How To: Write a good essay

How to score good marks in Essay?
With the change in the civil services exam pattern, paper of essay has become a make or break deal. For the past few years, cut off in the mains exam is trending near 35% to 40%. In such a scenario, the essay paper has become a decisive factor in whether one would land in IAS hit zone or not. Thus a candidate can ignore essay paper at their own peril.

Earlier UPSC used to ask one topic but now it asks us to write on multiple topics. This has positive as well negative aspect. On the positive side, it will help in reducing uncertainty in the essay. One of my friends had scored 120 out of 200 in a year but slumped to 21 in the very next year. Similarly, another friend who score 46 out of 200 in year 2012 and score 140 out of 250 in year 2013. With two essays, hopefully this uncertainty in the scoring pattern will reduce. On the negative side, this will put more pressure on the students. I know many people who had not practiced enough to deal with multiple essays, ended up screwing both the essay. For some of them, essay writing became same as subject answer writing. Some ended up making wrong selection in the heat of things. Many of them could not write the conclusion part properly.

Thus morale of the story is that a candidate should understand that weight of essay paper is same as subject paper 1. Thus essay paper should not be meted with any step motherly treatment. Thought essay paper does not demand any dedicated preparation. The content for essay writing develops gradually from the regular newspaper reading and subject learning. But one has to practice the answer writing on a consistent basis. It requires a perfect mix of speed, expression, knowledge and creativity to score real good marks in essay paper.

I have background of engineering thus essay writing was something unnatural and alien to me. In fact, it was the essay paper which killed my chances in cracking the exam in the very first attempt. Over the years, I practiced and practiced and practiced hard. I prepared myself mentally and informational in such a manner that I could write essay on any topic in any situation. I will attach six essays which I had written over the years. I have picked one essay each from my first attempt and second attempt. Two essays each from third attempt and fourth attempt are selected for this purpose. This will help you in understanding the gradual improvement in my approach of essay writing. The book also discusses the reasons behind my low marks in year 1, average marks in years 2, less than average marks in year 3 and good marks in year 4. It will help in clearing many doubts which irk the candidates who pick the pen to write their first essay in the life time after they clear prelims.

Over the years, I have met number of students selected or preparing. All of them have some common set of questions. I will discuss the issues related to essay writing in a Q&A form. This will help in easy understanding and clear presentation of thoughts.

Q. What does general coaching walah says about the Essay?
A. Most of the coachings treat essay writing as a mechanical exercise. It fulfills their purpose of attracting engineering graduates who find it easier to write essay in a defined structured manner. Even I started on the same line. The only key to come out of this structured mechanical approach is to “read, read, and read with write, write and write”.
This is what most of the coachings has to offer: An essay is divided into three segments. Introduction, Body and Conclusion. The Introduction is generally 10% of the essay. It contains the thesis. The body elaborates the teaching. The conclusion is the summary of the essay containing a bird eye view of your body. It is also nearly 10% of total length of the essay.
In my experience, no coaching walah ever tells the student about what is thesis, how to write a thesis, how to make a beginning. Most of them are limited to the discussion of “what of essay exam rather than how”? Even if some teachers touch upon these aspects, the viewpoint is very theoretical and limited. In my view there are no good coaching available for essay. In fact essay is something which does not require coaching. The content is gathered by regular reading of the newspaper and current affairs. There are various techniques which help in developing good content despite our limited world view. The expression comes from reading and writing practice. The context arises from the topic and multi-dimensionality of our viewpoint.

Critical thinking to generate more points: Suppose you are happen to choose a topic like “Social Media: boon or bane” or let say a philosophical topic like “Be the change you want to be”. Most of us start energetically. We list down all the relevant point that we could generate on the issue but ten minutes into the topic and we realize that our knowledge base is exhausted. Immediately we start sweating out of nervousness. In a three hour examination where one has to write on the multiple topics, we end up wasting precious initial ten minutes. This has risk of becoming our break moment. How to deal with this scenario?

In such situation, a technique of critical thinking helps in generating more points.
Step 1: Uninhibited Listing of Topics Whenever you see any topic, list all the words which come to your mind by looking at the topics without thinking deeper about the topic.
For example the topic of “Social Media: boon or bane” let us list the possible things that come to mind:

Step 2: Cross connection to generate detailed thoughts
Take any word from generated word list. Let us say we pick a word “game”. We can develop
some thoughts on this. This will make one good paragraph of our essay.
“Games like Candy Crush or Farmville has become a source of entertainment for a large number of people.” Games lead to internet addiction. Games waste time.

Now take the word “Game” and club it with other words. Clubbing Game with Money can help in another point that “Making online games can help in generating money”. Game and Knowledge can lead to another point that “Quiz games help in improving knowledge base”.

For some cross couplings, there are no points that come to our mind. We can simply drop them.
For example, for Games and messages nothing is coming to my mind.
Repeat this exercise for all the word you had gathered in the list. You may realize that

Step 3: Grouping of words
Once you are done with step 2, you’ll see that you have large number of positive and negative points with you. So now is the time to discard irrelevant point, and group together the relevant points.

Step 4: Thematic categorization of thoughts to give more streamlined outlook to the topic
Now you can capture big themes. For example, Democracy has themes like Social capital, Democracy, Knowledge awareness, Terrorism, Games, Privacy issues etc. These can be clubbed under the supra heading of boon and bane. While themes of social capital, democracy, knowledge can be grouped under the heading of boon, the issues of terrorism, privacy and internet addiction can be clubbed under bane.

Step 5: Some visionary lines or thoughts on the topic
Think of the way the particular issue has affected our life. For example some simple yet insightful lines on social media could be:
“Social media has made World Wide Web from mere repository of raw knowledge to a platform of Information Exchange.”
“Face book has become the new staple diet of internet age generation.”

Step 6: Chart preparation
Prepare a mental map like this.

Q. Importance of quotes in the Essay?
Quotes are a powerful one-liner. They are sum total of some one’s life experience.
Candidates are often in dilemma whether to put quotes in the essay or not. The answer is simple.
As with the other things in the UPSC, here also balance and originality is the key. Putting quote is good provided it strengthen your argument.
A quote without elaboration is not considered good. It gives examiner a impression that person has just mugged the quote without understanding its real application.
Using too many quotes is also not appreciated as it takes the originality away from your essay.
The essay is your view on the issue. Thus, quotes should only come to support your argument.

Many of my friends have scored good marks without putting a single quote in their essay. Thus, another wise strategy could be to use the words of the quote without putting it as a quote. Put it as if it is your own idea and explain it in detail with numerous common life examples.


Q. How to make a good beginning of an essay?
Story: Hypothetical or Real
Quote
Case scenario development
Figures and facts
Importance of the issue
Historical evolution
Spatial evolution

The first impression is said to be the last impression. The examiner makes an initial judgment of person’s intellect, thought process, and knowledge base from the first few lines of the essay. Thus, many times I see that people write their whole introduction in rough so that not even a word goes wrong.
Many quasi-engineer (a term to describe engineering graduate with social sciences subject) end up wasting quite some time in finding a right opening to their essay. During my evolution from a poor essay writer to an average essay writer, I discovered general lines along which one can open the essay. Some of these threads are discussed below: