An 8-step Essay Writing Guideline 

Experienced students develop and perfect their own writing processes through trial and error. Each process differs only in the slightest from the next, and follow the same main steps in the prewriting, writing, and post-writing stage.

An essay writer might rush towards his initial persuasive speech topics while another might take his time in getting down the ideas and evidence. Most beginners tend to spend more time on the writing phase, perfecting the essay as they write it. However, as they get more experience and start to learn from their mistakes, they focus more on the prewriting phase and the revision. For the experts, writing is more of a rewriting; they want to put down a draft as soon as possible. 

Here is an outline you can follow for perfecting your essays.

Dissect prompt question

The prompt question should be dissected into three parts:

• Task word: These are words such as evaluate, distinguish, explain. justify, etc that informs the writers the academic writing required for the essay.

• Subject Matter: The hook examples will state the essay subject that you will have to separate from the rest of the information.

• Limiting part: This includes the parameters set around the subject that help the writer narrow the subject down.

Read the guidelines

Before you begin working on the essay, you should take note of important guidelines such as the word limit, the formatting style, or any other specification your instructor has asked.

Follow a schedule

Without a rhetorical analysis essay example, you will spend too much time on one part of the essay while neglecting other important parts. This will affect your final essay.

Make a schedule and try to keep up with it, so that you don’t leave things for the end and complete the essay on time.

Sample essays

Reading sample essays on the topic or ones from previous batches helps you wrap your head around the subject. You can always ask the instructor to provide a sample paper if possible.

Know the audience

Different audiences require different levels of writing. Ask your instructor what type of audience you will write for— don’t assume. For layman audiences, you will avoid using technical jargon and will tend to explain things more. While for an expert audience you will have to use the technical terms and vocabulary and can dive straight into the specifics.

Brainstorm for ideas

You should jot down every idea that is in your head during this stage. There are many brainstorming techniques that you can use including:

• Mind Mapping and listing: A great way to make a spatial representation that shows relationships and informational hierarchy.
• Journaling: A process that allows you to jot down ideas as they come to you in your passive learning state over a long period. 
• Freewriting: Informative speech topics that is often known to help the writers break free of writer’s block. You write non-stop while freewriting, for many, timed sessions, everything that comes to your mind; later you sift the idea from the various writings.

Research intelligently

Don’t dive straight into the academic papers, try to find an online encyclopedia specialized for the relevant discipline, and read into it. This will gear you with all the background information, arguments, and salient points.

While researching academic papers don’t read each and every paper or word. Try to narrow the choices down by reading the abstracts, contents, and summaries. Also, learn to skim and scan through the text to gather information faster

Make an outline

The outline should be based on your research and the brainstorming sessions. Number your ideas and information, group them, and make a rough outline.