🖊️📃💭 how to write an essay 💭📃🖊️

The latest in the How To Be Creative™ series, we dive into the art of the essay.

This month’s How To Be A Creative™ entry is based on your vote for which subjects to explain and explore. Vote for the next subject at the bottom. Revisit older entries in the series, like How To Be A Creative, How To Run A Newsletter, How To Write About Art, How To Write For Social Media, How To Pitch, How To Decorate, How To Give A Gift, How To Go To Grad School, and How To Host a Dinner Party.

What is an essay if not a sprawling thought pinned to paper? That’s what they say at least (or that’s what I literally just thought up, right now) (unless I subconsciously regurgitated someone else’s idea, as if human AI).

Essays are arguably the definitive artform of this century, blooming from opinion pages into blogging, transforming into spaces like this, transcriptions of the Yap Economy™ that the internet has become known for. Essays are a very valuable currency in the idea economy: the form isn’t just a flex but a requirement — andbeing able to flex this muscle without the help of someone named Chat or Claude or Gemini? Big win for readers and writers alike. Put that brain to work!

But how does one “write” and “essay”? As someone who writes at least two a week, for work and for pleasure and to generally torture myself with glee, I wanted to offer some pointers on this form to help you not only get your ideas out there but so that you too can more effectively write. Technically, essays aren’t a hard form to master — but it requires practice, making the process both faster and more carefree.

So! Here’s my advice on the subject, which I’m going to breakdown by both technical essays versus personal essays while giving general advice and offering ideas for shaping the essay. Know that I am a bit psychotic, meaning that I am constantly cutting myself and watching the blood drip out to write essays: this process is hard and takes discipline but, after fifteen years in the essay factory, it’s “very” “easy” for me. Let this be a workout regimen for your writing!

The logistics of a technical essay.

A “technical” essay is an argumentative essay. Why do I call it a “technical essay”? Because these are essays that are more about a divorced subject: a researched comment versus a sharing of the personal, ideally where a technical thought is mapped out. Examples of this include the “Survival of the Mid-est” essay and the “Statute of Limitations” essay, both of which required a lot of structure on my end along with research. How did we pull these off? Some thoughts…

• Come with a thesis to defend instead of trying to “find” it as you go along. Every essay I write comes from trying to defend an idea. For “Survival,” it was defining the “mid” in culture as a representative of learned laziness. For “Statute,” I wanted to use the Grounded in the Stars statue as proof of how steeped we are in self-dehumanization — and show examples of that, now and then. The essays that do not work are never written in my case as I realize they do not work while gathering proof to defend the idea: for this style, never write without proof. Gather proof first, then start writing. This means you have material to use, that you are stringing together pearls to make a necklace instead of making the basis of the necklace and then trying to force any bauble you find into being a pearl.

• This is going to sound weird but your proof should be based in fact, meaning that it should be from reputable sources and or quotes from real people that you have gotten yourself or have pulled from a larger essay, video, etc. Remember bibliographies? The reason why they exist or why you had to write them was to prove that your idea is based in reality, or based in some proven, grounded thought. That’s why I link so much: the link is the citation, the proof of a concept or a guarantee of a reference being made. Every week, I amass and compile proof of ideas. Then, I construct. How? Well…

• Make an outline. Whether you find your form by following the rhythm of your evidence or by doing a simple five paragraph essay, outlining shapes your concept(s). What I find most useful is to break out evidence by themes and or how each set of ideas construct the bigger idea, with each paragraph paying off a sub-thesis. Let’s break down “Survival” as an example —

  • FIRST PARAGRAPH: People are talking about how dogshit awful Benson Boone is. Why?

  • SECOND PARAGRAPH: Let’s explain why Benson Boo Boo is doggie doo doo. What proof do I have of that?

  • THIRD PARAGRAPH: Why is this happening? Why (and who) are there “so many” Benson Boone types? It’s because there’s too much stuff and ease of access — here’s proof.

  • FOURTH PARAGRAPH: Access to everything means nothing is special. Thus, a culture of the mid. This is a problem of audiences being too feeble minded, resulting in entertainment feeling like Ken parts.

  • FIFTH PARAGRAPH: This is why nostalgia keeps trending because it frees people from “doing work” or thinking hard to access and or enjoy entertainment.

  • SIXTH PARAGRAPH: Closing zinger, which emerges like an exclamation point.

• Remember to offer context as people aren’t in your head and do not have your understanding of the world. To the point of the outline above, my offering “proof” was sharing and explaining not only who Benson is but what the landscape around him is. The hope for any essay is that it contains not only your argument but the bigger picture that surrounds said argument, so anyone can read what you wrote and understand it without trouble.

• If you’re having trouble with beginnings and endings, ask questions. Starting with a “Have you noticed BLAH happening?” and ending with a “It would be interesting if BLAH continued, wouldn’t it?” are perfectly fine — but know that they are crutches, training wheels, etc. You’ll develop your own bag of tricks as far as frames but using the questions to guide your writing can be useful in constructing both the argument and outline. As a good test, remove them — and see if the idea still holds without you needing to be so literal.

• A sign of failure? Things start to unravel toward the end, which some essays on this newsletter fall victim to. If you’re halfway through and feel like what you’ve written is getting nowhere and or has run out of steam, reassess. Where did things go wrong? Is the essay much shorter than intended and is perhaps a Tweet? What areas related to your subject are going uncovered? What are your weak points, meaning are there any subjects that you’re missing? To help cut through this issue, I often “write” an essay to a specific person. Not literally, no, but I keep a friend in mind and think that I am explaining a subject to them. That works almost every time: if I can’t explain the idea or defend it to this person that I know, then the essay isn’t working. And that’s really what a technical essay is above all else: a discussion expressed in writing, a conversation that you would have had with someone else but had to have with yourself. Perhaps that’s why The Trend Report™ has gone so well: it really thrived when I was lonely, without people to talk to, in need of a venue to work through culture. Use that as food for thought!

The logistics of a personal essay.

Personal essay are are more of a storytime with a shape. Unlike a technical essay, nothing is being argued; instead, a specific story about one’s life is being shared. What makes this form tricky is that not all stories in life are inherently “good stories,” which means you may need to bring in support. This is where, say, personal essay and nonfiction differ: your story bundles up larger cultural ideas whereas a nonfiction story is just the personal story. Some examples of recent personal essays I’ve written include “Deep in the Faith” and “Have A Heart,” the latter of which is a little more fluid than what a personal essay should be. Here are some suggestions of how to do this.