Essay writing

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There are many familiar problems that emerge in your writing: irrelevance, weak structure, insufficient evidence and examples to support your arguments, lack of fluency between paragraphs, inconsistent arguments, and many others. This section offers you a practical guide through the five distinct stages of essay writing:

• Interpretation of the question
• Research
• Planning
• Writing
• Revision

If you omit any of these or just rush them, certain familiar problems will emerge in your writing.

It's also as important to separate each stage, leaving time between each of them. Not only does this allow you to return to your ideas fresh, so that you're able to see which of them needs to be edited out, but you will also find that your ideas and arguments have developed in the meantime.

Additional practice and support is provided on this website through essay writing FAQ’s, essay writing MCQ’s and top tips for essay writing. You may also wish to see the section on referencing and plagiarism and our audio download, as well as the writing skills section.

For more advice, see The Student's Guide to Writing by John Peck and Martin Coyle and The Mature Student's Guide to Writing by Jean Rose.

The content has been written by Bryan Greetham, author of How to Write Better Essays.