In college, you deal with many essay types: term papers, book reports, and personal narratives — all are important to write for a high final grade. Persuasive writing is the trickiest one:

It requires a lot of research and writing strategies to structure your work so you convince readers to agree with your point of view. Not only do you share information, but you also persuade the audience, using solid arguments and evidence in your paper.

In this article, you’ll learn how to write a persuasive assignment and what writing strategies can help you make it worth the highest grade.

What is Persuasive Writing?

Persuasive writing refers to any text aiming to convince the reader of a writer’s opinion. It can be an academic essay, a political or social speech, sales copywriting work, a marketing blog post, etc.

Unlike other writing forms meant to share information, persuasive texts include solid evidence and logical arguments. They appeal to emotions and need to be compelling enough to influence readers and make them agree with an author’s point of view.

What is the Purpose of Persuasive Writing in College?

When a professor assigns persuasive writing in college, they want you to craft a paper where you’ll use logic, solid arguments, and evidence to convince readers.

It’s critical to understand the difference between persuasive and argumentative essays here:

While both require research and arguments, a persuasive essay is about choosing a side and providing evidence only about that chosen aspect. You mention counterarguments here but explain why they don’t work.

Argumentative essays are about representing both sides of a topic. You don’t convince anyone here but describe arguments and counterarguments for readers to decide which side to choose.

What can you use as evidence to persuade the audience of what you say?

• Academic research
• Statistics
• Expert quotes
• Case studies with examples
• Logical reasons

And now, to practice:

How to Write Persuasive Assignments

Choose a Topic

Given that persuasive essays aim at convincing the readers, their topics are to be polemical. In other words, you take an issue with at least two points of view in society. No one needs a persuasive article on “People need air to breathe:” It’s common knowledge, and there’s nothing to prove here. But “People need cannabis for better health” might work: It’s an issue someone would agree while others would disagree with.

Some professors assign a particular topic for persuasive essays, but often they ask you to choose it. (They want to check your critical thinking skills and the ability to prove your point on polemical issues.)

If you want your essay to succeed, consider topics in spheres like animal rights, politics, gender issues, or climate change. However, ensure you write about what worries you and have enough arguments and evidence to persuade readers of your position.

Here go some topic ideas for your persuasive writing:

1. Nuclear weapons are effective to prevent foreign attacks.
2. Every American should learn a foreign language.
3. Feminism is no longer a struggle for women’s rights.
4. The power of kindness is in its weakness.
5. It is necessary to cancel the mandatory exams in schools.

Two rules here:

(1) Consider topics that inspire you personally, and (2) take topics that are up-to-date and with enough discussion in literature and online: It won’t be problematic to research and find evidence on them.

Do Research

You won’t write an efficient persuasive paper with no research on the topic. Given that you need to convince readers of your opinion, you should understand the topic from multiple angles and decide what side you choose to prove in your writing.

So, once you choose a topic, it’s time to gather the information: Consider academic studies, relevant media news, expert opinions, and historical examples. You’ll need to examine and evaluate them to see what the world already has about this issue and which resources you can use as references in your essay.

Here’s how to evaluate sources: Consider those fitting the five following criteria.

1. Current: check the publication date.
2. Relevant: check if the info answers your question and is deep enough to cover the issue.
3. Accurate: check where the info comes from (educational or governmental resources, reputable organizations, etc.).
4. Authoritative: check the authors’ credentials.
5. Purposeful: check the purpose of the resource (educate, entertain, persuade). Is their information based on facts? Is their point of view objective?

Choose Your Opinion

Remember the core difference between argumentative and persuasive writing:

Argumentative is about describing both sides of the issue and letting the audience choose which one to support. Persuasion is about convincing the audience of your opinion on the issue.

So, you need to choose a polemical topic and decide whether you agree or disagree with it. Which side are you going to support in your essay?

When choosing, ensure you have enough evidence in your references to prove your point to readers. You’ll need credible arguments to sway the audience to your side.

Write an Outline

Okay, now you have a topic, you’ve chosen the side to prove, and you’ve done research to find solid references that will help support your arguments. It’s time to outline your essay so you don’t miss anything when writing.

Persuasive essays have a standard structure:

1. Introduction, with a hook, background, and thesis statement.
2. Essay body, with 1-2 paragraphs describing your arguments and evidence + 1 paragraph describing your opponent’s arguments and your counterarguments why you disagree with that opposite point of view.
3. Conclusion summing up your points and restating your thesis for the audience to have food for thought after reading your essay.

You are welcome to use the below template for outlining your persuasive essays. Once you fill it in, it will be much easier to write your paper step by step.

Write and Edit Your Persuasive Essay

Now you have everything to sit and start writing your persuasive essay’s draft:

• In the introduction paragraph, describe the issue and state the point you’ll support throughout your paper.
• In body paragraphs, remember to include evidence from credible resources to prove your point and convince readers to agree with you. You can also represent the opposite point on the issue but still provide arguments for why you disagree.
• In the final paragraph (conclusion), wrap up your points and restate your thesis once again for readers to remember it. You can finish with a question for the audience to think about.

Once your essay draft is ready, don’t hurry to submit it to a professor. Wait for a couple of days — and then reread it with a fresh eye to proofread and edit it if necessary.

Re-check your arguments again, and ensure the essay structure is logical and all the paragraphs are clear and coherent. Are your points and evidence solid enough to persuade readers of your opinion? Remember to check your essay for grammar and style errors: Apps like Grammarly or ProWritingAid can assist you.

10 Successful Persuasive Writing Strategies

Here at CopyCrafter, our writers deal with many persuasive essays daily. They’ve shared several practical tips on how to work on your writing assignment so that it turns out successful and A-worthy.

We know you don’t have much time to deal with long reads, so the given persuasive writing strategies go in brief. 😉

1 — Choose a Topic You’re Passionate About

We bet you’ll agree with us on this one:

It’s much easier to research and write about something that is interesting to you. If your professor doesn’t assign any particular topic but invites you to choose yours, think of issues that bother you and that you’d like to share with the audience.

First, it will be easier to research such topics because you already know some facts and evidence about them. And second, they’ll motivate you to examine the question deeper and learn new facts rather than sit and hate your professor for assigning it.

2 — Know Your Audience

To persuade people of your opinion on the topic, you need to know who will read your essay. Do you know their age, interests, or background? What do they know and think about the issue you’re going to represent?

Depending on the audience, you might consider different arguments and evidence for your essay. Also, it will help you understand what words to use and what emotions to appeal to for readers to believe you.

3 — Speak Directly to the Reader

Speaking to the reader is an effective writing strategy, so do your best to address your audience directly as “you:” It makes your writing feel more like a conversation than teaching, encouraging readers to lower their objections and listen to your points.

4 — Research, Research, Research Both Sides

Let’s face it: No one cares about opinions if they don’t follow E-A-T (expertness, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness). Today, we all are online, with personal blogs and social media, sharing thoughts and trying to communicate something to the world. But why should the world care?

In persuasive writing, the depth of research and information matters. As an author, you need to know both sides of the issue to have enough arguments and evidence to prove your point.

So, don’t hurry up to write until you examine and evaluate the facts. For that, do not be lazy to research the topic you’re going to represent in your writing.

5 — Write a Clear Thesis Statement

A thesis statement is the central idea of your writing. It introduces your point of view to the audience and helps them understand what you’ll try to communicate in your paper. That is why it should be clear and transparent.

A clear statement is your weapon to avoid confusion. Otherwise, readers won’t understand the purpose of your essay and will leave disappointed.

6 — Hook the Reader from the Start

Get your audience interested in your writing: Think of a so-called hook to grab their attention from the very beginning. The first sentence of your essay can be an intriguing question about the topic you’ll cover, a quote from an expert sharing some controversial information, unexpected statistics, an interesting fact, etc.

Give them a reason to continue reading your work. What’s so special about it? What’s in there for them? Why should they care? But please do not manipulate readers’ emotions and do not lie: Use straightforward language, be concise, and choose words that sound persuasive. (More on that below.)

7 — Choose Words Carefully

Word choice is critical in persuasive writing because they help emphasize your points, evoke emotions, and convince readers that your opinion is correct and worth trusting. Words are your instrument to build connections and personal relationships with the audience, so do your best to use strong language in your essays.

What does it mean?

Use active verbs, the right tone of voice, and power words (those descriptive and helping the readers understand what you want to say). Avoid redundant adverbs, slang and jargon, and wateriness: be precise.

Don’t repeat linking words and sentences; say no to irrelevant information. If the reader can’t follow your thoughts or you make too many immaterial points, you will lose your reader’s interest and have no chance of persuading them.

8 — Emphasize Your Point

Make the most of exaggeration and hyperbolic statements to express urgency or support your point. It doesn’t mean to lie in an attempt to impress readers: It’s a great persuasive technique when you want to convey an impactful image for readers to “hear” you.

Another writing trick to try is appealing to emotions. Readers are more likely to believe you if they feel you understand them and can relate to their experience. Thus, you’ll target their sensitivities and provide arguments for why their opinions on the discussed topic may change.

9 — Repeat Your Arguments

We speak about strategic repetition here, when you find different ways to make the same point: metaphors, rephrasing, storytelling, and other literary devices. Don’t ignore them while writing:

They’ll prevent you from using monotonous language and the same patterns. Readers won’t think anything like, “Oh my, s/he has mentioned it several times already,” and you will be able to reinforce your point without annoying the audience with repetitiveness.

10 — Ask for Feedback

When you think you have completed your writing, read through it thoroughly and check every part. Invite a few friends or family members to check it and give you their honest opinion, take feedback from unbiased people, and use their comments to make any final and effective changes.

Ready to Write an Essay That Persuades Readers?

Writing persuasive texts that have the potential to change someone’s way of thinking is not an easy task. If you want to succeed here, you need to know your audience, state your point of view clearly, and support it with arguments you can prove with evidence like research, quotes from experts, statistics, and relevant emotional appeals.

More than that, it would help if you could anticipate and respond to objections your opponents might have.

We hope this article has answered all your questions on persuasive writing, its purpose, and how to craft it when assigned. Still in doubt? Feel free to contact our professional writers for assistance.

Writing a dissertation is a struggle. According to the data provided by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, more than 50% of graduate students fail to complete this type of academic paper. Dissertations appear to be a challenge to those seeking a Ph.D. degree.

Completing this assignment takes more than diligence or advanced knowledge. It is more like writing a book: You need deep research and make it relevant to a specialized discipline. Many graduates reconsider their academic future facing such a trial.

But don’t hurry up to give up! First, you can always get professional assistance here. And second, the below dissertation writing tips will help you schedule an everyday writing routine and ease the dissertation writing process by far.

Contents

Dissertation vs. Thesis

Before we reveal all the detailed tips for writing a dissertation, let’s ensure you understand the difference between a dissertation and a thesis. (No offense, but many graduates still confuse these two paper types.)

Thesis meaning:

A thesis is an academic paper a student completes at the end of the course to get a Master’s degree. You choose a narrow topic in your field and examine it.

A thesis structure is rigid. Though it may vary a bit, depending on your university or department’s policies, a typical thesis includes the following components:

1. Title
2. Abstract
3. Table of contents
4. Table of Figures
5. Body chapters
6. Conclusion (the results)

Dissertation meaning:

A dissertation is an academic paper a graduate writes if they want to get a Doctoral degree. You conduct your original research to add something to the existing knowledge in your field: a new hypothesis, a new angle for the established research, etc.

As well as a thesis, a dissertation has a rigid structure but a more complex one. When writing a dissertation, get ready to include the following elements there:

1. Title page
2. Abstract
3. Table of contents
4. Introduction
5. Literature review
6. Methodology
7. Findings
8. Discussion (analysis and interpretation of your findings)
9. Conclusion
10. The list of references
11. Appendices

So, the primary difference between a thesis and a dissertation is the degree you get after writing it: You’ll need a thesis for a Master’s degree, and you’ll write a dissertation for a Doctoral degree.

Another difference lies in the content: a thesis is between 40 and 80 pages, covering some narrow topic within your field of study; a dissertation is between 100 and 300 pages, aimed at bringing something new (your original research) to the existing research in your niche.

Finally, a dissertation requires an oral defense. After submitting it to your academic advisor and committee, they’ll schedule dates for its oral presentation: You’ll justify your findings and the methodology you used to bring them.

Dissertation Writing Tips: Conditions and Time Management

Before you start working on your doctoral paper, you need to create favorable conditions: choose an advisor, agree on a topic, write a dissertation proposal, and start working with a committee.

Discuss with your supervisor how you would like to cooperate. Also, think of your topic and how you can make it better. Many doctoral students change their direction to get more comfortable with their dissertations.

Agree with the committee on how often they would like to see the drafts of your paper. Through your dissertation writing, do not hesitate to contact your department if needed. It is essential to clarify all questions before they turn into problems.

Now that you have everything to start work on your dissertation, one more critical point to consider is your everyday schedule.

Arrange each day if you want to spend time effectively. Use planning devices, like a calendar, to stick to your schedule. Decide how much time you are ready to devote to your dissertation daily, and do your best to measure your work, either in hours or pages.

At the end of each day, try to evaluate how much time you spent and what you achieved. Maybe you’ll need to optimize your time and process more material. Or perhaps you can take more rest if you get into a good pace with your dissertation.

How to Write a Dissertation: 10 Steps to Help You

Choose a topic

First and foremost, your dissertation topic should have research potential. Remember that you won’t write a paper describing something already known in the field: You’ll need to contribute something new to it, something the academic world will appreciate and refer to.

Please note that you’ll need to explain how your topic is relevant to your selected discipline today and how you can make your experience useful. Will you cover an existing problem from another angle? Will you add anything to existing research on the topic?

Conduct research

Before writing a dissertation, you’ll need to conduct preliminary research: It will help you hone the topic and question you plan to discuss in your paper. Depending on your field, this research might mean reviewing scholarly literature, running some lab tests, visiting archives to check existing data, etc.

Take notes, especially on areas with the potential for expanding research.

Read literature related to your topic

Yes, it takes time, but you won’t be able to choose a relevant topic if you don’t know what’s in your field at the moment. So, get ready to spend hours in libraries or online and read journals and publications in your research area.

Do your best to check credible scholarly sources: You’ll need them to support your chosen topic and research question.

Check some dissertation examples

Okay, it’s about reading again. As a student, you’ve written tons of essays and research papers in college, but a dissertation is another matter. It’s like writing a book, so it’s worth checking some complete dissertation examples to understand what it looks like and set realistic expectations about what your discipline wants from your paper.

Ask your academic advisor to share some recent dissertation examples from doctoral candidates in your department. Or, you can consider online resources like ProQuest Dissertations: They share samples so that you understand the standards of writing a successful dissertation.

Get ready that some of your concepts may change

So, as you see, you’ll read and research many journals, scholarly articles, and other dissertations while preparing to write yours. It’s okay if your topic and some basic concepts you had on it will change during the examination of these documents.

It’s a standard working process where you might understand that some changes are necessary to keep your future dissertation relevant and valuable to the field.

Prepare the proposal

A dissertation proposal is a required document to submit to the committee’s approval before you start working on the draft. It’s a table of contents for them to see what to expect from your future paper and if it’s worth further consideration.

Depending on your discipline, the proposal length may differ, but it’s 10-20 pages in general. Here you need to reveal your research topic, outline the research methods you’ll use, provide an abstract and the literature review, explain your aims and objectives, and write a mini-conclusion and a reference list.

Conclusions are not obligatory because your proposal is not complete research yet, but it’s worth mentioning what you expect to get from your dissertation.

Follow the structure

Dissertations have a rigid structure, so do your best to follow it when outlining your paper and writing the draft. A standard structure includes the following elements:

1. Title page, with your topic (title), name, an advisor’s name, and date of writing.
2. Abstract, aka a short summary of your dissertation.
3. Table of contents where you show the text structure, with sections and page numbers.
4. Figures (if you have any).
5. Dissertation introduction, with your thesis and the overview of what we’ll see in your paper.
6. Body: the main part, with all the arguments, facts, and analyses you have about the problem you cover.
7. Conclusion: the results of your research, summarizing everything and providing the answer and recommendations.
8. Bibliography, aka the reference list with all the sources you used during your research.
9. Appendices: Any additional information that’s not vital to include in the dissertation body but worth mentioning.

Meet with your advisor

You aren’t alone while writing a dissertation. More than that, you should meet with your academic advisor regularly to get feedback and ensure you do everything right. As you write chapters, send them to the advisor, and don’t be afraid of criticism and corrections:

Their comments will help you identify problematic issues, and they’ll suggest ways to improve your dissertation. Plus, regular communication with your advisor and other committee members will boost your confidence when the time comes to defend your dissertation.

Don’t be afraid to edit

So, your dissertation draft is ready. Now, another challenging part of the process comes: editing. You need to re-read your paper several times to prevent any logical errors, repetitive areas, biased or unclear language, grammar and spelling mistakes, etc.

To make the process easier, edit your dissertation chapter by chapter. After that, imagine yourself as a committee member or a person who reads your paper for the first time: Read the whole dissertation and ensure all the arguments are strong, logical, and persuasive.

Derek J. Brown, a Ph.D. graduate, shares 20 practical tips to help you finish a dissertation. Feel free to check if you are still in doubt whether the steps provided here are enough to smash all your fears and worries about dissertation writing.

Be ready for dissertation defense

Unlike other academic papers like essays, term papers, or theses, dissertation writing is not over once you finish the draft and submit it for review. To get a degree, you need to defend your work in front of the academic committee.

The format depends on your field or department policies. In some cases, they’ll ask you to present your research; in other cases, the dissertation defense will include an in-depth discussion with the committee, so ensure you are ready for it.

Stay confident, answer all their questions concisely, and be ready to address any weak points in your study (if the committee notices any). Once you’ve defended your work, the Doctoral degree is in your pocket.

Dissertation Tips: How to Start and Finish Your Work

For most graduates, a dissertation introduction and conclusion are the two most challenging parts to write. It’s much easier to do with the complete proposal at hand, so don’t hurry up to start writing your dissertation draft before you get the proposal finished and approved by the committee.

And the below writing tips will ease the process.

Introduction: Explain the focus of your study

• Give a background section that makes the reader care about your topic. It is not enough to provide the context and specifics of your topic; show why your research is worth doing and reading. Define influential points about your subject and support them with credible sources.
• Clarify the focus of your study. Link your research focus to the background section. Explain why you have done this study and show how it refers to the general field you are investigating.
• Mark the value of your research. Look at your study from a different angle or ask others to do it for you. Why is your research valuable? Try to evaluate the importance of the work you are doing.
• Include objectives in your study. Show how they help you meet the overall aim of the research.

Conclusion: Summarize your research objectives

Though summing up what you have already done may look simple, you can be too exhausted at this stage of your dissertation writing. Get some rest and clear your head before you take on this final chapter. Here you should cover three points: a summary of your findings, recommendations, and contribution to knowledge.

• Do not repeat what you have already stated in the discussion section. It was long enough, and readers need minimum information at this point. Just summarize your findings and keep your writing short.
• Let people know what should happen next. In your recommendation section, cover the prospects of future research. How has your dissertation influenced your field? How can you add even more value to it? Treat your paper as something that may trigger positive changes in your discipline.
• Mention your contribution to knowledge. In your dissertation, you operate with studies of other researchers. Inform readers what new findings you have added to already existing publications. Explain how your contribution correlates with what other experts have said.

For more dissertation writing tips, you can check any of the below books:

• Write Your Dissertation in Fifteen Minutes a Day
• Demystifying Dissertation Writing: A Streamlined Process from Choice of Topic to Final Text
• Complete Your Dissertation in Two Semesters or Less
• Finish Your Dissertation Once and for All!

FAQs

• What is a dissertation?

A dissertation is academic paper graduates write when willing to get a Doctoral degree. It’s a substantial research project that takes time to complete and requires oral defense for the academic committee to approve.

• How long is a dissertation?

The length varies by field and takes between 100 and 300 pages. According to doctoral candidates sharing their tips on writing dissertations, the longest are papers on History (nearly 300 pages), and the shortest dissertations (under 100 pages) are those on Math.

• What is a dissertation proposal?

A dissertation proposal is a detailed plan of your work to submit to your advisor or committee for approval before you start writing a dissertation draft itself. It’s like a table of contents to explain what, why, and how you’ll research in your dissertation. The goal is to justify your research, showing the committee how it will contribute to existing research in your field and that you understand what you’ll conduct within a given time frame.

• How to write a dissertation?

The process of dissertation writing is long and resource-consuming, and doctoral candidates should be ready to spend a few years on it. First, it’s critical to choose a topic that has research potential and can contribute to existing findings in the field. You’ll need to prepare a detailed dissertation proposal to justify your work for the academic committee (it’s probably the most critical and challenging part of the process) and then start writing a dissertation body. More dissertation writing tips are here.

• How long does it take to write a dissertation?

It depends on the format and content of your dissertation (how much time you need to conduct your research and get results). In general, the process takes around 1-3 years. With the dissertation writing tips from this blog post, we believe you can organize everything so it would take you less time to complete and defend your paper. If any help is still needed, do not hesitate to ask CopyCrafter’s writers for assistance.

Some students believe short story writing is the least challenging assignment they can get in college. They think it won’t take much time and effort to complete it because… well, it’s short, after all.

But there’s a catch:

Shorter doesn’t equal easier. Do you remember Mark Twain saying to his friend, “I didn’t have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead?” This writing form requires more diligence and clarity: You need an intriguing opening to hook readers, powerful words to communicate your character’s goal and conflict, and a compelling ending to wow readers and make them remember your story.

Short story writing’s structure reminds the format of a personal narrative, but here you don’t write about yourself. You craft fiction with all the components of storytelling in it.

Seems too challenging?

This article will help you learn how to write a short story. No time to read as the due date is coming? Ask our online assignment help to assist you with short story writing.

What Is a Short Story?

Because of their length (1,000 to 5,000 words), short stories are less complex than longer narratives like novellas (typically 30,000 words) or novels.

In a short story, you can build a world and have multiple characters, but this world won’t be as extended as in a novel, and every character won’t have a backstory or a meaningful character arc like you’d provide in a lengthier work. So, here go the restrictions:

• No big worlds or intricate plots like in The Lord of the Rings.
• No backstories or meaningful character arcs like in Harry Potter.
• No subplots or complex narratives like in Game of Thrones.

Okay, what’s in there in a short story instead?

Short Story Components

Your story is short, but it doesn’t mean its theme is less profound than a longer work’s theme. While you have fewer words, characters, and a simpler setting for writing a short story, it still needs to impact readers.

When planning your story, ensure to think of the following elements:

1. Mood or feeling. What do you want to evoke in readers? Is it an emotion of joy, grief, or loss? An idea concerning some life lessons or morals? Do your best to define the clear goal of your story: It will help you decide on the language, plot, and other instruments for writing it.
2. Descriptive language. Your story is short, so every word needs to be clear and essential to the concept, context, and plot development.
3. Point. What do you want to say with your short story? You need to know a clear point before writing your story so you could reflect on it throughout the text.

Speaking of short stories, we often mean a traditional storytelling technique: setting, hero’s journey, conflict, resolution, and all this stuff. It works for a short story writing assignment in the college, either. However, if you write a fiction story outside your academic life, feel free to break the rules and play around with conventions:

You are welcome to try writing flash fiction or microfiction, aka stories under 1,000 words. Or, practice anecdotes, aka short narratives with a moral lesson. Regular writing of fables, feghoot, sketches, or vignettes can be a good practice, too: They are short scenes that can become a part of your massive literary work later.

In the literary world, all these numbers are nominal. Take the famous, “For sale: baby shoes, never worn,” for example: In six words, the author provides all five elements every short story has:

1. Character: a person, an animal, or a creature who does an action in your story.
2. Plot: a series of events to illustrate the conflict of your story.
3. Theme: the central message of your story, a point you want to communicate to readers.
4. Conflict: what drives your story’s plot; the obstacles a hero overcomes or the goal they want to reach. A conflict can be internal or external.
5. Setting: the time and place where your story occurs.

The above short story about baby shoes is a palmary example of how critical language patterns are for communicating the point. That story relies on the reader extrapolating meaning from the words, and it succeeds.

What’s in a Short Story College Assignment?

When it comes to college assignments, a six-word story is not an option, of course, but it’s a great way to practice your writing skills! Also, it may serve as a warm-up before you start working on a short story or any other assignment.

A short story college assignment is not that different from traditional short story writing. A professor will ask you to craft a 500-1,000 word piece that includes storytelling elements.

So, you will need to:

• Choose a theme as the basis of your story.
• Decide on a setting and a plot to communicate the theme to the audience.
• Create a character who’ll have a goal and a conflict.
• Use indirect characterization and descriptive pictures to bring your characters to life and make them and your whole story believable.
• Think of a conflict resolution at the end of the story and the emotion (thought, idea) you want to evoke in readers. In other words, what’s the point of your short story?

Yes, the whole process looks challenging and time-consuming. No worries! Below is your step-by-step guide on how to write a short story.

Hint:

The prewriting phase is the most difficult one, and it takes much more time than writing a draft.

Reminder:

If you don’t have time and energy for short story prewriting and writing, you can ask professional academic writers for help. Here at CopyСrafter, we are ready to assist you 24/7.

How to Write a Short Story

1 — Decide on the Idea

Short story ideas are numerous. It’s a self-contained work of fiction, so do your best to mine imagination and craft an engaging story that evokes emotions from the audience.

It’s critical:

Before you sit and write a story just the way it goes in your mind, you need to decide on the theme and mood you want to convey. What idea or point of view do you want to communicate with your story? How will you represent it?

All the elements in your short story will work together to give your idea to the readers. What kind of story do you want to tell, and why? Start your brainstorming session — and write down the genre of your story (humor, horror, drama, romance?), its theme (a central message you want to convey), and the emotion you want to evoke (joy, grief, compassion, anger, etc.).

If you already have ideas on the setting and characters for your short story, write them down too. The key plot points are also worth noting: They’ll help you fill in details later.

2 — Think of a Character’s Goal and Conflict

Please don’t move on to outlining and writing a short story before you have a protagonist and a conflict. You need to know them beforehand; otherwise, you won’t understand what to write and how to move your story’s plot to the end (resolution).

A conflict is what shapes your characters, drives your plot, and allows you to communicate your theme to readers.

As you remember, your story is short and has a limited word number. That’s why one main character with one conflict is a great way to start. Think of the goal your protagonist wants to reach and a few obstacles they will overcome to succeed.

The following worksheet can help you create a character for your short story:

If your story has several characters, try describing each of them with the above worksheet. It will allow you to understand each hero better and craft their words and deeds accordingly.

3 — Choose a Strong Opening

How to start writing a short story? Consider the restrictions of this format:

You won’t have a lot of room for wordy descriptions and exposition, and that is why start with a catchy opening that will hook readers and immerse them in your plot at once.

Some writers practice the in media res trick: Open your story in the middle of the action and fill in details later. In other words, take the reader straight to the central scene of your plot.

Or, you can try these ideas for opening your short story:

1. Scene-setting. A reader joins the character in a pause before the action.
2. Conflict establishment. The exact moment when a character gets into trouble.
3. Mystifier. Throw a reader into a situation without giving any details yet.
4. You, as the third-person narrator, speak to a reader.
5. You, as the first-person narrator, speak to a reader.
6. Quotation.
7. Puzzler. You set up the conflict while making a reader guess what happens here.

Here go examples of each one:

4 — Outline Your Story

Now it’s time to write a detailed outline for your short story. Fill in this plot diagram, and you won’t miss any critical moment while writing:

5 — Write a Draft

You have a character worksheet and a plot diagram at hand, so the time has come to craft a rough draft of your short story. When writing, remember that you have a certain number of words to develop a plot, communicate a theme, and resolve a conflict:

Don’t waste space.

Your every sentence should be vital for driving a story. Focus on the story’s message and ask yourself, “Does this sentence need to be here? Does it serve to illuminate the story’s mood?”

Words and syntax matter in short stories to communicate mood and emotions and help readers “see” your setting and sympathize with the characters. Writers know it as the “Show, don’t tell” principle:

Use active verbs and descriptive adjectives that appeal to the human five senses and allow readers to “see, hear, smell, taste, and feel” what happens in your story. To make it easier, prepare a so-called setting worksheet beforehand: Write down metaphors, comparisons, images, associations, and other lexical items that will help you build a story using descriptive writing.

Tip: Don’t think of including all of them while writing a draft! Your goal is to get something out on the page and communicate your story’s overall aim. So, sit and write; avoid the temptation to edit your draft while writing. You’ll have a chance to improve the language when editing.

6 — Decide on a Compelling Ending

The end of your short story is even more critical than its opening: Readers wait for an exciting resolution, and they’ll be disappointed if you spoil your beautiful narrative with a weak finale. The most compelling resolutions center on your characters:

• What has changed about the protagonist of your short story?

Your characters can’t stay the same. Otherwise, what was the reason for their journey? The changes can be positive or negative, but they should have a place.

Also, focus on the mood you planned to evoke in readers: What would be the best way to finish the story to capture that mood and convey the desired message? Ensure your ending follows naturally from where your story began, and don’t leave readers with too obvious resolutions.

7 — Edit, Edit, Edit!

So, your draft is ready. Congratulations, the hardest part of your short story writing is over! Now it’s time to re-read it several times and revise your story, if necessary.

When editing, think of the following:

• Do I give enough information for my readers to picture the story’s characters and events?
• Are my story details specific and relevant to the overall theme and mood?
• Do I use descriptive language? Do my words and sentence structures fit the characters?

For your story to get an A+, it needs a vivid and descriptive setting, named and clearly described characters with problems that are easy for readers to understand, and a logical solution to the character’s conflict. Use dialogues to bring your characters to life and add creative details to contribute to the reader’s enjoyment.

And remember to correct spelling and grammar errors before submitting your story to a professor or publishing it somewhere. Meet all the written requirements (# of words or pages, font, margins, etc.): It would be a pity to get a lower grade because of such technical details, wouldn’t it?

Need Help With Short Story Writing Assignments?

Now that you know and have everything for short story writing, it’s time to craft a masterpiece that will impress your professor and all the readers who’ll see it. Are you ready to follow the tips from this post and structure your story in the best way possible? Maybe, you already have a theme or a protagonist with a conflict to describe in your work, huh?

If you still have questions or need practical help with short story writing assignments in college, please don’t hesitate to contact us. CopyCrafter’s professional writers assist with any academic paper type — just ask.

Most graduates stumble when the time comes to write the introduction of a dissertation. No wonder:

First, a dissertation introduction is not a mere paragraph with a hook and a thesis statement you wrote in essays and other college papers. It’s about a page in length, and its structure is much more complicated.

And second, your introduction to dissertation needs to include information about your whole paper: the context and scope behind your topic, the relevance of your research, your aims and objectives, and the overview of your dissertation structure.

Finally, it’s critical you wouldn’t confuse the introduction with your dissertation abstract and an introductory paragraph in your dissertation proposal.

Sounds confusing?

This blog post will help you clear out and shape everything about dissertation introduction writing. Sure thing, you can always ask for professional help or buy dissertations online, but let’s try to handle it by our own strengths first, agree?

Abstract vs. Introduction

In plain English, a dissertation abstract is a summary of your entire study, with research aims, methodology, and conclusions, while a dissertation introduction provides details on the background and your motivation for the study, stating your aims and objectives.

Confusing anyway? Let’s try this:

Abstract:

• comes before the introduction section of your dissertation
• overviews the purpose of your study, its research question, the methods you used for research, and conclusions you’ve drawn from it
• looks like an executive summary of your work

Example:

Source

Introduction:

• comes after the abstract of your dissertation
• provides the background of your study, sharing a brief description of what knowledge already exists in the subject area (based on the literature review) and what gaps are still present
• explains why your research is relevant and what aims and objectives you have for the dissertation

Example (a part; see the whole one in the source):

Source

How to Write a Dissertation Introduction

The general rule is to write a dissertation introduction in size 12 Times New Roman font, double-spaced. Depending on your topic and research, this chapter can take 5-20 pages and include the following parts:

Source

1. Start with a topic and context

First of all, introduce your dissertation topic to the audience. (You’re writing a dissertation introduction, after all.) Do your best to provide background information to contextualize your research, but ensure you also explain why your topic is worth researching. In other words, why should the academic community care?

To cover that “why,” you’ll need to provide the information on what is already covered in the subject area (based on the existing documents, literature, academic debates, etc.). For that, outline the top 5-7 authors who covered the problem, explain why they are so influential, and how they relate to your topic. Also, mention the gaps still missed and necessary to address in the research.

Note: Don’t make this section too long — one (max. two) pages will be enough for the background information to provide the context. It’s critical to arrive at your research scope and focus so the academic advisors wouldn’t reject your whole paper at its very beginning.

2. Provide your focus and scope

Now it’s time to narrow your subject area and introduce the particular problem or question you’ll focus on in your research. Determine the scope: What you will and won’t cover in your study. This scope may depend on many factors:

• Your time or budget constraints for research
• Specifics about the methodology you’ll use for the research
• Ethical issues about your population of the study
• Themes or aspects of your topic
• Any variables that can bias your research, etc.

Your focus also needs to provide the rationale for your study.

Explain why you research this particular area(s) and remember to link the reasons to the background information you’ve already shared. What you need is to tie the importance of your study with the overall research field. This paragraph of your dissertation introduction leads into the aim and objectives, explaining the value and relevance of your research for the academic world.

3. Explain the relevance of your research

What is your motivation for choosing this subject for your dissertation and doing this research? How does it relate to existing work on your topic? Why do you think it’s relevant and timely to do it now?

Start a paragraph by overviewing the current state of research: provide literature, cite the most relevant resources, and focus on the practical application of your topic. Please remember that you’ll conduct a more in-depth survey of relevant sources in the literature review section, so there’s no need to go in-depth in your introduction. You better focus on how your dissertation will contribute to the community:

• Will it address the gap in the literature devoted to this subject area? Does your topic lack critical investigation?
• Does it propose a new understating of the topic? Will you look at the area from a different angle?
• Will it help to solve any theoretical or practical problem?

Explain what new insights you expect to contribute to the academic world with your research. The committee wants to understand how it adds value and why it deserves consideration. Ensure you state it directly in your dissertation introduction.

4. Reveal your aims and objectives

It’s probably the most critical part of your introduction because it sets up the expectations for the rest of your dissertation. Aims and objectives will allow the committee to see if you’ve reached what you expected and come to the desired results at the conclusion of your work.

The aims and research objectives depend on your topic and focus, as well as your dissertation discipline, but ensure you state them clearly:

What is the central aim of your research? Do you plan to test any hypotheses? If so, formulate them in your introduction, either. Do you suggest any relationships between variables? If so, mention that conceptual framework.

Note: You can briefly describe the research methods you used in your dissertation to reach the objectives, but don’t write about all the details. Remember that it’s an introduction; you’ll include all the details in the separate dissertation chapter where you’ll tell about the methodology you used.

The aims and objectives in your dissertation introduction need to be:

1. Appropriate: Ensure they relate to your study.
2. Clear: Stay unbiased and avoid ambiguity.
3. Distinct: Make each objective assist you in achieving the overall research aim.
4. Achievable: Ensure your aim is realistic, and you can complete it within a reasonable timeframe.

5. Overview your dissertation structure

The final part of your dissertation introduction is brief: Write 1-2 sentences outlining the structure of your work. It will help guide the audience on what they’ll see in your paper if they continue reading.

Think of it as a concise summary of each chapter, showing how each contributes to the central aims and objectives of your research.

Sounds not that challenging, huh?

And here go some more tips for dissertation introduction writing. The below cheat sheet can help you structure everything in the best way possible:

Dissertation Introduction Structure: Checklist

Okay, now we are almost done with writing an impressive dissertation introduction. To ensure you don’t miss anything when crafting it, consider the below checklist. Once you finish the introduction draft, do your best to answer the following questions:

• Have you introduced your research topic?
• Have you provided the context for readers to understand your dissertation topic better?
• Do you specify the focus of your research?
• Have you shown the relevance of your topic? Why is it important?
• Have you stated the problem or question your research addresses?
• Do you outline the aims and objectives of your research?
• What about your dissertation structure? Have you provided its overview in the introduction?

Your confident “Yes!” to all these questions is a signal the dissertation introduction is ready, and now you can move on to the next chapter of your paper.

Need Help With Dissertation Writing?

Now that you know the process of writing a stellar dissertation introduction, it’s time to craft yours! Follow the above steps, consider the given checklist to cover all the critical aspects — and you’re all set. Also, feel free to read extra dissertation writing tips and check the introduction samples available online to have an exact idea about their content and formatting.

The key is to find the right research question and convince readers about your objective for choosing this particular subject area. Know the topic background and then explain it impressively to justify the relevance of your research.

Any questions left? Don’t hesitate to ask our professional writers to help you with dissertation introduction writing.

A personal narrative is a story about you. Simple as that, right?

Not quite.

Once you get the assignment to write a personal narrative essay, tons of questions arise: what exactly to write, how to format this story, how to know if its structure is correct, and what makes it different from other essay types like short story assignment, for example?

This article will answer all your questions and help you understand how to write a personal narrative to get A+. The process may seem time- and energy-consuming, but we promise: It’s not so if you get the core idea behind this writing format.

But still:

If this guide isn’t enough for you to proceed with the paper, our team is always here to provide you with homework assignment help.

What is a Personal Narrative?

A personal narrative is a story with a plot that allows authors to connect to people. It’s about the author’s growth, lessons learned, and reflections on experiences.

It can be an autobiography, a short story about an event that happened to you or a person who influenced you, a personal essay you wrote for magazines like Time or The New Yorker, etc.

Personal Narrative Topics and Ideas

As a rule, teachers don’t assign any particular topic when asking you to write a personal narrative. And such a freedom of choice can be a problem for some students: You stumble and don’t know what to write because you can’t decide on any particular topic that will be interesting enough to engage readers.

Personal narrative ideas and topics are many. You can write about your interests, childhood, school years, student life, relationships, travels, etc. It can be a story about achieving a goal, your realization or failure, your best friend, your biggest mistake or the happiest moment of your life, your childhood memory, and so on.

But when you decide on what to cover in your story, ensure to specify why you choose this moment and why it is important to share.

Here go a few topic examples for your narrative essay:

• This friendship breakup cost me a year of my life.

• It was the moment I changed my life philosophy.

• How I stole a cat that meowed on my dog.

• If I were a politician, I’d be…

• Why I’ll never support vegans again.

The Components of a Personal Narrative

A personal narrative is a story, right? So, it stands to reason that it needs to include all the elements of a story: a plot, characters, setting, conflict (climax), and resolution (conclusion).

• Plot: Events happening in your personal narrative.
• Characters: You are a protagonist of the story, and other people you mention there will be the supporting characters.
• Setting: Location and time when the events of your story happen.
• Conflict: The problem you resolve in a story, the challenge you need to overcome, or a moment of tension for you to win through.
• Resolution: The moral of your story. Why do you tell it? What have you learned, and what do you want the readers to understand?

Why Do We Write Personal Narratives?

The purpose of a personal narrative is simple: tell a story that happened to you and reveal the lessons you’ve learned from that experience. This form of writing helps you express thoughts, ideas, feelings, and opinions so that readers get involved and inspired by your story.

Today we use personal narratives on social media when writing about events and experiences that happened to us. You can write it in a blog post, magazine, case study, journal, etc. As a student, you may need to use a personal narrative in the admission essay or cover letter asking to tell your professional story for a potential employer.

In college, students often get an assignment to write a personal narrative essay. The purpose is to learn storytelling and emotional writing, with a focus on self-growth, reflections, and lessons learned from the experience.

With narrative essays, you will learn to tell stories so that others will listen to you.

What is a Personal Narrative Essay?

A personal narrative essay is a form of academic writing where you tell a story about your experience, using the components of storytelling and providing sensory details to get readers involved in what you want to say.

In a narrative essay, you don’t develop arguments and don’t try to persuade readers. That’s what makes it different from other academic papers: You tell a story and let the audience draw their own conclusions from it.

The purpose of narrative essays is to show off your writing skills and provide insight into your thoughts for readers to understand you better. Here you examine universal truths via personal experience.

Below are general characteristics of a personal narrative essay for you to follow:

• It’s informal.
• It comes from the 1st person. (Use “I” or “we” as you are a storyteller here.)
• Its purpose is to inform, not teach or criticize.
• It’s non-fiction: You tell real-life stories that happened to real people and are based on actual experience.
• It follows the structure of academic essays but includes the storytelling elements such as a plot, setting, conflict, characters, resolution, and others.

How to Write a Personal Narrative Essay

Choose a Topic

First, you need to choose what you want to tell the audience. Personal narratives are stories, so do your best to write about something interesting enough to hook readers. It’s okay to write about your interests, the people who influenced you, your experience in childhood or school years, etc.

These tips can help you decide on the topic:

• Think of what bothers you: What would you like to share or discuss with others?
• Go to social media: What do your peers discuss? What does bother them, and what stories do they share with followers?
• Try freewriting: Take a pen and start writing down everything that comes to your mind. After 10-15 minutes, stop and re-read: Are there any ideas you could share in your story?

And here go some personal narrative topic ideas to inspire you:

Write an Outline

A personal narrative has all the components of a story, but it’s your academic assignment anyway. It means you follow an essay structure here, with all critical elements like a thesis in your introduction, three paragraphs in an essay’s body, a conclusion, etc.

To ease the process, organize thoughts, and ensure you don’t forget anything, write an outline for your narrative.

Below is a sample you can use to incorporate all necessary components of a story into your narrative essay:

Write a Draft

Now it’s time to write your narrative essay. Follow the outline and describe each part in detail: Remember that readers weren’t there, so you’ll need to “paint” the picture for them to understand everything.

How to start a personal narrative?

The first paragraph of your essay is a story setup (exposition). Think of a catchy first sentence (a hook) to grab readers’ attention and mention why your story matters (thesis).

The following three paragraphs are your story itself, with all events, the conflict, and a resolution:

• Paragraph 1 is a rising action: tell about the setting, introduce characters, and start writing about the event.
• Paragraph 2 is a climax: here goes the conflict, and you write about how the characters (you) deal with it.
• Paragraph 3 is a falling action: write here about conflict resolution and its aftermath for characters.

Finally, the last paragraph of your essay (conclusion) is a story resolution. Here you write about the moral of your story, why it matters, and share a call to action for readers.

In other words, your story draft follows the structure all authors and screenwriters know as a narrative arc:

Edit It to Follow the Structure

The most challenging part is over — your narrative is ready! Now it’s time to re-read it and check if it follows the structure and has all the storytelling elements for the audience to get engaged and say, “Wow!” after reading it.

Guidelines to follow while writing and editing:

• It’s your story, so write your narrative in the 1st person. (Use “I” and “we” pronouns.)
• The length of narrative essays varies, but think of at least 600 words.
• Pay attention to tenses: As a rule, personal narratives describe the events that happened in the past, so many authors use the past tense. If you decide to write about the present, ensure you keep the present tense consistent throughout your story.
• Tell a story in chronological order.
• Consider the “Show, don’t tell” principle: Provide readers with enough details to imagine and understand your story. The ideal variant is to evoke emotions and make them sympathize.

Proofread Your Essay

The final stage is proofreading: Re-read your narrative essay once again to check it for spelling and grammar mistakes and revise your language for better clarity and readability.

Misspellings, double spacing, too complex sentences — do your best to revise all these for your essay to sound great.

If you use quotes or citations throughout your narrative, ensure to provide proper references to them. Delete repeats, and paraphrase sentences where it might be hard for a reader to understand what you mean.

A good practice would be to ask a friend to read your story before you publish or submit it to a professor. They will provide feedback for you to know if your narrative is interesting enough and how you can make it even more compelling.

Personal Narrative Examples

The best way to learn how to write personal narratives is to read magnificent examples of this writing form, agree? Given that such texts aren’t that long, tons of inspiring examples are easy to find and read online.

For example, here goes The Death of the Moth by Virginia Woolf. Notice how the author uses contract and swings a reader’s emotions with power words and images. By giving human feelings to the moth, Woolf piques empathy, leading us from pity to pathos, triumph, and awe.

Or, let’s take Siri Tells a Joke by Debra Gwartney. In this short text, the author goes through losses and reflects on her grief and how she learned to live without her dearest people nearby.

When reading these examples, imagine you’re Sherlock: You need to examine them to find writing clues to their success. Why are they so great? What makes them so intriguing to readers: opening scenes, vivid imagery, power words authors use to grab attention and make readers sympathize?

The more instruments you’ll distinguish in popular narrative essays, the more you’ll be able to use when writing your work.

And here go your extra resources to check for more writing tips and narrative essay examples:

• Narrative Essay: Characteristics and Examples
• The Narrative Essay: It Differs From a Simple Story
• How to Write Narrative (video by Jeremy Thompson)

Over to You

We hope you have a better idea of how to write personal narrative assignments now. All you need to do is choose an engaging topic and format it as a story with a plot, characters, and lessons you’ve learned from that experience. And remember:

It’s personal yet academic work if assigned in college. Follow the essay structure: Use a hook and thesis in the introduction, develop a story in body paragraphs, and mention the moral of your story in the conclusion.

Any questions left?

Copycrafter’s writers are here 24/7 to assist you with writing assignments. Don’t hesitate to ask for professional help here!