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So You Haven’t Started Your Essay Yet

Sometimes the hardest part of writing an essay is getting started. Even if you’re an experienced writer, each essay presents new challenges, be it the length, the subject, the complexity, or just straight up writer’s block. It happens to all of us.

Let’s say you’ve got a big essay due soon. Maybe you have a few ideas. Maybe you’ve picked a topic or written a thesis. Maybe you’re looking at a blank page. But how do you sit down and write this thing? It’s something I struggle with, and students come in to the writing center with this issue all the time. Here are a few tips I use for getting started, courtesy of everyone’s favorite tool: the outline.

Outlines are your friend!

They may seem like more work to begin with, but starting by creating an essay structure saves you so much time when you are revising and editing.

Your outline is for you, so make it yours.

Make notes to yourself using whatever language feels right to you. Your outline can be as formal or as casual as you want it to be. That may mean that your outline ends up having phrases like “Make a point with that thing we covered in the class about globalization” or “Chapter three scene with what’s his name and Jane.” You’re the only one who needs to understand what you’re talking about.

Use bullet points and lists.

Subheadings, comments, text boxes: you can use whatever format you like, but give yourself plenty of room to move things around or block them off. An outline is a visual document as well as a written one. This is the scaffolding of your essay!

Don’t delete stuff.

If you have outlined a paragraph that you later decide to scrap, don’t delete your work. Instead, move it to a secondary document. You never know when those ideas or quotations might suddenly become very useful.

Treat your outline like a set of directions.

After you’ve got your outline down, you just have to take it paragraph by paragraph, and turn those fragments into complete sentences. And for me, I’ve always found that much easier than turning a blank page into paragraphs.

Still, different styles work for different people, and this method is by no means one-size-fits all. Here are a few links to outline guides that offer some alternative explanations and structures, as well as some brainstorming tools to spark your thinking.

Essay Planning: Outlining with a Purpose

How to Make an Outline (with Template)

Writing as Process: Outlining

Tips for Organizing Your Essay

Brainstorming Techniques

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Growing, Writing, and Learning

Before I became a consultant at the WRC, I made over 50 appointments as a student, and I don’t plan on stopping.

Allyson Lowe ’23

In my first semester of college, I confused an author’s middle name for his last name. The following year, I described William Shakespeare as “commenting on nineteenth-century sex politics” instead of the seventeenth century’s. Then, in an upper-level English seminar, I forgot to double- and triple-check my spelling, stringing words together without spaces for half of a sentence. 

Now that I’m a rising senior, you would think I’ve learned all I can when it comes to writing, but no.

While amusing and sometimes obvious, these errors reflect where I was as a writer: growing. I came to William & Mary with a thick Appalachian drawl and no idea what a “college-grade” paper looked like. As the first in my family to attend a four-year university, I was also the first to stumble through an essay’s first, second, and third drafts, let alone the first to make the above mentioned mishaps. My mom, who has always been my biggest supporter, couldn’t advise me on what tense to write in or how to format my paper.

So, I made an appointment with the Writing Resources Center, or the WRC, as I’ve come to know it.

After my first few visits to the WRC, it was clear that my home, albeit seven hours away, heavily informed my authorial voice. Before attending William & Mary, I attended a high school in an educationally and financially underserved community with limited access to writing preparation courses. I wrote a lot, yes, and had a couple of classes that helped hone my writing abilities, but I couldn’t answer questions about what makes a strong thesis statement or the difference between Chicago style and MLA, or why you shouldn’t end a sentence with a preposition. These questions made me feel I was “behind” academically, like I would never make it to my senior year.

I did make it to my senior year (I’m writing this blog post now, two weeks away from my last first day at William & Mary), and that’s because of the support I found at the WRC. The peer consultants I met with answered these questions and didn’t make me feel embarrassed to ask them because, at the end of the day, they were students like me who faced similar challenges when writing. We found the answers together, talking through how a thought-provoking, argumentative claim is key to a good thesis and that the difference between Chicago and MLA boils down to footnotes and endnotes versus in-text citations. I even found the answer to my preposition question: you can end a sentence with a preposition. The conversations I had in the WRC with peer consultants also taught me how to grow from my middle name-last name, Shakespeare, and spelling blunders because to become a better writer, I had to accept there is no such thing as a “perfect” writer. Realizing that I’ll never produce error-free papers has allowed me to grow into myself as a writer, organically and positively. 

Before I became a consultant at the WRC, I made over 50 appointments as a student, and I don’t plan on stopping. I’ve made 65 and plan to exceed 70 by the time I graduate this year because each consultation presents a new learning opportunity. Thanks to the WRC and its supportive team, I know I’m not a small-town girl who’s “behind;” instead, I’m a proud, educated woman moving forward, ready to take on any essay topic, word limit, or deadline–mistakes and all.

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A Simple Introduction to Scientific Writing

Unlike other types of writing, scientific writing is purely a tool to communicate information. Forget the eloquent prose, flowery descriptions, and exclamation points—the goal is not to impress or exaggerate but simply to convey ideas and results clearly and efficiently. For many students, acclimating to this new way of writing can be difficult. Here, we have assembled some of our best advice on how to write in the sciences.

Precision

One of the most important things for a scientist to keep in mind is precision. This is equally true when writing in the sciences. By this, we don’t just mean accurately reporting results–because, of course–but also in your word choice, detail, and description. Be aware that your reader may not be as familiar with the material as you, so leave nothing to the imagination. Be confident and clear in what you say, and be as detailed as possible, prioritizing quantitative over qualitative descriptions. Take care to leave out anything distracting or irrelevant, but help the reader follow along as you guide them through your reasoning, methods, and results.

Clarity

Along with precision, it is important to keep scientific writing as clear and concise as possible. Avoid trying to fit too many ideas in one sentence, as this may confuse readers. It is also important to use familiar terms in your writing, as long as those terms don’t introduce ambiguity. Keep your audience in mind and be sure to include definitions for technical terms when possible. 

Additionally, avoid unnecessary phrases and wordy sentences. A quick way to check for the addition of unnecessary phrases is to ask yourself the question: do you feel out of breath after reading your sentence aloud? That means it is too wordy. Another way to shorten convoluted sentences is to remove unnecessary interjections. 

Objectivity

Passive voice, while loved by scientists, is not preferred by others. Why? Well, passive voice can be a useful tool for objectivity, but it can also introduce ambiguity. But to use passive voice, we first need to understand what it is. A very simple rule for passive voice is, if you can put “by zombies” at the end of the sentence, it’s likely passive voice. For example, “The sample was taken.” We can add  “by zombies” to the end to get “The sample was taken by zombies.” Compare this to “The scientist took the sample,” where adding “by zombies” doesn’t sound right. By focusing on the object of the sentence rather than the actor (e.g. the sample being taken rather than who’s taking it) we are viewing the situation more objectively. A word of caution: sometimes, passive voice can be detrimental, even in scientific writing. If you don’t specify who is doing the action, you introduce ambiguity, which we want to avoid. However, knowing the mechanics and function of passive voice can strengthen your scientific writing overall.

In scientific writing, we try to acknowledge any limitations in the studies we’re writing about and avoid gross overgeneralizations. This means we stay away from drawing conclusions that are too broad. In scientific writing, there is very little we can conclude is 100% true – science largely consists of observations that have the potential to be proven false (even those made in controlled experimental conditions).

Scientific writing may seem daunting at first, but hopefully with this guide, you’ll be ready to tackle any STEM assignments that come your way!