How To Start An Essay? • Essay topics • What is an essay • Hooks for essays

How To Start An Essay

Stuck with an essay deadline again? Looking for a quick fix? Read on!

Starting an essay is often the toughest part of the writing process, especially if you are doing it at the last minute. With all the essay topics making a crazy dance inside your head, it’s hard to keep your thoughts straight. The easiest way to go about starting an essay is to follow a certain plan.

Even if you are not a big planning guru, quick essay writing is only possible with the right approach. Take a few seconds to read this article, because it can help you save hours of work and a ton of nerves.

What Is an Essay? Identifying the Type

Before you start writing an essay, define the term. Otherwise, you might end up completing the wrong assignment. An essay is a brief non-fictional piece of writing, which revolves around a certain point.

The variety of essay topics is hard to describe. They can range from love to political science. The size of the essay is usually between 500 and 3000 words. However, artificial shortening or lengthening is a bad idea. This word range is sufficient to cover the topic at length.

There are four most common types of essays:

• Narrative essay – the writer talks about first-hand experiences. Such essays are written in the first person point of view, which is usually appealing to the readers since it makes them feel like part of the story.
• Descriptive essay – the writer describes an object (it can be anything from an apple to WWII) or memory with his/her own words while trying to get a deeper meaning through to the reader.
• Expository essay – this may be the easiest essay type for some students since it doesn’t require any personal narrative and real-life experience sharing. The writer analyzes a certain topic using facts and examples. The most popular expository essay example is “How to” articles.
• Persuasive essays – This essay lists the facts, stats, and examples similar to the way it’s done in the expository essay. However, the main goal of such an essay is to convince the reader of a certain point of view.

Once you understand what type of paper you need to write, you can go on to the next step.

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Essay topics

You may be lucky (or unlucky) enough to be assigned a certain topic. Then you can skip this section and read on. For the rest of you, the help with quick topic choice is below.

• Make sure you are comfortable with the topic so you can enjoy writing the essay instead of squeezing every sentence out.
• Narrow down the topic so you can fit the information in 1000 – 3000 words.
• Be realistic about how much time you have to research the topic.
• Consider the “target audience” of your topic. Will the people you are writing for find your essay useful?
• Think about unusual essay topics. Sometimes they are the best way to enjoy writing and catch the reader’s attention.

Writing the Right Hooks for An Essay

A good hook is a key to a successful essay. The hook should catch the reader’s attention and stimulate further reading.  If you can write a good hook sentence or small paragraph, consider half of the job done. A hook should be smart, concise, catchy, and unique. Sounds impossible? Not if you are prepared for the job. You can find a huge variety of sample hooks on the Internet. Usually, they fall into one of the below categories.

• Quotes – This is the best bet if you are out of time. You can find a suitable quote (preferably from someone respectable) and stick it on top of your essay. Did you notice how we did it in this article?
• Anecdotes – If you know a great anecdote related to the essay topic, you are in luck. Funny stories catch the reader’s attention and hold it better than any other hooks. But be careful, bad humor is a major turn off.
• Questions – People enjoy when you are paying personal attention to them. That’s what you can do by using questions as hooks. See how we’ve done it at the beginning of the essay.
• Scenes – You can describe a certain scene or an incident to help a person visualize it. Some people get attracted by visualization. This is a great hook for a descriptive essay.
• Facts – Another easy hook is a fact, which can surprise the reader. Interesting facts are always appealing. For example, it takes not 24 hours but 23 hours, 56 minutes and 4 seconds for the Earth to rotate once completely on its axis. Or.. beer is considered as a food in Bavaria on the official level. Think which fact will surprise your readers.
• Stats – This is a great hook for expository and persuasive essay types, in which you want the reader to believe in your competence. Meanwhile, this is the second simplest hook to find after quotes. For example, at NationMonster you can compare different countries, a whelm of marketing data can be found at Statista, and global development stats are stored in Gapminder.

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Drafting an Outline

If you are pressed for time, drafting an outline may seem like a useless task. Meanwhile, it can save you plenty of hassle in the future. Learning how to make a quick outline is the first step toward writing an excellent essay.

1. Define the topic.
2. Write an introduction (hooks).
3. Form the opinion about the topic.
4. Develop the argument.
5. Find points to support the argument.
6. Write a conclusion.

This is the simplest essay outline for further writing. Each point should have a subsection listing the information pertaining to the essay subject.

Conclusion

Writing an essay is not an easy task, especially if you have a complicated topic. Knowing how to go about starting an essay can simplify the process and make it more enjoyable for the writer. There is a big variety of interesting tips and tricks to help make your writing easier. All you have to do is some research.

In case you are pressed for time and need an urgent essay written, you can order it from an essay writing service FastEssay.com. The service and its teams work 24 hours per day and guarantee speed and high quality regardless of the essay topic. With essay samples from professional academic writers writing will go extra fast and easy.

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