How to write an essay.

What is an essay?

An essay is a literary work of prose. It is distinguished by its small volume, free form and conversational, sometimes sincere style of presentation. In an essay, an event, fact or phenomenon is not described in detail, but only taken as a starting point so that the author can express his thoughts and judgments. The views of the author in the essay are more important than the presentation of an objective fact or news on which the author reflects. Therefore, there are no hard rules on how to write an essay. But this does not mean that you can simply record a stream of consciousness and present it as an essay. There are characteristic features that make it possible to distinguish an essay from something else.

Most often, an essay is confused with an essay, travel notes and a philosophical treatise. What's the difference between them?

  • The essay focuses on the fact, on the event. The author describes it without contributing anything from himself. The essay has a clear logical structure: a description of the event, its beginning, culmination and ending. Little attention is paid to the event in the essay; it simplyisas an occasion to reflect on abstract, philosophical truths. The essay does not have a clear structure, which is obligatory for all works of this genre.
  • Travel notes have a plot. In addition, they also describe more what is happening, and only in the background are the author's reflections on what he sees and what is happening to him. The essay has no plot, no dynamics, it is timeless. Reflection is the essence, the most important part of the essay.
  • The essay differs from the philosophical treatise by its greater artistic orientation, expanded imagery, the use of epithets, artistic literary techniques. In addition, the essay may relate to topics that are not related to the field of philosophy: social, scientific, environmental, etc. This makes it related to journalism.

Essays in the past and today

Works in the genre of essays are found in the works of ancient authors. But the "official birth" of the genre is considered to be the 16th century, and France is its homeland. In the second half of this century, the French philosopher M. Montaigne published a work called "Experiments" (which sounds in French as "essays"). At the same time, the work of another famous philosopher, F. Bacon, was written in the essay genre.

And a few years later, first in literary criticism, and then in everyday use, the word "essayist" came into use as a designation of an author writing in a certain genre - the genre of essays. So this word from the proper name of individual works has become a household word.

Then the essay gained popularity in other countries. Despite the fact that the term appeared in France, from the 19th century to our time, England was in the lead by the number of famous authors writing in the essay genre: let us recall the names of B. Shaw, H. Wells, J. Orwell and at least a dozen other renowned prose writers. In Russia, the essay was not particularly popular, although several works can be found among Russian writers: A. Radishchev, N. Leskov.

In recent years, questions about how to correctly draw up a plan and write an essay have become relevant because writing it is part of the USE task in the Russian language (and it is also needed for receiving high scores in social sciences: history, social science). The following requirements are imposed on a school essay:

  • The volume is up to 160 words.
  • A clear topic or narrow issue (rather than covering a wide range of issues).
  • No plagiarism. Quotes can only be used to confirm or deny the author's point of view.
  • Imagery, light and individual style.

What an essay should contain

First, you need to take care of its style. The essay is written in an easy and lively language, in it the author shares with the readers his thoughts, aspirations, fears. He does not prove anything, but offers to reflect with him or even argue. To create such an effect, epithets, allegories, aphorisms are used in the essay.

Second, notice the structure of the essay. Thoughts should not spread, the conversation with the reader should not go away from the originally stated topic to another. To do this, you need to draw up an outline of the essay.

  1. Title. It should be made intriguing, tempting. It might be worth using a pun, a riddle, but not misleading readers.
  2. Introduction. It occupies 30% of the text. Its purpose is to spark interest in the essay. You can use quotes, aphorisms, statistics, an unusual fact. The introduction indicates (but does not reveal) the main idea of ​​the essay.
  3. The main part. It occupies 60% of the text. It reveals the main idea, supported by reflections, interesting facts, vivid, figurative descriptions. If the introduction should be as simple and clear as possible, then in the main part it is necessary to use all the lexical and stylistic richness of the Russian language.
  4. Conclusion. It takes up the remaining 10%. It summarizes or expresses the main idea that the author came to through reflections throughout the essay.

How to prepare for writing an essay

If you prepare in advance, then you will not have the question of how to write an essay competently. Preliminary preparation is as follows:

  1. Find out the parameters of the essay. If this is an assignment for the Unified State Exam, then you will be given its volume and topic, you also know the readership (teachers). If you are writing an essay for a blog, for a magazine, then first of all, decide on what volume will be, who will read the essay and, accordingly, in what style it is best to convey your thought to the audience, what topic, reason, fact you will take for reflection...
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  3. Gather information. In a draft, write down facts, statistics, quotes, and other material that you know about the topic that may come in handy.
  4. Write an outline of the essay.
  5. Define the main thoughts, milestones, which will be highlighted in the essay one after another. This will help you preserve the internal logic of the text.
  6. The easiest way to work on an essay is to write the body first, then the introduction, and lastly the conclusion. Then arrange them in the right order.
  7. Re-read the finished work, check it. In the heat of polemic inspiration, people often make mistakes that are easy to spot and correct when read again.
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