Begin organising your research and ideas into an answer.
Write a second essay plan
After you’ve gathered your research and your ideas are more developed, write a second essay plan. It will help you work out how to answer the question and how the essay will be structured.
- Decide on a possible answer to the question in terms of the research you have done.
- Decide on the information you will use to answer the question.
- Look through your notes and choose examples to provide evidence to support your answer.
- Decide which points you will discuss, and in which order.
- Write all this down in point form. This will be your essay plan
See Academic Skills' guide to Essay and assignment planning
Think it through
Essay writing requires both creative and critical thinking.
- Creative thinking encourages you to broaden your ideas. Try techniques like brainstorming and mind mapping.
- Critical thinking encourages you to narrow the focus or scope of your ideas, for example, asking why an example is important to your argument.
Your essay should be balanced; that is, it should include a range of information and viewpoints from different authors that explore the key arguments and relevant aspects of a topic. Don’t only include evidence that agrees with what you are arguing; if there are different or opposing views, then they need to be examined.
You need to evaluate differing arguments—explain why one argument is more convincing than another, and how they relate to the conclusion your essay arrives at.
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