How to Start an Essay - Tips For Beginning Writers

How to Start an Essay - Tips For Beginning WritersI recently read a blog post by an online business owner on how to start an essay. The gist of it was that his competition (and his writing style) had won him over and he was trying to imitate them. Some of his tips, in a nutshell, are: a) Use the right type of personal pronoun (you), b) Stick to your topic, c) Avoid using slang or vulgar terms, d) Focus on key points, e) Focus on your abilities and not your weaknesses, f) Get to the point, g) Start writing quickly and avoid writing lots of information. Now, one of my first responses to these thoughts is to call BS on the person's 'secrets.'Why should he use any of these tips when he can easily start an essay with a question, look at some of the best essay writers in the world, and go to the library? Do you think his high school English teacher ever told him anything about writing? I'm not going to try to debate his methods, but instead I want to talk about why you should avoid some of the tips he gave.Thinking and writing like an amateur isn't what will get you where you want to go. One of the keys to writing a great essay is to be able to have more than one or two points and make them work as a unit. You don't have to always use the same format for each essay. For example, if you're working on a test you can do one thing at a time instead of doing them all in the same sentence.In fact, one of the biggest mistakes that beginners do is to take an essay and then run it through a word processor. There's so much that a word processor can do for you that you shouldn't be editing every paragraph.His other suggestion was to use personal pronouns for you and me (you and me). While this is a good idea, and he may have been clever enough to find a word that means one thing and does another, it also serves to confuse readers. How many times have you heard someone say something like 'I' when they meant 'my'? It's become a cliche, but the point is that it's confusing because people who read like this often don't understand the difference between one person and several.It's better to have a topic and be able to talk about it in the essay itself. To do this, focus on the benefits or purpose of the idea rather than the argument. You don't need to convince someone that something is true, but rather illustrate the merits. Do this in a way that doesn't get your reader bogged down in details.One of the things that I particularly like about this person's essay is that he emphasizes his own strengths, yet he refers to himself as 'we.' In fact, he used his own words to demonstrate his point about getting bogged down in details.Writing an essay like this requires more work and practice than the other writers above. In fact, I would encourage you to take up the project yourself and write one for your business. I hope this helps you get started on the road to making your own essay an award-winning article.