These five steps are adapted from an excellent book “How to Write Better Essays”, which you can find here:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Write-Better-Essays-Palgrave-Guides/dp/0333947150/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1257339459&sr=8-2

I know it works, because I’ve done it… and it works. Each time I follow these five steps exactly as they are laid out, I get above 70% for my essays, which is a 1st.  Each time I don’t get a 1st, it’s usually because I didn’t follow this system, or followed it but skipped over parts (which is very tempting), or because I was just a little lazy towards the formatting at the end.

I think one of the key reasons people procrastinate is because they often don’t know what their outcome is, they aren’t focusing on all the reasons they have to follow through, or they haven’t worked out the NEXT ACTION to move forward.  When writing essays, by following this plan step by step you should never be left not knowing what the next action is.

Here are the five magical Steps. Read them, and use them, then email or call me to let me know when you get your 1st.

STEP 1: INTERPRET THE QUESTION BY ANALYZING EACH KEY WORD

• Notice the ‘key words’ in the essay question, and brainstorm what you think they each mean (use wiki if needed). This will create your ‘key word concepts’
• develop your ‘overall essay concept’ by answering the essay question based on your own opinions, based on what you understand from the ‘key word concepts’ (without doing any reading or research)
• brainstorm essay plan – everything you know about the subject, based on the new ‘key word concepts’ and the ‘overall essay concept’ – Ask yourself: “what am I curious to find out, in order to fully develop/shape my argument?”
• Get curious and create sub-questions: “what do I want to know to test out my essay concepts?” Come out with as many questions as possible

STEP 2: RESEARCH THE QUESTION, GUIDED BY YOUR ANSWERS FROM THE ‘INTERPRETATION’

• determine which sections of which books, and which online articles are directly relevant to answer the questions from STEP 1.
• Read the sections that are most compelling to develop an argument, based on the interpretation phase.
• Make your questions direct your research.

STEP 3: PLAN

• Create a detailed outline, including only those aspects of the research that are directly relevant to the essay question, and the sub-questions that will help you argue the essay question
• Relate each point in the detailed outline back to the essay question, to form a very powerful argument
• Make notes of each of the references that will be used in the final piece of work, so you can easily find them when you need to.

STEP 4: WRITE THE ESSAY

• Write the essay at the pace of at least 1000 words per day (this worked for me – the writing is the easiest part when you know what you’re on about – by the end of my degree I was at about 500 words per hour)
• Write the essay entirely on the basis of the detailed plan – use language skills to powerfully articulate the points in the final version.
• Make each paragraph start by linking the main point back to the essay question.
• Strong introduction saying exactly what argument you will make
• Strong conclusion based on the premises laid out in the essay paragraphs.

STEP 5: REVISE, EDIT AND REFERENCE PROPERLY

• Go through the whole essay and make a list of ‘works cited’
• Write a Bibliography, based on everything you’ve ever read that is relevant to the essay topic, and some of the other main texts that you know are relevant.
• Use the ‘Harvard System’ Document for help, or whatever system your university prefers you to use. The book this was adapted from has a whole section on explaining exactly how to do citations according to the different systems.