Rules of Essay Writing

The standard structure of an essay (in this case with three major points) should look like this:

• Be direct: get straight to the point and cut out unnecessary waffle and background material.
• Be precise: think carefully about exactly what you mean and how best to say it. Don’t hope that a vague thought will work itself out as you write it.
• Be economical: Think of words as money: you need to spend enough to get the point across, but you want to spend no more than you absolutely have to.
• Be formal: this is an essay and all essays are formal. Being colloquial or casual in your writing gets you no marks and makes you look like you don’t know your stuff.
• Don’t re-narrate the story: the examiners will already know what happens and don’t need you to tell them. It simply shows you cannot analyse.
• Be objective, or impersonal: say “Willy’s speeches suggest that he lacks self-confidence”, rather than “I think Willy lacks self-confidence”. The first is a strong statement presented as fact; the second is mere opinion. Examiners are not friends; they need to be told properly!
• Write about literature in the present tense: say “Willy lacks [present] confidence throughout the play and his confidence is [present] in dependant on other characters such as Ben.”, rather than “Willy lacked [past] confidence in the. We do this because the text exists now and we are reading it text now so the characters exist now.
• Remember names and titles: The amount of students that get the title of the play wrong, the author wrong or names of characters wrong is quite shocking. Make sure you know who wrote the text, who the characters are and most importantly what the title is.