On Writing Essays

Essays—the ever dreaded essays—are a form of writing that most people, especially students, tend to hate the most. But essays are also one of the most enjoyable to read. The essay is an underappreciated form of writing. When done artfully, essays can persuade an audience of an argument, introduce the reader to a new idea, or highlight an author’s deep love for a particular subject. Most ideas that have enriched society, such as reflections about the passing of time, the purpose of life, and the potential of a new discovery, became commonly accepted due to the power of an essay. 

We hope that this page provides you with helpful resources that encourage you to write a powerful and curious essay (and perhaps submit it to Archetype). 

An author may be tempted to write about their area of expertise, a subject by which they’ve received distinction; however, we also encourage essays on the unexplored, ideas faintly grasped yet felt from deep within. As Joan Didion writes in her essay “Why I Write,” 

“Had I been blessed with even limited access to my own mind there would have been no reason to write. I write entirely to find out what I’m thinking, what I’m looking at, what I see and what it means.”

Let this be encouragement to emerging writers who crave the act of writing but doubt their abilities. Our hope is that writing will be a form of freedom and exploration for you, and that your writing will welcome others into your own journey of discovery. 

Finding Your Voice

Your writing is your story, so it is also important to write in your voice. No one sees the world the way you do, which means no one writes like you do. To write in your own voice—without censoring your thoughts or conforming to the crowd—and work toward refining your words in later drafts should be your only tasks.   

There are countless characteristics to good writing. Economy, style, detail, grammar, et cetera, et cetera. Above all else, we at Archetype place high significance upon sensuality—the act of dazzling the senses through everyday life.

In “Frost and Snow” by Jan Zwicky, published in Brick Magazine, Issue 107, a professor leaves his job and wife to return to the land where he grew up. A revelation of freedom and unconditional love is shown through the imagery of a hand on his shoulder and a “wild and boundless” energy pouring into his body from the ground up: 

It was summer, late evening; I was preoccupied with sorrow, choked by the sense I had betrayed my truest friend. And up from the ground, up through the soles of my boots, came the awareness—clearer than speech, like a hand on my shoulder—that the land felt no betrayal, that it loved me and was glad for me to go, that its energy was wild and boundless, unconstrained by human decisions or desire… But I was still able to recognize it: a love so enormous, so exuberant that it was unaffected by my failures, or by any of its own possible fates. And I realized I’d been afforded a glimpse into what it is, really, to be. 

Zwicky shows us that essays need not conform to the formal language taught in many academic classes. Rather, essays can utilize the senses to help readers experience how an idea feels within the body, an experience that alters one’s perspective from the inside out. 

Structure

One of the hardest parts to the essay is narrative structure: how you pull the reader along while offering new bits of information. Many writers are afraid to structure their essays in ways that differ from how they were taught. In her essay, “An essay about essays,” Meghan Stielstra writes about how the education system’s curriculum trains students to adhere to  the traditional five-paragraph essay format, a format that ultimately constrains students to think within the box: 

‘Essays are terrifying.’ ‘Terrifying,’ I said. ‘Why terrifying?’ ‘Because you have to be totally, completely certain about everything,’ she said. ‘I’m eighteen years old—I’m not certain about anything.’ I tried to explain, as I always do, that an essay does not have to be definitive. It can be a place where we examine an idea, where we follow our curiosity as a way to discovery. As E.M. Forster wrote, I don’t know what I think til I see what I say. ‘That’s crazy,’ said my student. ‘Nobody can pull that off in only five paragraphs.’

Give yourself the freedom to explore a new idea—guided, not hindered, by the essay “format.” Do not worry about summarizing all your key points in a concluding paragraph, or about constructing the perfect thesis statement in one sentence. Worry about writing clear arguments that build on each other. Worry about writing with your soul thrown into the question you’re seeking to answer. And lastly, check out the resources listed below for more information on specific writing tools. 

Required Reading:

• Writing Tools by Roy Peter Clark 
• The Art of X-Ray Reading by Roy Peter Clark 
• The Elements of Style by William Strunk Jr. 

For Archetype, A Good Essay… 

• Begins with a narrative that naturally introduces more abstract elements: concepts, theories, philosophies:

Your writing should move, move, move. From concrete to abstract. From specific to general. From idea to example. From information to anecdote. From exposition to dialogue. A book is a perpetual motion machine that drives a story and lets the reader feel the energy (The Art of X-Ray Reading, p. 25). 

• Proposes an idea or question that the essay will focus on:

Without a sense of discovery, a creative piece will lack urgency and interest. […] Good creative writing is almost always conceived in doubt, and is fueled by an urgent desire to understand something that eludes understanding. Thus the best writing is less about dispelling than acquiring wisdom, less about explaining the point of a given experience to others than about exploring and learning about it oneself (The Making of a Story, p. 67-68). 

• Has clear writing—with the wider audience and purpose in mind:

And how is clarity to be acquired? Mainly by taking trouble; and by writing to serve people rather than to impress them. Most obscurity, I suspect, comes not so much from incompetence as from ambition—the ambition to be admired for depth of sense, or pomp of sound, or wealth of ornament. It is for the writer to think and rethink his ideas till they are clear; to put them in a clear order; to prefer […] short words, sentences, and paragraphs; not to try to say too many things at once; to eschew irrelevancies; and, above all, to put himself with imaginative sympathy in his reader’s place. (Style: The Art of Writing Well, p. 60)

Feel ready to submit your essay to Archetype? Go to our submissions page to review general guidelines and submit!