When the deadline for submitting a solid essay is right around the corner, it becomes overwhelming even to sit down and start writing the first draft. It does not matter if you are a student or a professional academic writer, the challenge and the jitters are the same. The silver lining is that you can still make it, with the right writing and time-management strategies.
This blog will explore some practical tips on writing essays quickly to help you write a high-impact essay to secure excellent grades, even in the pinch. From understanding the essay question effectively to organizing your thoughts for effective writing and editing protocols, we will help you make the most of every minute and submit a polished essay under time constraints.
Go through the Prompt and Requirements
Before you get to write your essay, it is important to get things in order. This preliminary list will cover all the bases that should be in line so that you can cruise through the writing process. Otherwise, you will be stuck with making mistakes and then improving them.
Understanding the Topic
Start with understanding the topic clearly. Go through it multiple times, mark it down, take notes, and ensure that you get an idea of what the topic demands from your writing. This takes no more than a couple of minutes.
Identifying Key Goals
Once you are done with understanding the topic, list down all the objectives and goals of the essay that you want to achieve with your writing. For instance, make it clear to yourself whether you need to argue, analyze, or compare things in the text.
Determining the Type of Essay
In many cases, it is not clear from the outset whether you need to write a certain type of essay. Instructors do not use clear terms and phrases. Mostly, it is up to the writer to determine the type of essay, from narrative to descriptive, expository, and more.
Creating a Checklist
When you have worked out the essentials, it is best to make a checklist and keep it handy all the time. This should include the word count, formatting style, citations, etc. You should also make note of special instructions, such as the style, tone, and focal points of the essay.
Swift Planning and Outlining
There is no point in planning before the first step that we have covered in the previous heading. Now that we have dealt with it and made a clear way forward for writing essays quickly, it is time to get to work and start making outlines and headings. If the whole idea of writing an essay is too much, you can get custom services for essay writing in a few hours!
Resorting to Mind Maps
Outlining without a mental map can create a bottleneck in the system. Start with mind maps and see your essay from start to finish. Imagine the headings, subheadings, and other elements of the essay before putting them down on the paper. This can also help you generate and test new ideas as you go.
Developing A Solid Thesis
A thesis is a compact statement that summarizes the focal point of the essay. It is an integral part of the essay as one is incomplete without it. When you are developing a thesis, always aim for a compact and precise statement, preferably a single sentence.
Creating a Working Outline
You do not need to invest time and effort in creating an elaborate outline when you are already working against the clock. Instead, it is time to improvise and create a skeletal outline. It does not have to be fancy, just functional with the right road signs to keep you on track.
Allocating Time for Each Section
Your essay consists of three distinct sections and each one should be assigned a time slot. For the introduction and conclusion, you should not allocate more than one-third of the time. The rest should go to the main body as it is the meat and bones of your essay.
Effective Data Collection
With the topic and outline sorted, it is time to do some research and get all the relevant information for your essay without wasting time. Keep in mind that you always need fresh, authentic material to ace your assignment.
Precise Research
The internet is for all and you can get lost in the maze of information if you are not attentive. Instead of going through blogs and articles, directly get to the main sources of data through online research portals and libraries. This way, you will have first-hand facts and figures.
Using Abstracts and Summaries
Academic research papers and dissertations are lengthy and can take hours to read and then maybe days to understand. But, you can use summaries and abstracts that are in the opening of the paper to understand whether the text helps your cause or not.
Straightening Points and Notes
While doing research, you need to collect and keep the data for effective usage in your essay. That’s why you need to make clear points and headings to sort the information where it will be handy for you throughout the process of writing and editing your text.
Efficiently Writing the First Draft
Now is the time to put the proverbial pen to the paper and start writing. If you are nervous, there is no point to be because you have done the leg work and it is time to blaze past the grunt work. Let’s get to the writing phase together!
Start with the Easiest Section
Hard sections such as the body paragraphs of the essay can break your momentum and make you lose precious time. Instead, start with the easiest sections, like the introduction and conclusion, to have a structure. Once they are out of the way, you can start working on the main body.
Focus on Clarity and Conciseness
One of the major mistakes that students make while writing essays is making things unnecessarily complicated, or they use a lot of fluff to make the word count. Instead, it is best to cover the ground with facts and figures because there are other ways they can make up the volume.
Employing Snowflake Method
The snowflake method in writing is about building the base and then working on it upward. Rather than starting a point and then elaborating it for several paragraphs, leave it at the base and move forward. Revisit the point and see if it needs any more work.
Stave off Perfectionism
First drafts are meant to be flawed and there is no point in getting stuck on a sentence or a paragraph to make it perfect. There will be a dedicated phase for editing and proofreading that writes should utilize to make sure that the text is polished and improved enough.
Editing and Proofreading
Merely writing an essay is not enough because there will be a lot of errors and mistakes in the text. Instead of getting you solid grades, such pieces of text will poorly reflect on your academic record. That’s why time management for essays is a must.
Rapid Self-Review Techniques
Before you get to remove the mistakes and errors in your essay, it is important to find them out. For that, you need to read the essay out loud or use the text-to-speech tool. This will help not only in the detection of mistakes but also in determining whether the text flow is right or not.
Focus on Frequent Errors
If you have done some writing, you might be aware of the weak areas in your composition. For some, it is compound sentences whereas others get stumped on conditional ones. Either way, focus on the sections where you have used lengthy sentences to check their grammar, punctuation, syntax, and spelling.
Get Peer Reviews or Get Fresh Eyes
Friends and family come in handy when you need to get an essay reviewed. They have a fresh perspective to look at the text from an editor’s POV. If that’s not the case, you can work on it yourself and ensure that all the areas are covered.
Using Editing or Proofreading Tools
In the end, online tools like Hemingway Editor and Grammarly can take hard work off of your hands. They can point out mistakes and suggest changes to make your essay better in every aspect. When everything is in order, it is time to turn in the essay for evaluation.
Summing Up
There is no denying that essay writing is a tough task, but it is doable even when you are in a time crunch. We have highlighted multiple practical tips for writing high-impact essays for school and college in this blog. We hope that students will find the information useful and compose excellent essays to ensure academic success. But if they cannot write one themselves, we have a solution for them.
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