How to Write an Analytical Essay: Tips that Work

In school, students are required to write many academic papers, analytical essay is one of them. We have to say it's a hard task - it is not easy to create such paper if you haven't got much experience in writing.

How to write an analytical essay and what's its main goal? Read our detailed guide and find answers to all your questions. We put an instruction about writing plus provided our readers with an analytical essay example. Hope this article will be helpful, and you will make strong work in shortest terms.

Keep reading and learn our top 9 rules how to write an analytical essay.

1) What is an analytical essay?

The analytical essay is a sort of writing that analyses something; this work doesn't require to summarize characters or events, your task is to analyze everything. Example: if you are writing a book report, you may write how this piece of literature was written and which methods author used to make it more impressive. This paper should consist of several small parts. These parts help the reader to shed light on the larger object; needless to say, all parts must be well-organized and connected to each other.

This kind of essay should contain your own analysis of the problem. It may face the opinion based on a certain thing. There are plenty of objects you can analyze - this could be movie, book, etc., and sometimes you may analyze a phenomenon or problem. You have to bring strong evidence to support statement; keep in your mind it's better to write this paper from third person voice. You have to use formal language; don't forget slang or abbreviations shouldn't be used for this paper. Feel free to put quotes and examples – these are good evidence of your main idea; don't forget to define which style (MLA or APA) you will use.

2) How to choose a topic and thesis statement for the analytical essay?

Brainstorm your ideas to select an interesting topic for your future work. While selecting a subject for writing, try to describe your future audience and think what things could make those people interested. You have to write a thesis statement for analytical essay after you defined the topic, a statement consists of one or couple sentences. They tell your readers what they should expect from your work. If to say different, the thesis statement for analytical essay must contain the main idea of your entire work. Remember this is a very important step you shouldn't ignore; avoid using common topics that have been discussed a lot. People can be uninterested to read such papers. If your teacher already provided you with a topic, you need to think how to focus the argument to motivate people to read your work. The paper has to cover the topic you selected. Keep in your mind that without a successful thesis, your work won't be good. That's why it's important to work on it carefully – each sentence of your future paper must be connected to a thesis. This is not a simple work, but if you do it, you will get the brilliant paper!

3) How to make a research?

Remember your essay is not summary – you have to make your own analysis, provide readers with your point of view and support this point with evidence. This type of paper requires detailed research before writing. That's why you should be ready to spend the time to create bright paper. You will have to read many sources to find all the needed information you can use as evidence for your future work. You will have to make a solid background of the topic. We recommend taking notes during the research process, so you will be able to find all needed materials without wasting time.

A good idea to find a lot of credible sources for writing is going to the library. But don't forget about online search! While making research and choosing quotes for your paper, you should understand secondary sources can't dominate your own words. We suggest using yellow marker to highlight all quotes and summaries from other works. If your own work contains a lot of yellow, it means your own ideas and voice were not developed in the essay. Remember you will have to cite all your sources in accordance with the style of your paper.

4) How to structure your essay?

You have to organize your work in accordance with main rules of writing; before you start writing, you have to make an outline of your paper. It's a detailed plan that will help you to create logical work. Any work consists of three main parts:

• Introduction – in this part you need to face readers with the problem, grab their attention, and put your thesis statement for analytical essay.
• Main part – this is body part of your work. It contains three paragraphs where you should bring your point of view supported by evidence and claims.
• Conclusion – this is final part to finish your paper logically, this paragraph you should restate your thesis.

Sometimes people think it's a lot of work to write an outline before making your essay. But creating paper without a clear plan is like trying to find the route without a map. You don't know how to start, what to bring in the middle, and how to end. Without an outline, you run risk into making chaotically work that won't be logical. That's why it's important to create a good plan, and then start to write; keep your essay structure clear and understandable.

5) How to write an introduction?

The main goal of this paragraph is to hook the audience and involve them into reading your essay; you won't have any other chance to impress readers, so you have to think thoroughly before writing this part. Define your audience before writing. This will help you to think up how to make people interested in your work. Remember that weak introduction would make an entire paper unsuccessful, no matter if you wrote it perfectly.

Your next step is writing down thesis statement to inform your audience about the topic and provide them with your own opinion. You have to explain to readers why your essay is important to read.

Keep in mind introduction should be the roadmap for people that read your paper – they must know where this essay will take them and which kind of stuff they may learn during reading. We suggest writing this part in the end when you have already created entire work. It's  important to make a strong beginning of your work. If it seems hard to you to make good introduction, try to find an analytical essay example on Internet, this can be helpful!

6) How to create a body part?

We already said above, that entire body part should be divided into three paragraphs. Each of them should have next elements:

• Topic sentence – explains to your audience what exactly you are going to bring in this paragraph.
• Make an analysis of the part of text/event / etc. where you should make your argument (claim).
• Strong evidence that will be able to support both thesis statement and analysis, and you can't leave any claim without this support. You can add paraphrasing or quotes for evidence.

We suggest providing each topic sentence with 3 claims supported by evidence. Of course, you can make it different – just put one claim with much evidence, or four claims for support.

After you created all three paragraphs of your main part, write logical transitions, without them, your paper would seem awkward. Remember that body part is a “heart” of your essay, where you need to show your talent and skills. Plan your time beforehand and don't try to write an essay at one night. A quality paper requires a lot of time, patience and work, so take this challenge and make a wonderful essay with our little help!

7) How to make successful conclusion?

Your conclusion shouldn't be very long, but it has to summarize shortly everything you did in your essay. We want to share some tips for writing this part on the highest level:

• Don't bring any new information in conclusion. This would confuse your readers, and they won't get a feeling you made a good analysis.
• It's not a good idea to write a huge conclusion and mention everything you wrote before. Your readers must get a feeling they came to end of your paper.
• In this part, you need to restate thesis statement and bring together the main points you have made in your essay.
• You can finish your essay with a final quote that will help to wrap it up.

8) How to proofread your essay?

Don't forget to proofread your essay because it's important to get off mistakes and misprints; try to have rest after writing and then re-read your work with fresh eyes. This will help you to notice more errors, so the entire essay looks more professional without them. Read the paper loud to find places that may sound awkward. Another good advice is to ask your friend (relative, coworker) to read your work and give their opinion. This feedback may help you to make your essay better. Don't forget to check if your essay paragraphs are well-connected and logical. We suggest checking text not just for grammar - make sure you spelled all names, characters, places, etc. correctly. You may use online programs for checking mistakes. If you decided to check your essay with such software, re-read text after checking – not all errors could be found automatically. Before printing your essay, check its format. Re-read your teacher's recommendations about font and format, and see if your essay meets those requirements. After you printed your work, re-read paper copy again to make sure you didn't miss anything.

9) Analytical essay example

Sometimes it's useful to read others essays to understand what you need to write about. We are going to provide you with our analytical essay example. This essay sample analyses subject of racism in the novel of Harper Lee, “To Kill a Mockingbird”.

Analysis of problems brought in the novel “To Kill a Mockingbird”

In this famous novel its author, Harper Lee brings the subject of class differences and discusses the problem of racial conflict. He shows us the problem of contrast between different races. We can see that mockingbird symbolizes some kind of innocence: two people in the novel, Maudie Atkinson, and Atticus Finch say it's a big sin to shoot the mockingbird because it doesn't make any harm to us, it sings beautifully for people to enjoy. The idea of this novel is metaphorical. The author shows us that racism is the complicated problem based on nothing, and white people can hate black people just without any reason, just stereotype that was formed for long years in society.

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We hope our tips are useful, and we help you to get your clear plan how to create your essay. You can find more advice here.

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