How to choose an essay topic
Choosing an essay topic may freeze your writing process for a long time because you just don't know what you're going to write about. With the exception when your teacher formulates a precise subject for your essay or offers you various options to choose from. Students are often facing the trouble of exploring their own ideas and expressing their thoughts on a topic they have to choose. Either you have to figure out the matter to reflect on yourself or have a choice, and it's still sometimes quite challenging. Together with EssayShark, an essay writing service, we have prepared an algorithm for choosing the topic for your writing in any of the situations.
Narrow down the given sphere
If your teacher has offered you a general direction or sphere to write about, you have to narrow it down. For example, you have been assigned to write an essay on fashion in France. Such a topic is too broad and requires narrowing it down to some single question. Let's say you have always loved the creations of Pierre Alexandre Claudius Balmain. You may write about his influence on the Parisian fashion world in the '50s of the XX century. Or perhaps, you have always adored the image of Coco Chanel. You can devote your essay to observing how her feministic character has altered the women's fashion world. Pay attention to who exactly you are writing the essay for. Ordinary work for submission to a faculty member will be significantly different from an essay for admission to a university, a literature class, or a job. What does the person who reads your paper expect of you? Are they looking for originality, the ability to intelligently and beautifully reflect, professional qualities, or something else?
Choosing from the list
This option is simpler than the previous one, but requires an analysis of what you know best or would like to understand. When choosing a topic from a list of the offered ones, you should assess how much knowledge and experience you already have on the topic. If you have no in-depth knowledge or expertise in any of the themes, you should choose the one that interests or intrigues you. It is more satisfying and fascinating to explore something that raises your attention.
Creating a topic of your own
The third scenario is the complete absence of any topic. This option is the most difficult in terms of choice but literally opens the doors to the world in front of you, allowing you to write about whatever you want. So that you don't drown in this ocean of possibilities, you should first determine what is most interesting to you. What do you think about most often? What attracts your attention so much that you forget about everything else? What would you like to improve in society, your city, the surrounding objects? Once you've decided on your direction, find out what you like most. Some people like to picturesquely describe events, places, interesting people, amazing things; others like to analyze. Others want to write about themselves, and the fourth prefer to criticize what they don't like. Depending on this, your essay will be descriptive, analytical, reflexive, critical, or something else. When you combine the theme you are interested in with the type of essay, you can sketch out several variants of topics. At this stage, it is not the precise formulation of the topic that is important, but an understanding of the essence of the problem and its potential. If you cannot choose just one issue to write about, you can always take notes of several problems that worry or interest you. When you finish the list of potential topics, you should analyze them and choose the one that fascinates you most. However, you should also keep in mind your chances of providing the best arguments and illustrations.
Evaluation of selected topics
After deciding on the specific topics, you should evaluate each one to see whether you can disclose it in a meaningful way. Do you have any interesting observations and ideas on the subject? Can you surprise the reader with something? Do you feel inspired to talk about it? You should understand that in the course of your work, you will have to formulate a certain thesis and then prove it with arguments. Will you be able to do this for the selected topics? What are your strengths? When exploring the potential of a topic, pay attention to the availability of literary sources. In some cases, it is more logical first to try to find the necessary information in the sources and then to start formulating thoughts in the form of an essay. If the teacher has required to agree on the topic with him/her, show the work plan, the central thesis of the essay, and arguments to confirm it.
