How to Choose an Essay Topic

Rumor has it that if you choose the right essay topic, you would already have won half the battle. You may find this to be true. Let's say you are entering a singing competition. You have this wonderful range of pitches that you can achieve with your voice. So it makes sense to choose a song that allows you to display your talents. If you choose the wrong song, you will get very different results - results that is undesirable.

The same goes for essay writing. You need to choose an essay topic that will showcase your writing talents. If you choose the wrong topic, you are just heading down the wrong path. A path that will eventually lead you to disappointing grades. So how do you go about choosing the right essay topic? Here is a step by step process that you may find helpful.

1. Know your strengths and weaknesses.

Where are your strengths? Can you write from imagination? Or is your strength creativity? Are you good with facts? Or are you good with fiction? You need to know your strengths before you can make a good decision about the topic that you are going to write on.

Also, you need to know your weaknesses. Are you struggling with grammar? If so, then perhaps you need to write with shorter sentences. Are you having trouble with descriptive writing? If so, maybe you need to avoid choosing writing topics that require descriptive writing. Only you know yourself best. So ask yourself, what are your strengths and weaknesses?

2. Brainstorming for ideas that you are interested in.

A well chosen topic allow you to flourish as you write. So you need to choose topics that you are interested in. That way, you will be more passionate about the topics that you will write on, and will write with more energy and vigor. This will show in your writing.

Make a list of topics that you are interested about. In the beginning, just write down everything that comes to mind. Talk to somebody if you need to so that you have a bigger list of topics to choose from. As a rule of thumb, you should have between ten to fifteen ideas for each essay that you are going to write on.

That seems like an overkill to some people but it is actually not. You are going to strike out ideas that you initially thought to be great, but turned out to be hard to write about. By the process of elimination, you finally arrive the essay topic that will be ideal for your writing.

Sometimes, you can mix ideas together and get a totally different and interesting combination. That's why it's important to have a list of ideas that you can work with. This is to ensure that you never run out of ideas as you write. It will also help to prevent writer's block - a writer's biggest enemy.