What’s the Best Way to Write an Essay or Report?

We have all done it, starting with a blank page of paper knowing we have x” amount of time to write an essay or report of a significant length and getting started is the hardest point. This is very true for this blog post. Therefore I asked around the office how to go about starting an important essay or report. The feedback we received back was as follows, in no particular order:

Break down everything

An essay structure is very basic – introduction, body and conclusion. But this can be broken down further into a bulleted list. Once you have the key points down, create content around each bullet to break down your argument. This will make it easier to write and will also make formatting smoother when it comes to putting the essay together.

Separate sections, separate pages

The most daunting prospect of writing a 10,000 word report is actually writing 10,000 words. The psychological effect of this can be daunting and may add unnecessary pressure. One way around this is to break everything up into separate sections so each section is a much simpler 1-3,000 word section, which is a lot easier to manage. When it comes to formatting you can add in all the sections in the right order and like magic your 10,000 report has been written in smaller sections.

Free writing

A not very common writing technique is free writing. Instead of breaking things down and having sections, free writing is just starting with a blank page and throwing every idea on the page at once. Once your mind is spent on creating loads of ideas, you will have created the body of your essay, without much effort at all. Of course, after this the more time intensive part of editing, refining and layout begins, but you’ll already have your main ideas down on the page, making it easier to add additional content later on.

Those are just 3 techniques that we in the Stonebridge Office use to write an essay, what methods do you use?