School Essays - Art of Writing

Here is an extract from my popular book - Notable Essays and Letters :

‘Practice makes a man perfect’ stands true to the learning of a language. In the modern world, when different means of communication require skills in writing in different manifestations, the practice to write an essay can be called the best means of learning how to write. Therefore, it becomes essential to practise how to write better, briefly, concisely and clearly.

An essay shows the ability of the writer how he observes things, how he experiences them, how he thinks about them and how he expresses them. This is the most suitable method to give logical order to his thought process, ideas, opinions and standpoint on different aspects of life. An essay gives an opportunity to a person how effectively and well he can influence the reader with his point of view. If the views of a writer are presented in a logical sequence, then these are bound to influence the reader beyond any doubt.

Writing Better Essays

Practice is the key to language, and it is all the truer in respect of the skill in writing an essay, because more the practice, better the mastery over this art. The ability to write good quality essays cannot be won overnight. This is an art and cannot be mastered in the matter of a few hours or a few days. It has to be learnt in a planned manner over a prolonged time, but it is worth to spend this much of time, as its rewards are innumerable. The practice to writing an essay leads to rational presentation of thoughts and ideas, a skill which is so necessary in today's world cutthroat competition.

Two Aspects of an Essay

An essay can be said to have two broad aspects—how you write it and what you write in it. Both these aspects are important. The style of writing is the art of writing the available matter in such a way that the reader can be optimally influenced. This skill is very important from the point of view that this, at times, conceals the shortcoming of the lack of suitable matter to be included in the essay. On the other hand, an essay cannot be fruitfully written if suitable matter is not available. Thus, both these aspects are complementary to each other, yet one makes up the shortcoming in the other. For example, if you don't have much to write, you can cover up this shortcoming by your style to some extent. In the same way, if your writing style is not good enough but you have a lot to write, even then you can make up some of your deficiency. However, a fine essay requires mastery over both. Presumably, every person or student cannot have mastery over the matter in all subjects and topics, so the writing style becomes more important; however, it cannot diminish the importance of the matter. Ideas and facts on a given topic constitute the matter. How the available matter is presented makes a lot of difference to the quality of an essay. If the matter is presented in its logical sequence, it hits its goal quite well, else it fails to impress despite all the merits it might have.

Writing Style

The aspect ‘how you write it’ is very important before it is ready for the presentation which makes even ordinary matter look good. Observe the following points :

* *         Write correct grammatically. When you commit mistakes in the language, sometimes you do not express what you intend to do, or sometimes you just express what you would never want to.

·  *      There are many types of sentence structures. You should preferably use the sentence structures that you are well familiar with.

·    *     The length of a sentence is irrelevant; however, smaller sentences are preferable. A long sentence too can be divided with the help of commas (,), semicolons (:), colons (:) and dashes (—).

·      *   Use proper words. There are no easy or difficult words. Even synonyms have different shades of meaning. So, try to use the most appropriate word in a given situation rather than a word which is approximate in meaning.

·        *  Observe your spelling. You must know the difference between ‘dear’ and ‘deer’, or for that matter, between ‘heir’ and ‘hare’. Even a liberal examiner becomes peevish on seeing incorrect spellings, so mind it well.

·         * Before you write, plan your matter as per its size and the required size of your essay. If the word limit is small, be brief, else write in detail.

Writing Material

The second aspect of writing an essay is what you write, that is, your writing material. You should plan your writing material into suitable divisions, such as :

·         * Introduction

·        *  Relevant information

·         * Uses

·       *   Merits

·        * Demerits

·        * Conclusion

An introduction should be brief which should tell about the topic that you are going to deal with. What you conclude should be based on the facts presented by you in the essay before. Any conclusion not based on your writing will make the examiner think negatively about you. As far as may be possible, one should be positive in his approach, that is, good things should be supported and evil things should be discouraged.

Essence of Writing

The two aspects of writing can be concluded under the following headings :

A = Accuracy  :           Be accurate whatever you write.

B = Brevity      :           Be brief whatever you write, according to the word limit.

C = Clarity       :           Be clear whatever you write.

L = Logic         :           Before you include a fact in your essay, think whether that is really needed.

R = Reasoning :           What you write and conclude, should be reasoned out well.

Types of Essays

Essays can be broadly divided into the following types :

1.         Narrative Essays          historical stories, biographies, events, incidents, accidents, natural calamities, journeys etc.

2.         Reflective Essays         habits, qualities, customs, current topics, philosophical topics etc.

3.         Descriptive Essays       places, things, persons, animals, seasons etc.

4.         Expository Essays        views, thoughts, ideas, institutions, industries, occupations etc.

5.         Imaginative Essays      pure imaginations, such as 'Were I the Prime Minister of India', 'Had I my ears behind the head' etc.

6.         Proverb Essays                        essays based on proverbs, such as ‘diamond cuts diamond’, ‘all that glitters is not gold’ etc.