#you can knock almost anything out in one nught like this

[stabethadeathwhisper]

When i used to write essays in school i smashed out one hour essays with a very simple formula:

First pass: you’re gonna do the bare minimum. This is the first graders guide to essay writing shit. “In this essay i will convince you that things are this way because of x, y, and z” “firstly, x” “secondly, y”. Just write the most bare bones basic shit that anyone can do. Its gonna look pretty awful and embarrassing. Honestly, just write one sentence of summary if you have to. These are placeholder paragraphs to organize what thoughts you want to put out, and decide the best order to put them in.

Second pass: expand. You’re gonna edit each paragraph one at a time, with breaks in between if you need to, to turn this into a college appropriate paper. It still doesnt need to be eloquent, this is the informative pass. Spit as much fact and technical language as you can here. You’re now building the skeleton of your opinion. This is the structure thats gonna hold the whole thing together, so you want to make sure its consistent. This will be where you start putting in citations tbh, cause its gonna save so much goddamn time later.

Third pass: flavour text. You’re gonna clean the whole thing up so that it sounds like a human wrote it, and not a very talkative ai. Add commentary, suggestions, callbacks to previous points and paragraphs, and—depending on the type of paper—personal insight. You have to flex your charismatic professionalism here. I like to envision myself as a smarmy businessman in a board room, the youngest one there, giving a talk to a number of old white men who are both jealous of my quick rise in the company, and respectful of my skills. Thats the tone you want to strike. If you look at it as acting in a shitty role its much easier to achieve the tone you want. This pass also takes the longest, because its whats gonna give your essay unique definition. Spend as much time as you need rewriting sentences and adding unecessary text about tangential but interesting points.

Fourth pass: take a nap. Come back in two days to edit it. Reread the paper and do step three again, but without the stress of working off an empty canvas. Give it to a friend and go “does this sound like....plausibly human? Can you follow what im saying and does it make you want to shoot yourself out of boredom?” Theres a trick to essay writing which is that while its not actually in the criteria, people appreciate a small amount of character (unless this is a scientific paper, probably. I only did chemistry and geology up to first year uni so im not exactly well versed in what a scientific paper should look like).

Fifth pass: if your teacher is cool and not busy sometimes they will read over your rough draft if you ask and give you tips. Try that. If theyre neither of those things just edit it one last time before its due and pray.

hard same