Going over the word limit is just as annoying to your teacher as going under.

3. MELELEC. My 11th-grade English teacher taught me this little trick and I use it as a mainstay for writing. It’s helped me ace assignments and win scholarships. MELELEC is a paragraph structure that helps you write paragraphs that are not only thicc and will eat up page space, but also are packed with meaningful content. The format is Main Point - Explain - Link - Explain - Link - Explain - Conclusion. You introduce the idea of the paragraph, add some extra information, link a related point or piece of information, explain that, link another point, explain that, and then conclude the idea expressed in the paragraph. It works, I swear. Teachers and professors love it.

4. Absolutely NO second-person. That’s when you directly address the audience as “you.” Yeah, don’t do that if you want to sound professional. I’m doing it right now and sounding hypocritical af because I don’t need to sound professional. It’s Tumblr. Enough said. Anyway, second-person statements tend to have a defensive effect on the audience, which makes them automatically more hostile to whatever you’re trying to say. (”Nuh-uh. I don’t think that. I would do that. That’s not how it works for me.”) And given that the whole point of your essay is to convince your audience that you’re right, that’s counterintuitive. The only time the word “you” should appear in academic writing is when it’s in the context of a quotation.

5. Avoid first-person, too. In some cases, you might need to write an essay in the first person, like when a college prof asks you to write about a personal experience. Yeah, good luck writing about your life without actually mentioning yourself. But in more impersonal writing, like informative or persuasive essays, it looks unprofessional. Sorry, but the audience doesn’t want to hear your take on stuff; they want to know the facts. (Well, if you want to be really specific, they want to hear your take on stuff when it’s expressed as fact and backed up with, ya know, actual facts.) Which leads me into my next point…

6. State opinions as facts. Don’t do this in real life, as it makes you look like a pompous asshole, but do it in academic writing. In other words, never soften a sentence with “I think” or “In my opinion.” Everyone already knows it’s your opinion, anyway. Instead of softening the the blow to lessen the chance of it offending someone, cite some evidence or make another point to back up your claim. That’s substance, which is what your teachers and profs are looking for.

7. The thesis. It’s all about the thesis. The thesis is the TL;DR of your paper. It’s the answer to the question “What’s the doodly-darn point of this essay?” The traditional spot for the thesis statement is the last sentence of the first paragraph – it’s punchy and to the point there. Take time to have a good thesis 

8. Don’t ask rhetorical questions. You’re the one who should be answering the questions that your audience has. So predict what they might ask about your topic or the points that you make, and answer them. It’s not the audience’s job to answer your questions, for the love of all things good. You can make them leave thinking about what you wrote without being so anvilicious.

9. Three is the magic number. In high school, the typical format you’ll have for an essay is the five-paragraph format. Now you might be going “Whut? I thought you said that three was the magic number, Saybyebus.” Well, yes, I did say that, but two of the five essays are the introduction and the conclusion. So that leaves you with three paragraphs to really get into the meat of your essay and dish out the important information. So one of the best ways to work with this is to make your thesis three-pronged, and use each of the three paragraphs to address a point of your thesis. Boom-shacka-lacka. I just laid out the structure of your essay. Does that mean you have to cite me as credit? IDK, actually. But that does remind me of my next point…

10. DON’T PLAGIARIZE! Bruh, don’t do it. Whenever you learn something from someone else’s work and add that information to your essay, you have to cite them, even if you paraphrase them. If you don’t do that, it’s plagiarism. In high school, it’ll get you a big-ass downgrade, and you will probably get yelled at by your teacher. In college, it could get you SUSPENDED or EXPELLED. They take that shit seriously. So you should too.