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

Sometimes learning just a few more “tricks of the trade” can take your
writing to a higher level. Try these five easy tips to instantly improve your
fiction. Some of these will work for nonfiction, too.

1. Weed out modifiers. Use strong verbs instead. Modifiers are words
like - very, much, fairly, really, just, so, some.

Don’t write “Jane ran very quickly to the store,” when you can write,
“Jane raced to the store.”

Don’t write “Mark spoke very quietly to his brother,” when you can write
“Mark whispered to his brother.”

Use strong verbs and you won’t need modifiers.

2. Look for compound verbs that tend to slow down the action and
distance the reader from what is happening. Change these compound
verbs to simple verbs. Here are some examples:

Mary HAD BEEN CLIMBING the tree.

Mary CLIMBED the tree.

John BEGAN TO SHOUT at me.

John SHOUTED at me.

Every day Jenny WOULD WASH her hair.

Jenny WASHED her hair daily.

Sandy STARTED TO SMILE.

Sandy SMILED.

3. Raise the stakes for your point-of-view character. If your story seems
to be lacking dramatic tension and rising action, that’s usually because
things aren’t difficult enough for your main character. Raise the stakes
by making it more difficult for him to attain his goal, and give him more to
lose if he fails to attain it.

You can also create a greater since of urgency, and therefore more
dramatic tension, by creating a tight deadline for your main character. If
he needs to raise some money for a big business deal, for example,
give him just three days to get the money before the deal is no longer
available.

4. Limit the number of sentences that begin with a participle phrase (a
participle phrase contains a verb that ends in the letters -ing). Here are a
couple of sentences that begin with a participle phrase:

SKIPPING THROUGH THE FOREST, she found her brother.

RUNNING FOR COVER, he took a dive into the grass.

There isn’t anything wrong with using a participle phrase to begin a
sentence. But beginning writers tend to overuse them. Look back over
your story. If more than two or three sentences begin with a participle
phrase, delete all but two of them.

5. Avoid over describing actions or characters in dialogue tags.
Dialogue tags are used to let the reader know who is speaking. These
tags can also include a short description of what the character is doing
as he speaks. But be careful. Don’t overload the descriptive part of the
tag. Your writing will be stronger if you use short tags and describe what
the speaker is doing in a separate sentence.

Here is dialogue with an overworked tag:

“Hand me that money,” John said angrily to Mary as she pulled a five
dollar bill out of her purse and held it in front of him.

Here is a shorter, stronger tag with the description written in a separate
sentence:

“Give me that!” John demanded. He snatched a five dollar bill from
Mary’s hand.

Each time you write a story, go back over it with these five tips in mind. If
you do, you’ll instantly improve your fiction.

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There are some quick, simple rules of spelling and word usage everyone learned and few were allowed to forget when I was a kid. Somehow, I think those rules are now missing in action these days.

I mean simple rules such as this spelling ditty: “Use “i” before “e,” except after “c” and when sounding as “ei” as in “neighbor” and “weigh.” That became a very practical way to get it right with one very troublesome vowel combo most of the time.

A simple usage type rule was this: “It’s” is the contraction for “it is.” “Its” is the possessive meaning “belonging to it.”

I’m not sure, but nowadays I fear most people are never taught such simple, basic ideas about the English language. Or if they are so taught, they’re too busy watching the latest “reality” TV show or cheering on their favorite non-talent singer in the American You-Know-What competition.

Grumble, grumble, grumble.

I admit learning to use the English language and to do it well is a daunting task. But I work at a “day job” where adult men and women are hired for their ability at “communications skills” and many of them misspell “recieve” and misuse “it’s/its” in their business letters every day.

Please, my friends, make an effort to get it right. I’m reminded of a saying attributed to both President Harry Truman and Mark Twain: “Always do right. It will please many people and astonish the rest.”

A few simple grammar rules, easy ways to remember spelling tricks and usage tips, can go a long way toward “doing right” with the language.

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There is one thing in this world that there is no getting around. Everybody thinks they can be a star, or at least wants to be, whether it’s as a singer, songwriter, actor, ball player or circus clown. It doesn’t matter how much talent we have or don’t have. We all believe there is something we can do that is of a creative nature that can make us famous. Writing is one of those things.

Take a journey to the local library or book store. There are more books about more things than you can possibly imagine. Everyone’s got an opinion on something and many of these people have put their opinions into print. Aside from opinions, people also write about facts. Think of how many biographies their are. Many of the topics overlap. There are a number of different biographies on people like John F. Kennedy, all written by different authors. So what is it that makes all of these books different? It is one thing, and it is the most important thing if you are going to be a writer.

It’s called being yourself.

There was an episode of MASH where Radar took a creative writing course. He started using all these fancy words that he had never used before. When Potter began to read the daily reports he noticed that they sounded a bit odd. When he questioned Radar, he told Potter that he was taking a creative writing course. Potter smelled the scam. Eventually, Potter had enough of the daily reports that sounded like a bad novel and told Radar to can it. When Radar asked him what he thought of his writing personally, Potter told him he didn’t think much of it. He said it sounded like he had swallowed a dictionary, that none of that sounded like him. Radar then told Potter that he was just doing what the book told him, to which Potter replied, “Son, the first thing about being a good writer is to be yourself”.

So just what is being yourself? It means to write what you feel, how you think and not what you believe you’re supposed to feel and think like. If you are thinking of writing a book and are very much interested in gardening but have no interest at all in mysteries and somebody tells you that you’ll make a lot more money writing a good mystery, it would be pointless for you to even try. Why? Because having no knowledge or interest in the material you would only be writing what you think the mystery should be written like and most likely will end up copying from other mysteries. The end result will be predictable and not very well written.

As for writing styles themselves, let’s say you do like mysteries. Don’t try to write like Agatha Christie, unless you have a similar style. Write how YOU want to write. Yes, we all want to make money and we think that if we copy a popular style that we’ll be successful. The truth is, the writing will come out as forced and the end result will not be anywhere near as good as the source you copied from.

Being yourself, while logically should come easy, is sometimes the hardest thing to do, especially if you have never written before. You don’t have a clue what’s going to come out, if it will be good or bad. That’s okay. But tapping into your inner resources you will find out what is inside of you. What is good you can use and what isn’t good you can improve upon or discard.

If the talent is there, you will find it.

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