It may be difficult to create a great written work if you do not know how to start writing an essay. However, these several steps can help you get a great result. Thus, starting may be more challenging than writing. This article offers several steps to write an essay.
1. Steps How to Start Writing an Essay
The first step is to come up with an essay topic or idea:
- Find a burning topic
- Think of controversial issues
- Search for ideas using AI
Essay Types
Determine the essay type to use when writing because it is directly linked with the structure:
- Informative or expository type – find a phenomenon, issue, or idea, gather information, and write through presenting information, explaining, and describing without arguments or emotions.
- Argumentative essay – find a controversial topic that raises debates and present your argument (you can use either Rogerian argument or Toulmin argumentative essay structure) .
- Persuasive type – if you want to write a persuasive essay, you should not only present an argument, statement, or claim, but to use facts, authority or experience, and appeals to emotions (logos, ethos, pathos) to persuade.
- Cause-and-effect essay – you can present blocks of causes and blocks of effects or a chain or sequence of events from causes to effects.
- Comparison and contrast – you can use blocks based on a set of characteristics (1 per block or paragraph for the first thing you compare and than 1 per block for the second thing with similarities and differences in relation to Thing 1) or a point-by-point method with similarities and differences based on a set of characteristics (1 per paragraph) for both things
- Narrative – use it to tell your personal or fictional story.
- Descriptive type – it is the best choice for describing phenomena or things in a creative way, using stylistic techniques (not just the presentation of information).
- Process type – present a process in chronological steps one by one (how something happens and works or how to do something).
5-Paragraph Essay
Create an outline for your essay based on the chosen type. If you decide to write a 5-paragraph essay, the following outline applies:
- 1 Paragraph – introduction with a thesis statement
- 2 Paragraph – idea 1 from the thesis statement
- 3 Paragraph – idea 2 from the thesis statement
- 4 Paragraph – idea 3 from the thesis statement
- 5 Paragraph – Conclusion
This guide on academic paragraph structure can be helpful. If you want to write an essay fast, it is explained here.
2. Example of the Writing Process
Let’s review a simple task, a high-school essay in the field of finance on the topic of Buying an Expensive Thing.
Read the Prompt
Here, the task is to explain your buying decision and what influences it and your goals and buying process with steps.
First, you should perceive this task as a single unit and then divide it into parts. The buying decision process is a unit, while defining your targeted goals is its part. Factors that influence your choice can be discussed at the phase of considering available options.
Research
Surf the Internet to research the phases of the buying process and some theory of buying behavior. Google Scholar is usually the most widely used database to find reliable academic sources. Here is a useful resource on consumer buying decisions:
Solomon, Michael. Consumer Behavior: Buying, Having and Being. Pearson Education, 2014. (MLA)
APA: Solomon, M. (2014). Consumer behavior: Buying, having and being. Pearson Education
Outline
The first phase is to realize that you need a thing, for example, an expensive bag by Prada, and analyze what has influenced this decision (it can be advertising or just the need for a bag because you have no such).
The second stage is to gather all necessary information about this Prada bag. You should find the item you want to buy, online store and the price it offers. You can search for prices on other websites and look for discounts. An alternative is to go to a local shop.
The third stage follows the second logically. As a result of your search, you can find different price offers of Prada bags or just discover that there are other nice options offered by other producers.
The fourth phase is the very decision to buy the bag. Here you should weigh all pros and cons. It can be the price, quality, feedback of your friends or other advertisements. So all these factors are influential.
The final fifth stage of buying an expensive item is after the process of buying, where a person evaluates the features of the thing in practice and feels either satisfied with the purchased bag or not. The buyer assesses whether his or her targeted goals set at the first stage have been finally met. The more scores the purchased item gets based on meeting the targeted goals, the higher customer loyalty will be.
The main task of producers is to focus on positive impressions of customers at the fifth stage to retain them and make return again and again.
Expand
Finally, expand your outline with adding more sentences and revise the final draft.
Updated on March 2, 2025
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