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Tips to Plan Your Essay from Start to Finish

Planning your essay is one of the most important things you can do as a student. Take it from experience.

By Shanae WileyPublished 3 years ago 4 min read
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When you plan your essay, you get your thoughts in order, make sure you reference everything, and have the time to proofread afterward.

But this planning doesn’t come easy for everyone. Here are my top five tips for planning your essay from start to finish. From me personal experience, I always leave a day when I will edit my paper. I suggest you to do proofreading in a day when you don't write - it will help you to notice mistakes.

  • Read the Question Before Doing the Reading

Your essay planning starts when you’re beginning your reading. You need to read all your notes and listen to your lectures with the question in mind. This helps to lay out your notes in a way that will help you with the essay.

This can be a difficult part. At the start, I recommend you to read the question and then only take notes that were relevant to that question.

I would do one read-through taking notes for the essay, and then a read-through with notes for the exam. It takes longer but keeps the two separate.

Important advice. If you have exams you will need to think about notes and your essay writing process in advance. Try to plan your work and to find a balance between your study and free time. But if you feel like you can't manege everything by yourself, I'd recommend you to buy custom essay or delegate another tasks.

  • Note Down All Your References

Whenever you take notes that answer your essay question, note down your references. This is very important when you plan your essay.

You will need the references throughout, as well as at the end. It proves that you have not plagiarized something and that you are developing your arguments based on someone else’s findings.

It’s much easier to note the references down, along with page numbers, while doing the reading. You will limit the chances of losing a book or that exact sentence when it comes to formatting all your references at the end.

If you don’t want to take notes, take photos of the books.

  • Create Your Essay Plan

You need to plan your essay on paper before you even think about writing it out. This needs to detail your introduction and conclusion, as well as the separate sections.

Try to go into as much detail as possible when planning out this essay. This about organizing your notes to make the writing part easier and much smoother.

When it concludes, decide on the side of the argument you will take, and write the notes that will support that argument.

  • Make Sure Each Claim and Argument has Evidence

You need evidence to back up anything that you say. Planning your essay is the perfect time to make sure you have all this.

Whenever you make a note of a claim, go back to find the evidence that supports this. If you can’t find it while planning, what are the chances of finding it while you are writing? Highlight a claim that does not have evidence right now, so you remember to go back and find it.

  • Layout Your Essay With the Introduction

The introduction will take up about 10% of your word count. This is the part that lays out everything you will talk about in your essay, which is why your plan is so important. You will detail the question you are answering, and the pointers you will use to make that argument.

Use your introduction when you plan your essay. Think about it and the type of arguments you are going to make, or the evidence that you will use. It will help with the initial structure.

Remember your conclusion just brings all of that together and clearly states the side of the argument that you are on.

Once you have your essay plan, it is time to get started writing. Give yourself enough time to write it out, proofread and make your edits. You don’t want to lose marks for late delivery.

What tips have you followed when you plan your essay? Feel free to share your secrets and the methods you rely on to get to the writing stage.

More resources:

  1. Custom Essay: Consequences of High School Bullying
  2. Custom Assignment Writing Services
  3. Why Distance Learning Is So Hard
  4. Essay Writing Service Number One

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About the Creator

Shanae Wiley

I'm a freelance writer who has a life-long obsession with reading and writing a short stories. My current areas of interest and exploration are my Taiwanese culture, human-centered design, and branding.

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