How to Write Interesting Essays That Won't Bore Your Professors

Imagine this: your English literature course has been covering Shakespeare’s Hamlet for the last three weeks. You have nothing in common with Hamlet.

He is a depressed brat — we know. He resents women, is a terrible lover, and is far from an empathetic son. In fact, he annoys you so much with his strange ways and unpredictable behavior that you give up reading the play.

SparkNotes it is, you tell yourself.

But then, your teacher gives you a prompt and asks you to write an essay about Hamlet. You have now shut out everything and instead, you focus on the impending pain of having to write an interesting essay about something you cannot relate to on any level.

What now? You have no choice but to get down to it.

Before you get started, you might want to read this article and learn how to write interesting essays that are anything but a snoozefest.

How to Write Interesting Essays in 7 Steps

Newsflash: your professors have to read uncountable essays in a day. You can either submit a half-baked one that bores them to death or take time out to write one that’s sure to leave them impressed (and get you the scores you want).

Let’s take a look at how you can write interesting essays in seven steps.

Understand your prompt

This is the first step of writing an essay and one of the most crucial steps that should not be neglected. Once you understand your prompt question with ease, the process of writing an engaging and interesting essay on the topic becomes a simpler process.

Through this process, you can highlight the prompt question’s keywords such as ‘discuss’, ‘compare’, ‘explain’, etc and be able to identify the type of question and work on how you can approach it.

Hook your readers at the start

If the beginning of your essay is engaging, your readers will be enticed to read the rest of your essay.

To start an interesting introduction that catches the eye of your reader immediately, you can:

• ask a compelling question;
• use a relevant quotation;
• share an engrossing anecdote or story;
• place the reader in a situation;
• write about the main mistakes they should avoid;
• start with a catchy dialogue.

Make sure to start your essay with these attention-grabbing hooks.

In addition to a great hook, an introduction also consists of a thesis statement. A critical element, it needs to encompass the central idea of your essay and tie your points together.

Organize your ideas

Keep in mind to collect all your ideas and organize them in a smooth flow. This can be done by creating an organizational structure or an outline of the essay so that putting in all your ideas and points into the essay can become uncomplicated and effortless.

Losing your readers to a disorganized mess of ideas can turn them off from reading your essay.

Make a plan on how you want to place your ideas, as doing this will not only help you know what to write, but also create a clear picture of what kind of content you have, and if any other points need to be included.

Write short paragraphs

To find your essay interesting, your readers wouldn’t want to read multiple pages of wordy or lengthy sentences with lots of unnecessary information.

Instead, they would be engrossed in an essay that consists of precise points and smaller paragraphs that don't ramble on.

The solution? Stick to the purpose of the essay without disrupting the flow of your ideas.

Avoid including over-complicated words or phrases that can confuse your readers. You may think that using a thesaurus and adding complicated words will make you seem academic, but in hindsight, it can compel your readers to feel alienated and make you sound arrogant.

Reading essays that consist of the above issues may tend to become laborious to read and understand easily. This eventually causes your readers to lose interest in your essay and then ignore it.

Avoid clichés and repetitive sentences

A huge writing mistake that brings down the quality of essays is using overused words or clichés. These phrases make your essay writing dull, predictable, and less interesting.

Avoid using similar phrases as your classmates and peers to make your essay stand out among the rest.

Similarly, repetitive sentences or phrases can make your entire process of creating a good essay a futile chore. Use new and catchy sentences that depict your thoughts and ideas clearly.

This helps show the readers your vocabulary range and writing capabilities as well as makes your content more interesting to read.

Take a look at this video by Tolentino Teaching that talks about avoiding cliches and decluttering your writing

Use examples, statistics, and visuals

Add some life to your essay by adding statistics, infographics, interesting examples, and visuals such as images or videos. Using examples is a brilliant way of showcasing your ideas and it also helps your readers to understand your explanations better.

Another simple way of engaging your readers is by including statistics and linking them to their appropriate source. Through this, your reader will understand that you spent proper time researching to take out logical evidence that supports your statements.

Insert rhetorical questions

A rhetorical question is when you ask your readers a question, without expecting them to give you an answer in return. This keeps them engaged as it makes them think and try to decipher your question.

These questions are then eventually answered by you in the essay, making it an effective way to include a new line of inquiry as well as to showcase a point that you’d like to discuss further in detail.

Rhetorical questions keep the dramatic effect of your essay in motion, thus making it an interesting read.

Conclusion

Essay writing can be an exciting process if the right strategies are taken but if it’s approached incorrectly can become an extremely daunting experience (for you and the reader).

Implementing these tactics will help you draft interesting essays and set yourself apart from your classmates.

Still in a fix? Write to us at Writers Per Hour with your requirements and we’ll put our expert essay writers to work. When you outsource to us, you can expect to receive original, plagiarism-free essays that are far from boring.