As a writer, I have developed my own system for writing an essay. Originally, it’s been my method for writing my book, but I have told my friends about this and they said that it helped them write an essay. It’s easy and simple and it works. Here are the five E’s to writing an essay.

1. Establish

This is your rough draft. Basically, this is when you decide on your thesis, find your main points, and the information to support your main points and your thesis. I typically write a rough draft for this step just because it makes the rest of the steps a lot easier. Also, there is not as much writing to still do after this. The establishment is the brunt of the work on your essay, so I say that the sooner you get it done, the better. However, if you want to, you can just have this be an outline. It will be more work later on, but it’s up to you.

2. Edit (First Round)

Now it’s time for your first round edit. If you wrote your establishment as an outline, this means type your rough draft and then edit it. Sometimes this is a personal edit where you just look for ways to improve your essay and note them. You don’t fix these mistakes at this point. You just have the essay printed out and you make the notes with a pen that way you can look back on what you changed and have some sort of original copy in case you don’t like the changes you make. Edits can also be done in class in the event that the teacher wants a peer edit. These are especially helpful because other people can see some of the things you can’t. Another option is to have your teacher look over your draft and give you opinions or tips on how to make it better and earn a higher score on your final draft.

3. Enhance

This step is where you fix the notes that you, your peer, or your teacher made on you draft. It just makes you draft better and can only improve your grade. It might take some time, but trust me, it’s worth every second. Most people don’t like revising their work, but it helps not only your paper, but your grade as well since papers are typically worth as much as a test and you get a lot of time to writer an essay compared to the time given for a test.

4. Embellish

This is where you make your essay as good as you can. You add in more details and commentary to support your thesis and it makes your entire essay better. You can honestly combine this step with number three because it saves time and there’s no reason to not do them at the same time.

5. Edit (Second Round)

This round of editing is easier than the first. All you are doing is looking for grammar mistakes and fine tuning everything. Don’t over think it. Just look for the little things you might have overlooked before. It’s not in-depth. It’s nice and simple. All the big stuff should already be fixed.

So there you go. The five E’s to writing a good essay. Hopefully they help you out!