Essay Writing : A step-by-step guide to writing a basic essay

Here in no particular order, are the ten best writing tips I’ve discovered in 25 years
of writing. They may work for you, too. Try them.

=> Tip One: Pay attention to images

http://www.jeanhouston.org/brain.html

Your right brain thinks in images, and when you write, you translate images from
your right brain into words. Usually this process happens so quickly that you’re
unaware of it. If you can make this process conscious, you can goose up your own
creativity. Stephen King calls this process “writing with the third eye — the eye of
imagination and memory.”

To get the hang of this, try Jean Houston’s process, adapted from her book, *The
Possible Human*. (URL above.)

=> Tip Two: Making mud/ laying track

Your first draft of any piece of work is “mud” — raw material. Julia Cameron refers
to your first draft as “laying track”, another term I like.

If the first draft’s awful, great! It’s meant to be. It’s only raw material. However, if
you don’t create the first draft, or you wait until you have a really great idea that’s
worth a first draft, you won’t write anything. Write. Make mud.

=> Tip Three: Just write — think on the page, or on the screen, NOT in your head

Thinking too much while you write is treacherous, because you can spend two hours
“writing” and end up with half a page of work. Write-think. That is, think on the
page, not in your head.

=> Tip Four: Grow your writing with lists

Listing is a form of brainstorming. It grows your writing, and it’s fun.

Listing is an excellent technique to use when you get stuck in your writing, and it
doesn’t matter what kind of writing you’re doing, whether it’s fiction or nonfiction.
Listing also helps you in the revision process, to add texture to your work.

Here’s an excellent FREE software program to help you to produce lists, and to save
them:

http://www.flashpeak.com/slimlist/slimlist.htm

=> Tip Five: Use your magical thesaurus

Your most useful listing tool is —- a thesaurus. Keep one on your desk to kickstart
your brain.

Your thesaurus and dictionary are perfect kickstarters. They’re also vital tools
whenever you’re revising.

=> Tip Six: Make writing the FIRST thing you do each day

If you write at least page, by hand, as soon as you get up, you’ll find that writing
comes more easily to you for the rest of the day. You’re also more focused and
relaxed for the rest of the day.

=> Tip Seven: Set WIG goals — the best goals are always unrealistic

Writer Martha Beck calls unrealistic goals WIGs: Wildly Improbable Goals. In the
September 2002 issue of Oprah magazine she says: ” learning to invite and accept
your own WIG can awaken you to a kind of ubiquitous, benevolent magic, a river of
enchantment that perpetually flows to your destiny.”

A WIG is exciting. Just thinking about a WIG will get your heart pounding. Working
toward your WIG (writing a book, writing a screenplay, getting signed on as a
contributor at a mass-market magazine) takes hard work. Lots of hard work.

And at the end of that hard work, as Beck points out, you achieve your goal, but
there’s a twist. You never achieve it exactly as you envisioned it - you achieve
something even better, something you could never have imagined.

I’m a great believer in writing ABOUT your goals. This is because when you write,
you’re using both sides of your brain, and are accessing your unconscious mind as
well. You live in your left brain, which you regard as “you”, but you have a silent
partner, your right brain, which is also you, and which communicates via images
and feelings.

=> Tip Eight: Separate writing and editing

Writing comes first, then editing. If you try to combine the two, you will block.

Writing should come as easily to you as chatting to a friend. If it doesn’t, you’re
trying to edit in your head before you get the words on paper, or on the computer
screen. If you’re not aware of the danger of combining writing and editing, you’ll
make writing hard for yourself, when it should be easy. If you don’t have trouble
talking, how can you have trouble writing?

=> Tip Nine: It’s good to struggle with your writing

In his book The Breakout Principle, Dr Herbert Benson (who also wrote The
Relaxation Response) describes a struggle/ release process that leads to a new level
of awareness. When you struggle, and then completely give up the struggle — just
give up — there’s a chance that you can achieve a peak experience which leads you
to a new level of functioning.

How does this work in your writing? Let’s say that you’re writing a novel. This work
is hard for you. However, you keep at it faithfully, working on your novel each day.
You struggle with it for weeks. Then you give up. Although you keep writing, you
say to yourself: “I don’t care any more what garbage I write. I’m just going to do it.
I’m just going to write.”

This release leads to writing magic. Suddenly you’re inspired, and you finish the
book in a rush. Although you will still occasionally struggle with your writing
(because struggle is a part of life), you’ve broken through to a new level of
functioning in your work.

This new level would not, and could not, have happened without the struggle.

=> Tip Ten: Good writing = truthful writing

Writing truthfully can feel like undressing in public, so many beginning writers worry
about sharing their writing.

Be compassionate. Firstly, to yourself. Write. Write for yourself. All writing takes
courage.

When you finally show your writing to others, you discover the amazing truth that
_no one cares_. In her book “Writing To Save Your Life”, Michele Weldon advises:
“Get over yourself”. No one is judging what you write. So write.

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After cracking hundreds of screenplays sent into the BlueCat Screenplay Competition, the same problems in the execution of the story and script continue to emerge. Here is a general overview of these persistent issues.

Do you realize what you’re saying??

In the theatre, they read plays aloud over and over in the process of script development, and one of the reasons they do this is to hear the dialogue. When I hear dialogue in my head, it might sound very good, but then when I hear a person actually speak it, I often have an impulse to jump in front of a bus. And over and over and over and over, when I read screenplay entries to BlueCat, I am immediately dismayed when the characters start speaking. Excellent everything else, awful dialogue. And I often wonder if the writer has actually heard the lines they have written for their characters out loud. Either read the whole thing aloud to yourself, or even better, get a group of your friends to read it. You do not need professional actors to evaluate dialogue. Just people excited to help. Videotape it. I have videotaped readings, and then sat down and worked out an entire rewrite off the tape, addressing every single line that bothered me. Which leads me to another thing.

Ha.

It’s hard to pass a screenplay on to industry contacts if an unfunny joke is sitting in the middle of page two. It’s highly difficult if there’s twelve by page five. You might have a payoff in your third act that would break my heart, but if your jokes are poor, the heart of your audience will be shot, probably resentful, and your work will be recycled. Please try your humor out. If your beats aren’t funny to some people, rewrite. Trust a truly hilarious bit is coming. Think of the patience you need to muster through this writing process as courage, because it is.

If you find you are not funny, write a script that is not funny. Many, many great scripts are not funny, as we all know.

Mispellings.

Do you think the development people in Los Angeles, basically the smartest people in the film industry, will not be annoyed and continue to read your script when you have misspelled three words in the first five pages? Perhaps. How do you feel when you’re reading something and you find misspelled words? How does your attitude shift towards the author? Exactly. If you don’t think many scripts have this problem, start a screen writng comptition.

OKAY, WE GOT IT!

Try to limit your scene description. When a person opens your script, how many INCHES of action slug are they looking at on page one? Is there anyway you can convey what you want us to SEE with less words? I always go back and CUT CUT CUT to prevent my screenplay from fatiguing my reader with excess words as they try to listen for my story. Do we need to know what necklace someone is wearing? We all understand making motion pictures is collaborative. I strive to let the art department and the costumer and the prop master and so on DO THEIR JOB by not making their decisions in the screenplay, because I have little passion for it and don’t do it well. They will make their own choices, and most likely better ones, so why bother? Always use fewer words to say the same thing.

It’s not show and tell, it’s show not tell.

I constantly find myself being told something by the screenplay the viewer of the film will not be aware of. Screenplays are not literature. They are words assembled to describe what motion pictures will play out on the screen. Telling us a character is a jealous person is passive and dull. Showing a character in an act of jealousy is more effective and essentially cinematic. Let the words and actions of your characters carry your story. This is not easy. You want the actor or director to understand what you want and what you mean. Allow the description of physical actions and the recording of spoken words reveal the narrative to the filmmakers. The script will read faster and offers the reader a richer opportunity to imagine and discover.

The Joy of Making Things Up.

I really cherish the idea, that as a writer, I can make things up. If I want the guy to say something, all I have to do is type it. But I have to fight against creating characters and interactions amongst characters derived from movies I have watched and television I have seen. I often find myself writing a scene only to realize I’m not drawing from my imagination or my own life experience or my observations of people, I’m drawing from the millions of hours of observing actors play human beings on television and in movie theaters. And because I’m writing a “MOVIE,” it is even more difficult, because I’m fighting against a subconscious or unconscious observation that this is “how people act in movies.” Stop yourself and ask, would this happen on planet Earth? Do I know how people from Miami really speak? What would a person actually say if they had a gun in their face? Can you possibly imagine what could happen? This is your opportunity to be truly imaginative. Answer your own expectations of original work. A mature writer develops a strong capacity to recognize and reject the false.

Ouch.

Forced exposition. This is when a brother tells a sister on page two that he will be attending a school which dad wouldn’t pay for because he bought a farm that the whole family will be moving to tomorrow because he found that the city was a really bad place to live in after mom was really scared because of that mugging thing that happened after they came back from the sister’s graduation from high school. When characters engage in an unbelievable conversation about matters in which they would be familiar with, or when they proclaim something completely out of nowhere simply to inform the audience of key facts crucial to their understanding of the movie, you have a problem. This awkward exposition will not be seen as genuine human behavior and will detach your audience from the emotional current of your story. Exposition is necessary and difficult to execute. Be careful how you offer information crucial to your story at the start of your screenplay. This is a common problem in early drafts. Exposition needs to be seamless and graceful.

Format.

You know what? Go get a script and copy what you think it looks like and you’ll be fine. Trust me. Spec scripts are sitting on desks all over Hollywood and their format is not consistent at all. Getting crazy about format sells screenwriting software. I use two tab settings and copied stuff from a book and not one person in the film industry has ever said a thing to me in ten years. But if your script looks like a book, or a poem, or a magazine article, your screenplay format is wrong. Just make it look a little like a movie script, and if it kicks ass, guess what.

So do you.

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In today’s highly competitive and ever-changing world it is extremely important to acquire the ability to explain your point of view, your contention as well as the gist of the topic you are familiar with. Whether you intend to become a teacher or have chosen other career path, it is imperative, even indispensable for many careers to develop good communicative skills. During your study at the University you might be assigned with several types of written assignments that help you to develop and enhance communication skills. I would like in this article to focus on two of them, expository essay and persuasive essay. In spite of the fact that the structure, style and some other elements of these writing projects are similar, there are some notable differences between them.

The main purpose of expository essay is to teach you to develop communication skills by learning how to acquaint your reader or listener with the knowledge that you possess. Depending on the subject you are assigned with, your expository essay should include factual information which should be backed by reliable, trustworthy and up-to date evidence. It might be advisable to write in the third person in this type of the written assignment. Try to avoid using of such words as “I”, “we” or “our “as much as possible. In this way your expository essay would fit more to the standards of the educational institution set for this type of the essay. Also, remember as this is a factual essay you should avoid explaining your point of view or contention on particular subject, as in this case your attitude must be defended. The essay, where your contention is stated and defended is named “persuasive essay”, I will deal with it later. Let us examine how the expository essay should be composed. First you must state your thesis. One should bear in mind that it must not be too broad as the length of expository essay is usually short. Your sentences should be written in easy to read, logical and coherent style. All facts should be backed up by evidence. One should restate the thesis in the last final paragraph of the essay. If you follow these simple rules you will be bale to compose the expository essay that meets the requirements set by your tutor.

In contrast to expository essay, persuasive essay should not only provide your reader with your contention, it should back it up so the reader understands why your point of view is better than the contentions of your opponents. Whereas the main purpose of expository essay is to explain the facts of view, the aim of persuasive essay is not only to explain your point of view, but to convince the reader that your point of view is right. The plan of your persuasive essay might be similar to expository one; however, it is advisable to include in the body of your assignments several important elements. First, one should consider strong and weak point of your argument and the contention of your opponents. Second, your contention in this type of the essay should be backed by the up-to date and trustworthy evidence in order to convince e your reader that information provided by you is reliable. In this way it would be easy for you to learn how to persuade even the most skeptical persons.

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