How to Write an Analytical Essay Under Pressure

If your analytical essay assignment is due soon, and you don’t know how where to start, you’ve come to the right place. We understand the hassle that goes into writing a great essay, and we’re here to help. Luckily, custom writing bee has a team of prolific writers and tutors who are ready to help you improve your writing skills. Therefore, you can rest assured that by the time you finish reading this essay, you’ll know how to write an analytical essay without much strife. 

We have a lot to discuss; let’s cut to the chase and get into the action.

But first…

What is an Analytical Essay?

An analytical essay definition can be described as a type of composition which requires a student to present an argument and then analyze it using supporting claims. Your curriculum may require you to analyze a book, an event, a film, or a poem, among other things. 

One common mistake students make when asked to write an analytical essay is writing a synopsis of the analytical material. Instead, your essay should penetrate the surface level and explore the core arguments presented in your novel or film.

If your analytical essay is about a work of literature, you’ll be required to analyze how the book was written and why the author wrote it that way. This type of composition narrows its focus and identifies significant themes. Also, it studies how the author developed and supported his argument. Finally, it explores how the author manipulates literary devices to generate effects and communicate his ideas.

Hey, why don’t you check out our archives for an analytical essay example? You could even learn more about making an analytical essay outline.

Analytical Essay Topics and Ideas

Did your professor give you a topic for your analytical essay, or is it entirely up to you? Teachers understand that allowing you to pick your topic will improve your creativity. Therefore, when picking a topic, you must ensure that you don’t pick an angle that has been analyzed from all aspects.

Are you wondering how to come up with a good analytical essay topic? The following tips will help you.

Brainstorming is a useful device for coming up with ideas. Without paying much thought to it, take a piece of paper and jot down any possible issue related to your subject.

Researching your chosen topic at the library or on the website will streamline your writing significantly. 

Analyzing the quality or credibility of the sources you’ve found will guarantee a high-quality essay. Based on the amount of information available, decide which analytical essay topic you can cover more easily. 

Evaluating your topic of choice and running it by your class instructor is a crucial step. Before settling on a topic, consult your professor, and ask whether the issue you want to analyze fits the essay prompt. 

Tilting your composition with a thoughtful, unique, captivating title can enhance the interest and excitement, eventually attracting the reader. 

Prewriting your Analytical Essay

One of the most commonly searched questions on Google is how to start an analytical essay. Prewriting is a crucial phase in the writing process as it gives you a starting point for your analytical essay. What’s more, it makes you think about your assignment or topic more concretely.

Additionally, prewriting for your analytical essay will help you;

• Develop clear reasoning
• Find a weakness in your argument
• Organize your thoughts

With that said, here is a step by step guide on how to write a literary analysis.

1. Understand the Objective

Do you understand the requirements of your analytical essay? This type of writing requires you to raise an argument or claim about whatever you’re analyzing. In most cases, you’ll have to analyze a film, or a piece of literature, although you can also be asked to scrutinize an idea or issue. As a result, you must break down your topic into segments, and provide evidence from the material you’re analyzing or from secondary research, to back-up your claims. 

2. Choose an Analytical Essay Topic

If you’re writing an analytical essay for a class assignment, your instructor probably gave you a topic. As such, you must read the analytical essay prompt carefully and find out what the assignment requires you to do. If you have a list of analytical essay topics, you should pick the topic you feel most confident to handle. 

If it’s up to you to come up with a topic, you should begin with something simple. If your analytical essay is about a book, you can explore a character’s behavior, relationships, or motivations. You can also present your opinions about the author’s intention when they created the character. 

On a different note, if you’re writing an analytical essay on a historical event, your focus should be on the primary forces that caused the occurrence. This may include social or political issues or the influential figures that may have contributed to the historical moment. Ultimately, choosing the right analytical essay topic will give you an incredible start towards writing a great analytical essay.

3. Brainstorm

Choosing your essay topic is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to writing an analytical essay. By now, you’ve narrowed your topic’s focus and are trying to find out what you think about your chosen topic.

Brainstorming will help you come up with many ideas about your topic. As such, you should consider it from as many angles as you possibly can. 

Here are some helpful tips for brainstorming your analytical essay.

Identify repeated ideas, symbols, or phrases – Things that are repeated are often essential. As such, you should endeavor to uncover their significance.

How does it work? – If you’re writing a rhetorical analysis, you may explore how the author uses logic to present his argument, and decide whether you find his argument compelling. In the case of creative work, you should consider stuff like imagery or visuals (in a film). If you’re analyzing a piece of research, you should consider the methodology and results, and evaluate whether the survey was conducted properly. 

Use a mind map – If you are the type of person who appreciates a mind map, you can use your central topic as a starting point, and position ideas around. Subsequently., you’ll connect the small dots to identify patterns and how everything ties together. 

Entertain all ideas – Good brainstorming should not discount any ideas. When you’re starting, you should jot anything that pops into your mind regarding your central topic without discrimination. 

4. Develop a Thesis Statement

Do you know how to write an analytical essay thesis statement? A thesis statement is a sentence that communicates your position on a particular subject. It’s probably the most crucial solo sentence in your essay; all arguments in your composition revolve around the thesis.

With that said, a great thesis statement should be:

• Analytical, as it examines a creative piece and makes a specific claim
• Present an arguable claim; not a fact
• Sufficiently narrow to fit the scope of your argument
• Precise and to the point; ambiguity may confuse the reader

In most cases, the thesis statement is usually the last sentence of the introductory paragraph.

5. Find Additional Evidence

This step is where you determine how bulky your analysis will be; you collect the information that makes your composition an analytical essay. Your assignment instructions will determine whether you’ll be working with primary sources (the material you’re analyzing) only or secondary sources (other books or journal articles) as well.

Backing your thesis statement with quality evidence strengthens your claim and convinces the reader to buy into your perspective. 

One way to ensure that you have the necessary evidence to make a convincing case is to be thorough when reviewing the subject of your analysis. If it’s a book, you must read it carefully as you highlight the most crucial points. Ultimately, try to gather as many examples (phrases, passages, lines, or clips) from your primary source of evidence. 

Tip: 

        1. Never disregard or skew evidence to fit your thesis statement. 

        2. As you learn more about the topic, modify your thesis until it reflects your actual position

6. Write an Analytical Essay Outline

An analytical essay outline will help you to organize your work, making your writing much more manageable. 

The overall length of your essay is a crucial consideration when making your essay outline. If you’re writing a standard essay, usually about 500 words, the 5-paragraph essay will do just fine. If the word count is unrestricted, you may want to explore your topic in more depth, meaning more paragraphs. 

Regardless of the number of paragraphs, any academic essay you write must have an introduction, various body paragraphs, and a conclusion. 

We’ve compiled numerous analytical essay examples to help you understand how to structure an analytical essay effectively. 

Now that you know how to start an analytical essay let’s move to the next bit.

Writing your Analytical Essay

Now it’s time for the fun stuff! Everything you’ve been doing since you started prewriting was leading you to this moment. It’s time for you to put it all together.

Our tips on how to write an analytical essay under pressure continue below.

7. Write Your Analytical Essay Introduction

Have you ever come across an introduction that captivated you into reading the text subconsciously? You should resolve to write such an introduction. Apart from setting up your analytical essay, your introduction should pique the reader’s interest and draw them to read your composition. 

An excellent introduction to an essay should include the following elements. 

• Hook
• Topic introduction
• Background information
• Thesis statement

If you want to strengthen your hook, it should be engaging and intriguing. It should be one or two statements and depends on the mood of the work. 

Here are some ideas for writing a compelling hook:

• Interesting statistic
• Proven fact
• Funny anecdote
• Rhetorical question
• A famous quote
• A figure of speech

You want your introduction to be engaging but not overzealous -  avoid infusing it with exclamations and questions. Overall, make sure your reader is hooked from start to finish. 

8. Write the Body

The body section comprises of everything that lies between the intro and conclusion. While it is the section the carries all the arguments and supportive textual evidence, it is the one part where you can have a lot of fun.

The primary purpose of your body is to prove the claim you made in your thesis statement. As such, each body paragraph must focus on a particular aspect of the thesis. 

Check out the following elements of a great body paragraph. 

Topic sentence 

Introduce each of your body paragraphs with a topic sentence to maintain your essay’s focus. A good topic sentence provides the reader with a teaser of the paragraph’s contents. Besides introducing a new idea, a topic sentence can link or contrast the current paragraph with the previous one.

 Transition words such as “however,” “moreover,” “in addition,” among others can help to improve the flow and streamline the transition between ideas.

Evidence

A crucial part of writing an analytical essay is providing evidence to support your claims. As we mentioned earlier, your evidence should include snippets from the materials you’re analyzing. For instance, if you’re examining a piece of text, you may include phrases, quotations, or segments of a paragraph to support your claim. 

With that said, you must know when to quote and when to paraphrase. If you want to use the exact wording, you should quote. If you want to summarize an idea or to compress many details into a single argument, you should paraphrase. 

As you do this, you must ensure that your quote correctly according to the rules established by APA, MLA, Chicago, or Turabian styles.

Analysis

All your evidence must be contextualized and explained. For instance, when you introduce a quote, you should explain why you are using it, instead of treating it like it is self-explanatory.  

Overall, you must explain your supporting evidence and demonstrate how it backs the thesis. 

Concluding sentence

Once you’ve successfully presented your argument and supported it with relevant evidence, you should wrap-up your paragraph with a concluding sentence. Here, you can reiterate your analysis and the implication of your argument. You can also use this sentence to introduce the next paragraph. 

Want to see the analytical essay format used by our custom writing experts? Check out our collection of analytical essay examples in our resource center.

9. Draft the Conclusion

Not many students know how to write a killer analytical essay conclusion. Luckily, you won’t be one of them. The conclusion ties the various aspects of your analytical essay together. As the last part of your essay, it determines the kind of taste your essay leaves in your reader’s mouth.

So, how do you craft the perfect analytical essay conclusion?

Your conclusion paragraph should begin by restating your thesis statement. Restating your thesis exemplifies to your reader that you’ve proven your thesis. It also recaps the steps you took. The conclusion also serves to help your reader to comprehend your arguments and how you organized them in a cohesive piece.  

Next, your conclusion should summarize your main ideas, emphasize your resolve, and state the new point of view your thesis offers on the work as a whole. As you do this, you shouldn’t introduce new ideas or arguments. 

Your conclusion paragraph should end in a concluding sentence. Sort of a release line; it can be what you’ve learned from the examination or what you want the reader to take away after reading your essay. 

Polishing-up your Analytical Essay

Most students make the mistake of overlooking this section. As a result, their final submission ends up having some inconsistencies in grammar, organization, flow, among other aspects. Eventually, work that took you a great deal of effort to compose is panned, just because you never took time to polish-up your work. 

Here’s how you can check your work for errors.

For starters, proofread your work personally as you look for run-on sentences, punctuation errors, spelling mistakes, and grammatical issues. Also, ensure that your analytical essay follows the required format according to the assignment’s instructions. 

Secondly, read your paper out loud. It will help you identify areas that sound awkward. You’ll also catch some run-on sentences here. 

Thirdly, read your essay as if you were a teacher or someone that has never come across the material you’ve analyzed.

To that end, ask yourself:

• Are my ideas organized logically?
• Is my core argument clear?
• Is my work engaging?
• Does it flow smoothly?

Finally, ask someone else to proofread your work. Often, fresh eyes catch errors that you might have missed. The other party should understand the point you’re trying to make in addition to correcting the grammar. 

Need Help Writing an Analytical Essay?

If you are rushing against a deadline to submit your analytical essay, you’ll love the tips we’ve shared above. While we believe that you can now write a decent analytical essay by yourself, we can’t overlook that you may need help writing your analytical essay. 

In addition to the hundreds of analytical essay examples in our archives, our essay writing experts can help you write a custom analytical essay just for you. With that said, we’re glad to have the opportunity to contribute to your academic success. 

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