How to Write An Amazing Essay in 5 Steps

Last Updated on August 16, 2024

Your outline for a strong essay that will set you up for success.  

Writing an essay is unavoidable for most students, especially if you are still in high school. This skillset comes naturally to some, but it can be a challenge for others. Those that ramble may get lost in their work and forget to answer the question. Those that write more straightforwardly can struggle to meet the page requirement or fully flesh out their ideas. 

A tale as old as time. 

In this guide, I will go over the main parts of an essay, what is required in each, and steps you can take to set yourself up for success. Read below for more! 

Disclaimer: This guide does not apply for those taking courses in STEM; essays look very different for these college level subjects. This guide is designed for those taking language arts courses (or anything that requires MLA format).

Step 1: Define Your Stance or Answer

Some essay assignments will come with a specific question or writing prompt that needs to be addressed. Others won’t. Regardless, before you start writing, you will need to create your thesis statement. 

A thesis statement is just a declaration of your stance (aka what the essay will be covering). When you make this statement, it’s important to state it confidently and with a clear reason. It’s not enough to just make the statement and leave it at that, even though you will provide evidence later. 

Here’s a relatively weak thesis statement for example: 

“I believe Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë isn't a romance.” 

First of all, why? What specific reasons are you arguing against mainstream opinion? If you don’t give a specific argument or overarching reason why, then it’s an opinion rather than a thesis statement. 

Instead you should say something like: 

“Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë is not a romance between two people, but rather a love story following Catherine and Heathcliff’s weakness for status and power.” 

See the difference?

What Changed?

First off, we deleted the first two words, “I believe”. Hedging your ideas with “I think” or “I believe” makes your writing sound less confident. Your essay will have evidence that supports your thesis statement, so there’s no need to be shy about it! 

Second, we added not only the initial statement, but also the transition phrase “but rather” to lead us into our real argument: that Wuthering Heights is actually “a love story following Catherine and Heathcliff’s weakness for status and power.”

This revised thesis statement is more likely to be remembered by the reader. Futhermore, for those that struggle to get started in the beginning, creating a strong stance can insure that you don’t run out of things to say later on down the line. (Another way of saying this: choose a hill big and strong enough to die on.)

Last, but not least, make sure your thesis statement is something that you at least half believe. This will make your life easier in the next step. 

BONUS TIP: When you first start, I suggest putting the writing prompt (if there is one) and your answer to it at the top of your document. Put your answer in bold big letters if it helps! The goal here is to not forget what you‘re trying to prove by leaving a big reminder you can easily see. This will help you actually answer the question; if not, you technically haven’t completed the assignment, and it will cost you a lot of final grade points and your precious time.

Step 2: Find Your Supporting Evidence

Now time to find your evidence. That is, what supports your stance or thesis statement from the last step? If you are writing a book report or analyzing a work of art, what parts of the piece prove your point? 

The goal is to provide evidence that proves your argument without a shadow of a doubt.

As you are looking for evidence, find any and everything that you think might be helpful in convincing the reader that you are right. 

This step takes the longest out of them all, I won’t lie to you. I mentioned at the end of Step 1 that believing your thesis statement will make your life easier. This is true! When humans believe something, they subconsciously find and pay attention to things that automatically support that belief system. This process in psychology is called confirmation bias. 

Although confirmation bias gets a bad rap, and is the fuel behind a lot of modern problems, you can use it to your benefit when writing an essay. 

Answer me this: what made you choose your thesis statement? Was there something specific that jumped out at you in the book/work of art/etc? What was it, and how does that connect to your thesis statement? Tapping into this natural tendency may help you collect your evidence faster. 

 If you haven’t done this already, group the evidence you found into 3 different buckets. It does not matter how you group your evidence, just make sure that the buckets have a similar theme or clear reason why they exist. 

Note: If you see any evidence that goes against the point you are trying to make, write it down and separate it from your “good” evidence. You can address it in Step 4.

Step 3: Choose Your Talking Points

Now, for the actual writing part of this guide! Choose your talking points, and choose wisely because they will be your body paragraphs. Body paragraphs are the paragraphs full of your evidence. They sit between the introduction (first) paragraph and your conclusion (last) paragraph. 

It is good practice, in my opinion, to have 3 body paragraphs in an essay. Three is the perfect number, because it’s just enough to have a solid argument, but not so much that you get lost in your own writing. 

At the beginning of each body paragraph, you should start with your topic sentence. A topic sentence clearly explains what type of evidence you are going to cover within that paragraph. 

If you were following along throughout Step 2, you should have grouped your evidence into 3 clear and distinguishable “buckets”. Each bucket will represent one of your body paragraphs, and the reason why they are grouped together is your topic sentence! 

For consistency, you should format each of your body paragraphs the same: 

1. Topic Sentence – what type of evidence you are going to cover within that paragraph
2. At least 2 examples of that evidence
3. At least 3 sentences explaining why that evidence supports your claim

If you follow this format for each of your three body paragraphs, your essay will be easy to read, and your supporting evidence will be clear. 

It may sound like a lot, but since you put in all the heavy lifting at the beginning of this process, the body paragraphs should go by pretty quickly!

Step 4: Address The Opposition

When debating a topic, it can make your points seem stronger if you address the opposition instead of avoiding it. What do people with opposite opinions to yours get right? What do they get wrong, and how exactly are they misunderstanding the evidence? 

I left this step for last because I usually like to address the opposition at the end of my essays. When the writer has spent 80% of the essay building up their points, saving this for last can be beneficial. The reader already has solid faith in the your perspective, so opposing evidence won’t impact your argument as much. 

If you address the opposition after every point you make, it can leave the reader feeling unsure of who’s side to take. 

Feel free to mention your opposition, either in its own paragraph before the Conclusion (following the same format as your body paragraphs!), or briefly at the very end of the paper. 

Step 5: Conclusion

Whew! We made it to the very end: the concluding paragraph of your amazing essay. A lot of people struggle with this step. When I was in school, it was commonly said that the conclusion should be a brief recap of everything stated before. This is not (necessarily) true. 

Don’t get me wrong, it is advised to restate your thesis statement from the beginning, so that you remind the reader and come full circle. If you still have it in big, bold letters at the top of your essay, copy and paste it now. 

However, restating your thesis does not mean regurgitating literally everything you said in the body paragraphs. I’ve seen friends and fellow students do this time and time again. 

We have already presented strong evidence, grammar, format while writing the essay. Your reader should be convinced of your awesome stance by the end of it, so don’t bother summarizing it all again! 

Instead, use the conclusion to connect the ideas you presented before in a new way.

I know, easier said than done. For an impactful conclusion, it can be worthwhile to ask yourself these questions: 

• What does my thesis statement (and supporting evidence) say about human nature/the world/the author/etc.? 
• Other than my thesis statement, what connects my evidence together? What overarching themes are present?
• If you haven’t addressed this already, what do people that disagree with you say, and how are they interpreting the evidence wrong? What does that say about them?

Final Thoughts