An Essay on Writing Essays

An Essay on Writing Essays

A correct and effective essay consists in three elements – an introduction, the body of the essay, and its conclusion.

The introduction, of course, introduces, telling the reader, in short, everything he is about to learn, making all of the assertions that will be supported and proven within the subsequent body of the essay. In addition to innate on-the-face positive proofs for the author’s own assertions, recourse can be made to supporting scholarship or even scholarship to the contrary, by discrediting it with one’s own observations and opinions. Remember, that in Scholastic Circles NOBODY is ever totally right, and there is always open some crack of imperfection even in the Best Previous Scholarship that new Scholars can bore into and criticize. Scholars have no respect for the God’s, not even their own. Agreeing with Past Scholarship always seems timid and servile compared to attacking it with opinions of one’s own, and there is always more room for further thought about things. Anyway, once all open circles of inquiry promised by the introduction have been closed, a conclusion comes in order. This is where the reader is informed, in some clever way, that if he had not been convinced by the preceding essay, then, well, he very well should have been. In the best of essays the Conclusion, in establishing that the promised Truth had been found, should suggest, again cleverly, that some Greater Truth is now revealed and evident.

These conditions for an essay – the Intro, the body, and the Conclusion – have never been just mere literary conventions. It is all just common sense, just as any essay is supposed to be. We can see this even if we reduce it to simplest terms, to a gem of an essay in less than 50 words: (Intro)Watch out for that truck! (Body) You were about to step into it. It was 20 tons and going 60 miles per hour and would not have been able to stop. (Conclusion) It would have killed you dead as a bug. The Intro quickly captured the attention of the audience, presenting the problem to be discussed. The problem was discussed lucidly within the Body, and the Conclusion set it all into the pithy perspective of Life Death Mortality issues.

So an up and coming essay writer will never go wrong as long as he remembers those three essential things, to say what he will say, to say it, and say that he said it… and the World now better off for it.