1. Writing an Awesome Essay with ½ the Stress English 9 Honors 18 August 2014

2. Find out What the Teacher WANTS Break the prompt down into individual parts This becomes the skeleton of your essay

3. Don’t Start with the Introduction! This is a great way of stumping yourself ten minutes into the writing process Why would you try writing an intro for a paper that doesn’t exist? Start with the first body paragraph

4. Your Awesome Body Paragraphs You get to tell people what you think Don’t hold back Your name is already on the top of the page So whatever you say Try to really mean it

5. Conclusion Paragraph Is like the end of a 30 second commercial where they hold the product up at the end just in case you forgot you were watching a Hot Pocket commercial Hold up all your arguments for the audience one more time Just in case they forgot what they just read

6. Introduction Paragraph Rewrite your conclusion to introduce the topic It’s easier to introduce something AFTER you’ve written it Slap an AWESOME thesis statement on the end

7. Thesis Statement Get out your skeleton of your paper Make a single sentence that discusses all of those points 3 Steps Make the topic specific Who? When? How many? Where? Continue with a debatable phrase Does…does not…should…highlights…ignores… Explain the significance to the audience, proving that…, resulting in…, making us doubt…

8. Quotes Great way to make yourself look credible and to add length to your paper You need to talk before and after a quote Tell people who you’re quoting Tell people why they should care

9. Citations! Fun fact: Microsoft Word’s citation maker is the scum of the Earth Never ever use it Use the Purdue Online Writing Lab (OWL) owl.english.purdue.edu/owl It takes about the same amount of time to generate your own as it does to use a citation generator

10. MLA Format Deis 1 B. Deis Ms. Knox English 9H 18 August 2014 Writing an Awesome Paper

11. Standard Paper Format Double Spaced 1” Margins Times New Roman 12pt font There should be no additional space after your paragraph