How to Write the Perfect Essay

hi I’m yes or no and today I’m going to share with you all the literary tools I’ve picked up over my years of writing essays you might want to grab a pencil and some popcorn because this is gonna be long alright so I want to begin by talking about the title and the first sentence of your essay before anything else like literally before anything else you need to make sure your first sentence and your title are not generic they need to be eye-catching and make the audience want to read more because if you can make these parts good then you’ll already have the reader on your side rooting for you before they’ve read a single other word of the essay just think if the title is the clickbait of your essay then your first sentence is like your essay reaching out at and of the reader and saying hi I’m what you’re going to be dealing with for the next couple paragraphs so don’t have a sissy handshake don’t have a sissy si okay so after you’ve established that your essay is in fact totally cool and worth reading then you have to worry about the other words in it so my nice tip is expand your vernacular aka grow your geek speek aka learn some new words and use them creatively so one really easy way to stop sounding generic is to avoid starting your sentences with common words like I or however or although you know try something different instead like for example okay uh inches from the ground tommy’s nose was about to communicate to his body that this was the day they’d get their lunch money stolen right like itches isn’t even a complicated word but by starting the sentence with something different it gives that phrase and artistic flair uh but here’s the catch in your quest to sound artistic you don’t want to overuse these $100 words you know you don’t want to use big words that you don’t know how to use cuz when you do that you end up sounding like someone who uses big words just to try and sound smart and that’s trend pairen you need to learn how to use everything in moderation all right the next thing I’m gonna go watch it is a formulaic structure for how to write your essay now this is like the training wheels of essay writing meaning when you learn how to write like a big boy you can discard it until then it’s incredibly useful so let’s go so the perfect formula for an academic essay don’t worry we’ll get to creative essay soon enough the perfect formula for an academic essay is four to five paragraphs composed of one intro paragraph two to three body paragraphs and then one conclusion paragraph also known as the kink butene paragraph this little piggy went home to write an essay now bear with me because this gets a little bit detail your intro paragraph should be used to introduce some kind of question you want your essay to answer and then your body paragraphs should be used to develop some line of reasoning to discover the answer to that question and then your concluding paragraph should be used to summarize everything you’ve already said answer the question and then either one open up a new question to the world or to tie a nice pretty little bow on the end of your essay that ties everything together now if you’re in America you might be freaking out because I haven’t mentioned the word thesis once don’t fret thesis is just a fancy way to say this is the answer to my question if you need to present a thesis in your essay this is the structure you’ll use use the intro to present the thesis use the body paragraphs to develop an argument for that thesis and use the concluding paragraph to restate that thesis in different words easy peasy lemon squeezy but just in case this wasn’t all easy peasy lemon squeezy I will include a link down in the description that goes into more detail about how to write the perfect academic essay and I’ll give you some more advice all right there are a few things you need to remember when writing an academic essay one each paragraph should have its own unique point it’s it’s own unique special snowflake additionally every sentence should have a purpose if it doesn’t delete it next when presenting body paragraphs you always start with your strongest argument and end with your weakest one and lastly every transition should be fluid the last sentence of the paragraph should always have a hook to the first sentence of the following paragraph and vice versa okay now I’m just gonna throw a little bit of miscellaneous advice toward you guys and this one is what I call use your weaknesses to show your stripes use your weaknesses to show your strengths means that you should consider adding a counter-argument to your essay when you use a counter-argument it does two things one it shows that you’re intelligent enough to understand that there’s another side to the issue and two it gives you an opportunity to care that counter-argument apart with logic and make your point seem even more legitimate fun fact the best place to put a counter-argument is usually in that third body paragraph it just is hockey okay finally getting to you creative essay writers now creative essay writers you still have to use a lot of these elements I’ve already listed but you have a lot more freedom over where to use them so luckily or unluckily no training wheels for you yeah you’re just gonna have to roll with it so one thing that does stay consistent between creative essays and academic essays is that there’s still an idea that needs to be developed throughout the course of the essay and needs to be resolved at the end somehow so what I’m going to do for you guys is I’m going to include down in the description below a link to one of my successful Harvard application essays and also an outline describing how I use each paragraph to advance an idea so won’t give you a formula but it’ll give you a sense of what needs to be done and I’m telling you I’ve seen dead people as the sixth sense and seeing out write a good essay is the seven after you do it enough times you’ll start to sense how it’s done even if you can’t fully articulate it which leads me perfectly into my next point practice makes perfect oh oh I cannot stress this enough practice makes perfect when you’re trying to go from training wheels to whoa look ma no hands practice is the only thing standing between the two so I would encourage you to get as much writing under your belt as you can join the school newspaper write creative content for the internet etc etc because by doing something a million and both times you’ll finally learn the nuances of it and no amount of money no amount of talent no amount of watching youtube videos will ever teach you as much as practice will okay and at this point I know you guys might be like we want cold hard techniques you want a tip that always works make sure your grammar and vocab is a hundred percent correct you make one spelling or grammar mistake and it will undermine your entire essay so take the 30 seconds to invest in a Google search and learn the vocab and sentence structures that you don’t understand fully trust me that they’re there and there’s the world will thank you as will your essay reader alright maybe all my advice was fine and dandy you know for like 90% of situations but sometimes you’re just looking at a blank Word document and you’re too petrified to even start and I get it essays are like the basilisks of real life you can’t look an eye or they’ll kill you so sometimes you got to use a different approach now a lot of people would advise to you to just word vomit all over your blank page I think that’s one gross and too disgusting instead what I would advise you to do is write an outline an outline is great because it gives you a place to just write all your main ideas in a crude and ugly fashion and after you’ve come up with your main ideas the only thing left is figuring out how to creatively link them I mean creativity and main ideas are like talking on a cell phone and trying to cut a steak sure they can be done at the same time but when you separate on both activities become much easier alright last but holy cow not least read the requirements for the essay and follow them otherwise you could end up rain the completely perfect essay on a completely wrong topic hi I’m Erin Owens tone end up with the zero bye [Music]