Writing an academic essay needs a bit of planning. So rather than jumping straight into drafting your essay, take time to unpack the brief, brainstorm and generate some initial ideas, and start to outline how you might research and structure your essay. The planning stage also involves thinking about how you manage the essay writing process from first ideas to final submission.
The Assignment Calculator breaks this process down into five steps: planning, researching, organising, drafting and reviewing. It provides you with a suggested timeline that you can adapt to help keep you on track and focused on meeting the deadline.
Read the brief thoroughly, then read it again. Have a highlighter or way to mark key words, phrases and requirements as you read. Revisiting lecture notes or assignment guidelines can also help you connect the brief to key course concepts and topics. Keep checking back to the brief as you work to avoid drifting away from what’s required and potentially losing marks.
An assignment brief for an essay usually includes:
It's important to pay attention to all of these throughout the essay writing process, but especially at the start (and the end!).
Familiarising yourself with the Learning Outcomes means that you can better align your effort. They often give you great starting points too. Check what skills or knowledge the task is assessing — e.g. critical thinking, research, or creative reflection. Use these as a checklist: your essay should clearly demonstrate each outcome.
Before you start planning or writing, take time to unpack the question or brief carefully.
Look for instruction or task words — these tell you how to respond and shape the kind of essay you’ll write. Common examples include:
Each word demands a particular type of response - for example, analyse means breaking down an idea into parts to better understand it, while evaluate requires you to make a judgement based on evidence. These verbs are often paired with the word ' critically', such as 'critically analyse' or 'critically evaluate' to signal that you must go beyond simple description. 'Critically' means you should question, compare, and interpret, rather than just explain. It involves showing awareness of different viewpoints and theories as set out in 'the literature', assessing evidence, and forming your own reasoned judgement.
Tip: Changing these task verbs into nouns can help you reframe the question into a working title — for example, “Analyse X” can become “An analysis of X.”
Highlight the main topics and ideas you’re being asked to explore. These are often embedded in the question and can guide your research.
Here, you might begin by defining haute couture and exploring what counts as contemporary within the fashion industry.
In this case, you’d need to examine key terms like sensationalism and melodrama, which will form the foundation of your reading and analysis.
Different disciplines may ask you to interpret the brief through different lenses.
Pay attention to key words and terms used throughout the brief - these will be helpful when you come to searching for information sources.
Ask yourself why you’re writing this essay. Are you being asked to argue a specific point, explore a theme or creative process, demonstrate understanding of theory or context, or reflect on your own practice? Knowing the purpose ensures your essay remains focused and aligned with what your tutor expects.
Look for words or phrases that limit or define the essay’s focus - such as time periods, geographic areas, particular artists, movements, or number of examples required. These parameters help you narrow your research and avoid taking on too broad a topic.
It is very common for an assignment brief to require that you devise your own essay question or title within the requirements of the brief. You can use the following components to help you devise your own question or title:
Topic + Action + Parameters (Scope)
It's more than okay to have a 'working question'.
A working question is a provisional question that you create before you start deep reading. It's called 'working' because it guides your reading and note-taking right now. It's not final - you can refine or change it as you learn more.
Think of it as your research compass - not the destination, but the arrow that keeps you heading in a particular direction (hopefully the right one!).
The brief might include recommended resources - if these have been included, make sure to use them as a starting point! If not included in the brief, it is still recommended to look for the course or module resource list. You can search the Library's Online Talis Resource Lists using your module code. Prioritise core texts first, then expand to related sources for depth. These resource lists are carefully put together by your course tutors - with an expectation that you will use them as a starting point.
Assessment criteria usually describe what is expected for each grade level. Reading through the criteria for a high grade gives you an idea of how you can achieve that grade. Read the marking rubric carefully - look for what you need to demonstrate and what you need to apply. Check how marks are weighted so you know where to spend your time and word count.
Check for the submission details:
Knowing this helps you estimate, plan and manage your time and effort.
Turnitin is an online tool used to check the originality of your written work. When you submit an essay or assignment, Turnitin compares your text against a database of academic sources, websites, and student submissions. It highlights any matching or similar text in a Similarity Report - this makes visible where proper referencing is required.
Doing preliminary research can be a good way to to familiarise yourself with your topic and can help you to establish basic facts. It may also lead you to adjust your topic as you find areas that you want to focus on.
As you explore, notice the words that are being used to describe your topic. Look for the names of key people, places, events, concepts, or theories. These can be used for more focussed searching later on.
There is no need to do in-depth reading at this stage. Just dip in and use what you find to help expand your ideas. All ideas and thoughts are welcome - make sure to capture these initial thoughts in a notebook or document. Start a bullet list or mindmap.
Do some quick and simple searches using a familiar search engine such as Google (remember other search engines are available, e.g. DuckDuckGo, Ecosia, and Firefox).
These basic searches will bring you back a diverse range of sources covering lots of different perspectives. These might include news stories, product promotions, links to professional organisations as well as more scholarly sources. The headings and titles of these varied search results might help you start to build a mental picture of the topic. Think critically about these different source types and evaluate them as information sources for your essay.
Although it isn't recommended that you use Wikipedia or GenAI tools as a cited source in your assignment, online encyclopaedias such as Wikipedia can be useful to help you understand basic background information. Although quality and reliability varies, they can provide an overview of events or key terms and concepts.
The hyperlinks within each Wikipedia article allow you to explore related concepts and because sources used in the articles are cited, you might find useful articles or books.
Wikipedia and generative AI tools (like ChatGPT) are not usually accepted as academic sources because of their variability - although some pages can be excellent, others may contain biases, inaccuracies, omissions and errors. However, with this in mind, they can still be useful for getting an overview, finding keywords, or generating ideas at the start of your research - as long as you then check all information against reliable academic sources such as books, peer-reviewed journal articles, and scholarly databases.
Think back to any lectures you might have had on the topic. What events, theories, or people were mentioned? Are there are any slides or course materials you could go back to?
Were there any related resources on the module Talis resource list? Use the lists to not only to identity key texts but also the names of authors who write on the topic. What else might they have written? Also note the titles of journals that any recommended articles were published in. You might want to search through the journal for related articles. A quick way to access your Talis list is to type the module code into Online Resource Lists.
Talk your ideas through with a friend. Bouncing ideas off other people can generate more ideas and fresh approaches. It can also help you to identity where the gaps are in your knowledge.
Be open to their comments and questions!
Brainstorming is about getting anything you know about the essay topic out of your head and onto paper. Get yourself a blank piece of paper and set a 5-minute timer. Write the essay topic in the middle of the page within a circle and write key words and phrases that branch off from this. Try to fill the page.
Capture the ideas that come out of your brainstorming by using a mind map or by writing down all your ideas on post-it notes or in bullet lists.
Add in any questions that you might have. Brainstorming is likely to generate questions because it triggers new ideas. You will also discover that there are gaps in your knowledge. Maybe there are dates or names of people that you need to check, or a definition that you need to find? Are there theories or concepts that you need to understand in more detail? Make a note of these too.
Draw arrows to connect up related ideas or move your post-it notes around so similar ideas sit next to each other. You will start to see what your main topics are going to be and what the sub topics are. This will put some order on your ideas and may help you to see a possible structure for your finished work.
Finally, but importantly, a mind map will help you create a list of keywords. Keywords are going to be essential for the next stage of research, which is searching and locating sources.
The Assignment Calculator breaks the essay writing process into five steps: planning, researching, organising, drafting and reviewing and provides you with a suggested timeline. Set mini-deadlines to keep yourself on track. If you’re juggling multiple assignments, use a calendar or Gantt project planner to balance your workload and meet your deadline. See the study guide to managing time and workload for tips and tools.
Divide up your word count while making sure to follow any structure or format you have been given. Use headings or bullet points to roughly outline your main sections/ paragraphs and allocate word count. This will help you see where you need to focus your reading and research.
Most academic essays follow a similar structure:
Paragraphs are usually around 200 words in an academic essay, so a quick calculation will give you a rough indication of how many your essay might need. You might want to group paragraphs into themed sections to better tackle the question.
Remember this isn't a fixed essay plan - it will no doubt change as you read and research your essay topic. In fact, you will probably find that you need to review and revise this plan in each stage of the essay writing process.
An information audit is a way to take stock of what you already know about your topic, what you still need to find out, and where you might find that information. With your essay question in mind, look back at any brainstorming and mind mapping you have done along with your rough essay outline.
Reading for an essay is different from other kinds of reading and benefits from having a strategy and a notetaking system. The guide to reading and notetaking provides helpful advice about how to approach academic reading and note-taking for assignments.
Have a way to keep track of sources as you find them.
Create an account with a reference management tool such as MyBib, and add the MyBib browser extension so you can tag, label and collect references in a folder as you browse; or try the more powerful Zotero (more features). Learn how you can export references from the library catalogue and import into MyBib/ Zotero using .ris files.
A reference management tool will help you keep track of sources as you find them, cite as you draft, and format a complete reference list for your essay.
See the study guide to referencing for more guidance.
