Getting Started on That Troublesome Essay

Techniques to Help Writers Begin Composing Their Papers

Writers who have an essay topic but are struggling to begin writing their paper will likely find the following techniques helpful. The experts from the One Hour Essay service helped us to solve this problem.

Sometimes choosing an essay topic is the easiest part of composing a paper; that could simply be because writers sometimes have no idea how to begin. When one feels like he has “writer’s block,” the techniques here might help one start generating ideas.

Freewriting

Freewriting is a great way to explore one’s subconscious and probe one’s brain for ideas. It’s a technique whereby one simply writes for ten minutes whatever comes to mind. For more information, see the section on freewriting in the article “Techniques to Improve Writing.”

Writers who explore ideas around their topics in two or three focused freewriting sessions may find some interesting angles that they’d like to explore in an essay.

Listing

Listing is similar to freewriting but with more focus. Writers make a list of everything they know or think about their topic, then spend ten to fifteen minutes writing their lists. Afterward, they go through the list and circle a few of items that interest them.

If, however, the circled words still don’t inspire a writer to begin her paper, she can take the circled word she likes the most and begin the listing process again.

One such list exercise might look like this:

TOPIC: American Revolution

• Paul Revere
• Boston Tea Party
• Crossing the Potomac
• George Washington
• Declaration of Independence
• “Don’t fire until you see the whites of their eyes”
• Benjamin Franklin
• Nathan Hale
• “Give me liberty or give me death”
• Patrick Henry
• Taxation without representation
• Thirteen colonies

This technique can help writers not only generate lots of ideas, but it can also help narrow one’s focus if an initial topic is too large for a short essay. If one is not able to generate a fairly large list of ideas, he might consider changing his topic (see below).

Brainstorming

People often think of brainstorming to come up with new and unusual ideas, so why not give it a try with an essay? Just like traditional brainstorming, a writer takes her topic and tries to generate lots of ideas, both sensible and seemingly outlandish. The idea is to refrain from forming an opinion about anything she writes down until she’s done. Out of the ideas she writes, she is likely to find one or two that interest her.

In brainstorming to develop a topic, set a timer for about five minutes. Have several sheets of paper and a pen or pencil handy. Have the topic on the top of one sheet of paper, and pose a question about it.

For example, if one is writing a persuasive paper on climate change, the question could be “What can people do on their own to reduce their carbon footprint?” or “How can I help anti-environmentalists understand the impact their cars have on the atmosphere?” A broader question might be more helpful, however, and it could be as simple as this: “What should I tell someone about climate change that she may not already know?” Writers might be surprised at the ideas they come up with.

After a writer has a list of ideas, he should slowly sift through them with an open mind, evaluating them one by one. Ideas that are truly unusuable he would cross out. But he may find some that will not only work but will also spark enough interest to sustain him through his first draft.

Conducting Research

Sometimes, even if a topic doesn’t require research, just doing some investigating will give writers some new ideas. For example, maybe someone is writing a personal essay about her hometown. She knows much of the rich history of the place where she lives, but she finds out some things she didn’t know. These interesting facts might make an exciting introductory paragraph, and that might be all she needs to get going. On the other hand, these facts might lead to a theme which drives her whole paper.

Changing One’s Topic

If a writer can choose to change his topic and he’s stuck, really stuck, changing his topic is a viable option. If a writer is feeling stressed out and his attempts to start have ended with nothing, he might see if he can try something else. If a writer must remain with the original topic (if it was assigned, for example), then he might try creatively approaching it another way. For example, if his topic is about Eleanor Roosevelt, but he doesn’t think he has anything new to say about her, maybe he could write his essay as someone going back in time to interview her and “find out” what she thinks about America today.

Getting Started

Most of the time, once a writer gets started, finishing is easy. If writers find a technique that works for them a majority of the time when they feel stuck, they should keep doing it.