Critical Essay Writing for Impressive Results

Critical essay writing is often a tough task for students, especially with minor writing experience at all. There are two main factors about this task. We mean argument and analysis. We are sure you are already familiar with these two points. For critical essay they are crucial. Your task is not to agree or disagree with the author but to analyze their work properly.

In this article we will discuss all the important factors of this particular task making it easier for you to understand the entire deal. Our experts have prepared the most relevant tips for you to create a successful critical essay. Keep reading to learn everything you want to know about critical essay writing.

Features Critical Analysis Essay

The main core of this task lays right in its title. The analysis of some piece of art, event or text is the main thing about critical essay. Your task is to analyze a subject and describe your point of view in the clearest manner possible.

Also, you will have to convince your reader to take your side. For this task you will need to use the most relevant evidences possible. Another important aspect of the task is to be able to complete your view and describe it in just few sentences. There are three common essay parts used in this writing task. The structure of your article should look like this:

1. Introduction - with thesis statement
2. Body - with three or more paragraphs
3. Conclusion - summary of your evidence

This piece of writing requires a set of certain skills. Of course, the most obvious one is the skill to analyze. There is a whole list of subjects you can analyze. It can be just any piece of art produced by any author or even a collective. Also, it can be an article or any other text content you can imagine.

Critical Essay Starting Point

The entire task begins with reading (depending on the type of a subject you are working with) the source. If you are not familiar with the piece, try to read it just like for fun first. Then read it trying to analyze the most significant moments.  You need to absorb the information provided by the author and truly understand what it is all about. Your clear understanding of the task and the object of your analysis is a crucial factor for creating a successful and relevant work.

Read through the text a couple of times until you are totally sure about the context and your opinion. It will also help you to find all the interesting details and relevant info. Your own thoughts about the text now matters the most. Then you should find all possible arguments to support your point of view. Be sure it is a tough task, but there is nothing impossible. Just be sure to make a proper research to get the most relevant evidence possible.

For your audience you must create a proper summary of the entire piece and then state your point of view. It is like you have your own opinion regarding police brutality but you should open it in context of some writing piece. To keep your track over the writing process there is just one simple thing to use. The outline for your critical essay will be that helping hand that we all need while writing. Here you can write down a raw draft of your thesis structure.

Tips on How to Write a Critical Analysis Essay

The main task for you as a writer is to get evidences strong enough to support your point of view. Sometimes it is an uneasy task, but remember, there is nothing impossible in academic assignments. Also, please focus on the entire paper format. It is important to craft a proper paper so you could deliver a proper message to the reader.

 1. Create an outline

It is always a great plan to have a plan. It sounds simple but lots of students totally ignore this rule while writing any type of assignment. At the same time, outlines make our life easier letting us ignore some certain part of the process while focussing on the main thing. Consider using outlines for your critical essay and other academic tasks. Set your main goals and marks in your outline and then start writing.

 2. Introduction

It is very important to grab your reader’s attention right from the strat. This is an important trick for all academic assignments as a reader should be involved into your context completely to get the main point and to have a chance to be convinced by you. Good introduction tells everything but says nothing.

 3. Body

Usually, there are three paragraphs for this part of an essay. It is totally enough to present your main evidence and arguments. Use not too many sentences and get to the point. Analysis do not like long description sentences. Get to the point and do not waste your and your readers time. Ask a question and give an answer immediately.

 4. Conclusion

Here you should restate your thesis statement once again and provide a short summary to support it. There should be some undoubtful evidence to support your statement for the last time. Do not try to simply repeat your Introduction but offer an effective overall summary.

 5. Edit/Proofread

Any academic paper should be checked carefully after the writing stage. Editing and proofreading are two fundamental factors of a complete and winning paper of any type not just critical analysis essay. Even if your work is perfect by its structure and content, it should also have a perfect grammar and style.

Tips on How to Format a Critical Analysis Essay

To learn how to write a critical analysis essay you just need to follow few simple instructions. Format is very important for this type of an essay. Usually, it goes with a typical 5 paragraph format, but requirements may differ due to your tutor instructions.

Remember that all these requirements regarding sections are important and cannot be ignored as they help to describe your analysis properly. Here are three main stages for critical essay writing:

• Background - this is a regular information about the subject of your investigation and its author. Also, you need to recon with the topic, other publications, and main goal of your own task. Your thesis should also describe the view of the author on the problem.
• Get a relevant summary of the entire subject you are analyzing and describe it in simple style.
• Describe an overall idea of the author to encourage your audience to ask questions and start a discussion.

Critical Analysis Essay Example

Twilight Saga

Among the literary products that become popular in the media and with consumers, one can point out two main categories. The first category consists of novels, stories, or poems that become popular due to an author’s talent, vivid characters, and dramatic plots; the second category refers to those books that have nothing special about them, but have been actively promoted or a naive nuance on a popular subject, and thus made it into bookstores and the cinema. An example of the first category is the Harry Potter series or the (in)famous Game of Thrones; the best illustration for the second category is the Twilight series.

The cinema version of this novel has the word “saga” attached to it—as well as the official ebook with some additional content referring to the novel. Since the movies were made rather similar to the literary source, it is fair enough to try to figure out why the movie creators thought the word “saga” would describe Twilight accurately? Originally, a saga was a story about the heroic, or at least somehow significant, deeds of viking war chiefs, jarls, or Scandinavian mythical heroes such as Beowulf; nowadays, this word is most often used to characterize a novel that contains elements of an epic. By all means, J.R.R. Tolkien’s Silmarillion or The Lord of the Rings is definitely a saga. The aforementioned George Martin’s Game of Thrones can be called a saga as well, considering the scales and the significance of events occurring in his universe. What epicness is there in a lovey-dovey story about a relationship between a schoolgirl and a vampire? Obviously none, neither in the novel, nor in the movies—it is simply a marketing turn aimed at making the source look like something more worthwhile than it is.

This does not matter much, however. What is more important for a critical review is observing the plot, the characters, and the style of the source. In the case of Twilight, all of them are poorly constructed.

The plot revolves around Bella Swan, an American schoolgirl, and a 104-year-old vampire named Edward Cullen. Later, another main character comes in: Jacob Black, a werewolf. The storyline of the entire saga can be described in a couple of sentences. Bella meets Edward and falls in love with him; later, she learns he is a vampire, but this does not stop her, and only seems to make her even more attached to him. He falls in love with her too. Bella is attacked by James, a vampire from a “bad” clan. Edward and his family, who belong to a “good” clan, kills James. In the second book, Edward and his family leave Bella’s town because Edward believes he endangers his beloved. Depressed, Bella switches to Jacob, who is a werewolf. Jacob and his clan protect Bella from Victoria, a girlfriend of James from the first book. Edward thinks Bella died, and wants to commit suicide, but then Bella appears and stops him. She gets introduced to Edward’s clan, which decides she must be turned into a vampire someday. Bella and Edward reunite. In the third book, Victoria gathers an army of vampires (still, to avenge her boyfriend?), but it does not seem to trouble Bella, who instead cannot choose between Edward and Jacob. In the end, Victoria is defeated by the joint effort of werewolves and vampires, and Bella marries Edward. In the fourth book, Bella gives birth to Edward’s child, almost dying in the process, but gets saved by being turned into a vampire by her husband. The vampire clan decides to let their hybrid child live, the end. Finally.

This is it. Of course, any book can be described like this; for example, the plot of “The Lord of the Rings” can be described even in a shorter way: “Four guys go to a dangerous land to defeat an ancient evil by destroying an important artifact, and their friends help them.” However, unlike Tolkien’s novel, Twilight has nothing to offer to a reader except the events described in the previous paragraph. This is ridiculous, considering four published books, some sort of online encyclopedia, and movies.

The weakness of the plot is fueled by the idiocy of the main characters (all characters, actually). The first and foremost question: why would a 104-year-old person fall in love with a teenager? Theoretically, people get wiser when they get older, although reality proves it is not necessarily so. I would understand if Edward treated Bella as an adopted daughter, at least. But love? There is a special word for adult men having romantic and sexual relationships with teen girls. Also, according to folklore, vampires are sadistic, vile, and sexually-insatiable creatures, so in a proper vampire story, exploitation and being devoured would be Bella’s only options. But a true, clean, and romantic love? This is stupid. The only reason why it became possible is probably because aging has negatively affected Edward’s (and his family’s) mental capabilities. Also, why would Bella not feel scared of knowing people who suck blood, or who can turn into savage beasts? What kind of weird taste or fetish is that? And it is not only Bella and Edward acting weird—Jacob, Victoria, the vampire clans, and other folks appearing in Twilight seem to have little-to-no common sense, reason, or logic.

As for the style Twilight is written in, it is hard to say anything. My main impression from it was that the author first wrote a regular romantic lady’s story, and then suddenly decided to turn the main characters into vampires and werewolves.

As a summing-up grade, Twilight should get 3 out of 10 proper vampires. Awful, but not because it is a horror story.

Tips on How to Format a Critical Analysis Essay

• Writing a critical essay does not mean you should attack the author directly. It should be a straight analysis with relevant facts. Your task is not to find something wrong about the piece of art or writing but provide a fair analysis of the content.
• Avoid mixing facts with your emotions. You are not writing a narrative essay but a serious analysis. While there can be something that confuses you or distracts, you should operate with facts only. If there is no evidence to support your point of view regarding the piece of writing, a proper analysis is impossible.
• Avoid any humor in your analysis and use formal tone only.
• The main goal of your entire task is to tell something absolutely fresh. You need to reveal something absolutely new and unknown to others. Yes, we mean there should be some sort of a discovery.
• It is always a good idea to make a list of your statements and then to find all possible evidence to support those claims and to check if they are relevant at all.
• There are two main forms of criticism. You nay critique the author or the content itself. In any case, there should be some strong and undoubtful evidence supporting your point of view.
• It is impossible to tell about all the facts about the subject. You should use a narrow topic to fit some particular but striking statement or problem. It is better to tell about the problem and ways to solve it in one essay.
• Self organization and great formatting are two important factors for your success. Keep your text logical and well-structured to avoid confusions and misunderstandings.

Bottom Line

It is a challenging task for lots of students. Critical essay may be a hard job to do, especially if the deadline is too short. In case you want to get an A, you need to use all your writing and analytical skills and spend some time crafting a perfectly-organized paper from scratch.

If you do not have time to deal with this task due to various circumstances, there is still a way out for you. Our experts who have prepared this useful article for you know well how to create a perfect critical essay from scratch for any topic and any deadline. Just feel in the order form and get your perfectly-written paper on time.