Full Guide On How to Come Up With Good Essay Topics
Many little things make students’ lives easier. Keeping a planner. Carrying a water bottle. Catching a mid-day nap. Watching a how-to YouTube video. Yet, there is something that always stands apart in this context – getting a clear, comprehensive essay555 writing prompt that includes one or several good essay topics to choose from. However, students do not always enjoy such a blessing and must come up with topic ideas on their own. Let’s figure out how you can generate, find, or get interesting topics to write an essay about in other ways.
5 Working Methods to Come Up with a Worthy Essay Topic Yourself
When facing the necessity of developing a topic for an essay single-handedly, students may experience two contradicting feelings – excitement and horror. On the one hand, generating ideas is perhaps the most creative stage in academic writing. On the other hand, there is not a single guaranteed method of developing a unique and novice topic that is also compelling to a wide audience. Yet, applying the techniques described below increases the chances of success significantly.
1. Brainstorm
Yes, you will need to think and stretch your mind. Think about topics related to the required field, and write them down. Then, repeat the procedure for so many times as you can. Another approach to brainstorming is free writing – when you type topic ideas non-stop for a fixed period of time. After the first stage of brainstorming is finished, you analyze the ideas you’ve come up with, choose the best ones, and elaborate on them to articulate the final topic.
2. Talk & discuss
Talk through your ideas with somebody, preferably an expert in the required field – another person’s opinion may highlight an entirely new perspective on a seemingly banal issue. You might wonder – which ideas to discuss if you don’t have any at the moment? Well, it’s an extremely rare occurrence when you are required to develop an essay topic from point blank, without any limitations. Even a discipline you need an essay for can give you great space for discussion. For instance, you would most likely be considering literature or philology-related ideas for English essay topics rather than the peculiarities of using the recursive frame analysis in therapeutic conversation, right? And that’s already a start!
3. Ask a question you want answered
Starting with a question you want answered might be a bit scary as it might mean that you really don’t know the answer. On the other hand, this suggests more excitement and explorations while crafting your piece. Of course, we’re not talking about questions that don’t (and probably cannot) have answers. For example, do people have souls? Instead, the question should be about something that interests you personally, something you ask yourself or discuss with your friends, or your reaction to something you’re studying.
4. Look back on your life
Adding a personal touch to a topic is one of the most plausible ways of inventing a unique topic. However, the approach works best in humanities and creative studies while being virtually inapplicable in exact sciences. Do you know something others don’t? Do you have an experience others don’t? Do you understand something in an entirely different way than all others do? Write about it. In addition to being unique, such a text should be generally easier and faster to craft.
5. Look through samples or search news
Admittedly, this method is cheat-ish but still has the right to exist and be used as a measure of last resort. Yet, when pressed for time and hungry for ideas, browsing a sample database for a relevant piece by a professional essay writer free online might save your day. It doesn’t mean that you should just borrow their ideas, but only that they can help you cut some corners and come up with your topic faster. After all, even the brightest minds of our time don’t willingly accept that they are standing on the shoulders of giants of the past.
Of course, there are many more viable techniques for developing a good essay topic on your own, but the five approaches listed above definitely are the most effective ones, tried and tested. However, if, for some reason, they fail you, it’s not an excuse to lose heart and give up. Fortunately, the Internet offers
some other methods you might want to consider using.
Where to Get College Essay Topics Online (and Even Entire Papers, If Needed)
When your imagination and creativity, even combined with proven topic-generation techniques, cannot ensure the required result, it’s time to look for other alternatives. Luckily, you can find everything youneed on the Internet with just several clicks.
Topic generators
Commercial Artificial Intelligence is not yet smart enough to craft human-like papers but works just fine as the basis for paid and free topic generators. Some of them propose topics randomly and focus on hinting ideas rather than formulated topics (for example, Portent’s content idea generator); others require you to select the field of study or enter keywords (for instance, the essay topic generator on the WowEssays website that we’ve already mentioned in the context of free sample papers); yet others utilize non-trivial approaches that are not that easy to master (like AnswerThePublic.com). Overall, the effectiveness of online topic generators remains questionable in case you don’t know what you want. However, if you already have narrowed the area of interest to one or a few directions, generators can help save time on the “brainstorming stage.”
Blogs
Another way to look for a worthy topic is by searching for blog posts that contain dozens and even hundreds of ready ideas. Just google something like “best narrative essay topics” or “good topics for a descriptive essay” and browse the results – typically, there are lots of them. The huge number of available options gives you many variants to use in your work; on the other hand, you might need a lot of time to look through them. So, if you are pressed for time, this method clearly isn’t what you need.
Writing services
When speed is crucial for writing and submitting a paper, you might want to think outside the box. In this context, generating a topic when the deadline is looming is even less than half the job. What might the solution be? Addressing a professional writing service with a write my essay inquiry. Such companies specialize in crafting entirely original college papers for money according to customer requirements and instructions. Remarkably, short essays can be delivered as fast as just 3 hours. Of course, the turnaround entirely depends on the size and complexity of the required task. In legal terms, this method lies in a gray area, but security and confidentiality measures implemented by writing
services ensure that customers remain anonymous.
Freelance websites
Alternatively, you can order a topic selection from freelance writers on platforms like Fiverr, Upwork, PeoplePerHour, etc. Such service would cost you around a dozen bucks, which is relatively cheap. Just post your gig and choose an offer from outsource writers who apply for it. Or take a proactive approach and search for such experts yourself to offer them your job. Undoubtedly, it’s only natural that students would develop topics and craft their papers single-handedly. However, when life brings you lemons, you must know how to make lemonade by any means necessary and available.
Tips on Developing Good Essay Topics
As an icing on the cake, I’d also like to describe several tips on making sure that the topic you’re about to generate is really great. These tips are applicable to all the techniques and methods described above.
- Ensure you’ve understood the assignment correctly, get back and re-read it once you think the topic is articulated.
- Work from general to specific, gradually narrowing the topic by adding specifics (period, area, region, etc.)
- Choose a topic that interests you or even better: that you are really passionate about.
- Use your “third idea”: come up with an idea; think about how you can narrow it down, make it more specific and interesting; try to find the way to make the topic even deeper and truly unique.
- Take an abstract noun (for example, love, hope, purity, truth, honor, etc.) and start associating various things or opinions with it.
- Create mind maps – visualization can help people see something they would miss otherwise.
- Always return to how you’ve articulated the topic once you’ve finished your essay and make sure it is still relevant.
The tips above are universal in their nature and can be applied to generating a topic for an essay or academic paper of another type. At the same time, below you can find some specific tips regarding the most popular essay types – argumentative and persuasive.
Peculiarities of Selecting Argumentative Essay Topics
- An argumentative topic must be arguable, preferably one that appeals to you.
- It better be controversial and assertive to avoid being boring.
- It should definitely be researchable and reasonable, so perform preliminary research before you start writing the text itself.
- You may want to consider trending topics and issues but remember about point #3.
- If possible, take a position in the title.
Peculiarities of Selecting Persuasive Essay Topics
- Consider the audience you will be delivering your message to and see if it can be made relevant to the topic.
- Try to add emotional appeal to the topic (and title).
- Display your position on the topic.
- Write a strong thesis statement, and then see if your topic / title needs revision.
- If you can fit in a potential to address both sides in a topic – that would be a plus.
Coming up with a really good college essay topic might be a torture, especially when there are several dozens of papers you have to craft during a semester, and teachers don’t bother offering topics to choose from. I hope this brief guide presents several effective ways of coming up with interesting ideas and developing them into hot topics for essays single-handedly or with external help.
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