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Essay writing can seem like a nightmare. All those thoughts jumbled up in your head. Somewhere in there you had a point, or was it lots of points. Oh dear. Better go watch some TV.
The key to writing a good essay is structure. And the secret to structure is a good plan. If you're in an exam situation, this may seem like a waste of valuable time, but it really isn't. A plan means that when you've only fifteen minutes to go and you've written yourself into a complicated corner, you can look back to your plan and remember what you should be talking about - this can often save your essay, adding those vital few points to bump you up to the next grade.
You'll have been told ad nauseam that all essays need an introduction and a conclusion but its the middle part that really needs careful structuring. Think of ways to split your essay into easily digestible chunks, or paragraphs. Maybe its doing a paragraph on tone, a paragraph on theme, a paragraph on characters. If it's poetry you might want to do a paragraph on what the rhyme or meter is doing. These individual paragraphs should lead to a conclusion that takes evidence from each on. For example perhaps your character is a lonely wandering soul, you've talked about the language the author uses to describe him, then you've talked about the piece's melancholy tone, then you've looked at the form of the work, and established that the writer is using his rhyme or prose to emphasise this lonely feeling. But perhaps there's something an image or a line that doesn't fit. It's often a good idea to bring in an anomaly towards the end of your essay to show that you've seen where the author might be undermining or playing around with his own work. Then you can add everything up and conclude your assessment that the work is about loneliness or loss or whatever you think it is about.
BUT, this is before you even put pen to paper. All this should be down on your first page in a bullet point list: the perfect plan from which you can then go on to write the perfect examiner-wowing essay.
Good Luck!
