Last Minute Essay Writing: a Complete Guide

There is no student in the world who wouldn’t lack sleep. Most students are getting used to exhaustion, perceiving it as something completely natural or even necessary for the education process. Many students get stuck because of the same problem: they are preparing for exams and suddenly realize that they should have already prepared a long essay. They are students, after all, so there’s no surprise that such situations are quite common. This guide on Writers House Blog will teach you how to write a good last minute essay.

On the other hand, everybody needs to sleep sometimes. If you face the situation described above, the chances are that you will try to improve your daily routine, exercising, eating healthy food, and devoting in a few hours a day to studying your subject. However, when the deadline is close, you will likely get stressed out. If you look for essay writing tips on the internet, you will find the most common advice: start as soon as you can. Indeed, this is the main secret of a good essay.

When the deadline is too close, you have only three options available:

• You can try to be super-productive. However, don’t forget about Murphy’s Law: when you really want to be as productive as possible, the chances are that your productivity will decrease because of all the stress associated with the deadline.
• You can also buy an essay online. There are many professional writers who are familiar with such assignments and who will quickly prepare a good paper for you. Honestly, this is the best solution in this situation, but sometimes students don’t have enough money to buy a paper.
• Follow our tips and prepare your essay in a few hours.

Step 0. Keep Calm

When you’re stressed out, you are unable to properly analyze your task and to write a quality essay. When you’re stressed out, you don’t believe that you can make it so you produce a mediocre paper, going through an extremely anxious writing process. Obviously, such an approach is wrong.

Just close your eyes, take a deep breath, and say to yourself: “I really can do it.” We know that such advice may sound too corny, but you should understand that it actually works. You have to be in the right mood when you start writing because you need to be concentrated.

Another good psychological method is visualizing your goal. Create a proper environment to stay relaxed so that you can be able to come up with fresh ideas. You will easily go through the following steps if you have a sense of control, and the whole writing process also will be much easier.

Step 1. Create a Perfect Outline

An outline is a very important thing that most students forget. Writing an outline is a crucial step in the writing process, so the worst mistake you can do is skipping it. You may think that it’s just a waste of time because you already know what you’re going to write about, and nobody will grade your outline. Do you need it? Absolutely yes.

Ask any professional essay writer, and they will tell you the same: start with writing an outline. The main purpose of the outline is to create the structure for your essay, and the structure to a large extent determines the overall success of your paper.

• Take a piece of paper and just write all the ideas you have.
• Just write down a list of ideas and don’t categorize them.
• Consider every particular idea and connect different ideas to form an outline. There is no need to try to include all the ideas — if some of them look unnecessary, you can get rid of them.
• Create a mind map and plan the structure that includes an introduction, main arguments, and a conclusion.

To create a mind map, you can use various software, such as MindMup, MindMeister, or many other programs and online services.

When you see a mind map, you know your exact goals. Creating the outline takes only 10 minutes, and this step will help you write much faster.

Step 2. Research Your Topic

All successful essays have something in common: they are based on proper research. Even if you lack time, you still need to research your topic because your professor won’t appreciate an essay based on a couple of weak arguments.

Don’t worry because the research process will not take long. Moreover, you can conduct research in 15 minutes. The main thing is to keep in mind your outline.

Instead of using the traditional Google, we suggest that you use Google Scholar. For example, if you have to write an essay on global warming and search for information on Google, you will spend a lot of time trying to find reliable and authoritative sources. You will have to try different keywords and phrases, which is a waste of time. Just do the search on Google Scholar, and you will find many academic sources for your citations.

• Don’t forget about Wikipedia. Although this source is updated by users, here you can find a lot of information that may be useful for your paper. Don’t include Wikipedia in your references but use the citations section to find some good sources.

Step 3. Write About Something Interesting

Even if your professor tried to make the topic interesting, you may still hate it because you were forced to write the essay. Just calm down — you’re already prepared and know what exactly you’re going to write about.

• Find something really interesting about your topic. Any boring topic has some interesting aspect, you just have to find it, and make it the basis of your essay.

Keep in mind that many people will write about the same things. It means that you have to find something different and stand out. For example, if you write about global warming, you may find some works written by scientists who don’t believe in it. You don’t have to agree with them, just use some of their arguments to address some aspects of global warming that students usually ignore.

• Your introduction should be very good. Make it entertaining by using examples from real life or quotes. Create a strong and convincing thesis statement, and you will have a nice introductory paragraph.
• The body of the essay should include your arguments along with supporting evidence.
• You also need a great conclusion. It should connect all the elements described in the body, restate your thesis, and have a meaningful ending.
  Your readers should be satisfied with reading your paper, learning some new information, and getting something new to think about. You may want to motivate your readers to keep researching this topic in the future, or to find more about the problems you addressed.
• Don’t forget about the importance of your citations! No matter if some source supports your claims directly or you use it as inspiration, you should include proper references.

Step 4: Polish Your Essay

Perhaps, you feel happy when you see your conclusion done. However, it’s not the end. You still need at least 30 minutes to review and edit your essay. Every paragraph and every sentence should be related to your thesis statement, and you should make sure that there are no grammar or spelling mistakes. All successful essay writers understand that editing is as important as writing itself. Fortunately, it’s not the hardest part.

• Read your essay and make notes to remember what corrections you have to make. Don’t start with editing minor mistakes, you can do it later.
• If some sentences don’t make sense, get rid of them. If something sounds illogical, rewrite it and add more examples. Make sure all your claims are supported by evidence.
• When the overall structure of your paper is good, you can start proofreading. When proofreading, we suggest using special software, such as Grammarly or Hemingway Editor. The first tool will help you fix grammar and spelling mistakes, while the second one will help you improve the overall readability.

Step 5: Check for Plagiarism

Now that you’ve put so much effort into writing a good essay, it would be really sad if your professor said that it wasn’t written by you. Always check your papers for plagiarism before submitting them because there’s always a chance that you could unintentionally copy something without a proper citation. Use Plagtracker to check your paper for plagiarism, and then check it with Citation Machine — a tool that will help you quickly proofread and format references.