Do you ever go through an experience where you feel like its impact on you is going to last for quite some time? An experience that you’d like to share with people. Something you would love to describe every second of in precise detail so that someone else could get as close to the feeling that you had as possible. That is what an argumentative essay US does. It describes an unforgettable experience in colorful words and enough detail that the person reading wouldn’t miss out on anything important. This is one of the most interesting manners of informative essay writing.
Choose your fighter!
Deciding a topic is clearly the first part of any kind of essay writing. Choose a topic that gets to you. That you understand every aspect of and can write about in a way that it will touch the heart of your reader. That’s what it means to be reflective. Don’t let your topic selection be random; it has to be something that means a great deal to you. Your topic has to be universally engaging, not just something that’s specifically meaningful to you only. Here are some examples of potentially heartfelt topics that everyone can relate to.
- Love
- A past experience that changed your life drastically
- Something you may have touched, tasted, heard or smelled that stuck with you due to thoughts and feelings you associate with it. We all have senses so this could be relatable, considering how well you write about it
- A place
- An object
- An event you may have imagined
- Something you watched or read that influenced you greatly
Get all the puzzle pieces together
Don’t you want everything ready so that you can simply just place it into your essay format without having to pay too much attention to outline as you’re writing the content? Make sure you understand the format beforehand and collect all the information you may need. It’s rare to have to do research when it comes to reflective essays, but if there are some things you need to look up, do it and put all of your raw information together so you can refine it and add it to your essay later. Don’t try to do research once you start writing because that will disrupt your flow, distract you and waste your time.
- Do all of your research beforehand
- Look up anything that you think you may need to when writing the actual essay. Don’t let yourself get distracted in the middle of it.
Think of this as storytelling
What’s more interesting to read than a boring old essay? That’s right, a story. Try to make it more personal to let the audience connect to you better. Make it sound like you’re telling them a story from your past, make it sound interesting and engaging enough to keep the reader hooked until the very end. Make them want to read and learn about you, don’t drag it too much. Be brief, they will only want to know the most fascinating bits of your presumably very long story.
- Keep it short and sweet, talking about only the most essential and interesting parts
- Don’t let it become a snooze-fest, you do not want your reader to fall asleep mid-essay
List everything down! Be organized
Make a list of everything you plan to write about. Write an overview before anything else, once you’ve found your topic and done your research on it. Edit and re-edit your essay until you are completely sure there’s nothing left to change and you’re fully satisfied with what you’ve written. Making drafts is part of being organized and it’s very important if you want to avoid making really silly and embarrassing mistakes in your essay.
- Make several drafts and keep rechecking your work to make sure it’s as perfect as can be
- Do not use first person in this essay
- Support anything you state with evidence
- Be formal. Don’t use slang
Self-psychoanalyzing is a thing?!
Since this essay is all about letting out your emotions and describing experiences, you must understand yourself before you can describe anything. Question yourself and try to get in your own head. Ask yourself questions and try to answer them as someone else. This way, you will get a lot of information out of you that your conscious mind might not have been able to perceive. Understanding your own emotions is not as easy as it sounds and this may be the most time-consuming part of the whole process. Don’t rush it, because if you do, your essay might just lose its authenticity, resulting in you not being able to relate to your audience that well.
- Give yourself time to get to know you. Understand your own feelings and emotions before you can write about them.
- Give this part of the process as much time as you possibly can to maintain authenticity.
Explain what you conclude before you conclude it
You need to make sure that by the time your reader gets to the conclusion of your essay and realizes certain things, what you said in your essay was already overshadowing those conclusions. The reason this is important is because this way, your audience will feel like they were on the right track the entire time, and that you and them were always on the same page.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Elijah Gabrielson has an MA in Linguistics from the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Illinois. He is the father of two and loves to write blogs with Eazyresearch on topics that he likes, such as his favorites books or pet health care. In his free time, he likes to watch science fiction movies and read novels.