4 Books to Improve Essay Writing Skills
To write good texts you should read plenty of good texts at first. We embrace the writing styles of those we read, it is a natural way of learning (or, in this case, it even can be called apprenticeship). So, reading the books of great writers makes us a bit better with each finished literature piece. Furthermore, direct application of what we’ve learned into our own projects, like when we write my thesis, provides practical experience that is invaluable. By doing so, we not only apply the theories and styles we’ve learned, but we also face the real challenges of writing, which books alone cannot fully address.
But what about the direct learning of writing? Can we have a course on writing skills? Of course! The books that teach us writing are the most convenient way, because they are, well, written. You can also hire a custom essay service or a professional paper writer to help you and get efficient service to improve your skills. If you want to pay for an essay there are many options too! Let’s browse through writing bestseller courses for different levels and purposes and learn what are the differences and peculiarities of these four books to improve your essay writing skills.
1. Everybody Writes: Your Go-To Guide to Creating Ridiculously Good Content by Ann Hadley
This book is written for bloggers – both beginners and professionals. It teaches us to write in modern style, fascinating the audience from the first sentence, making text exciting, easy to read, and emotionally fulfilling. Despite the fact that we are talking about essay writing here, some marketing tricks and blog techniques are extremely useful for essay writing too. If you want your argumentative essay or case study to draw the attention of your audience and create a heated discussion later – this book will give you lots of tips on how to do that.
The book covers all the aspects of content creation: from grammar and word usage to the case studies of best blogs and explanations of the reasons to write about this or that. The value of this book for the essay writers is undeniable: it teaches us also to choose the right topics for our texts – the ones that will be most interesting for your target audience, e.g. the class and the teacher.
The knowledge learned from “Everybody Writes” will also help you in the future if you decide to work with content creation on services like PaperAp papers or with social media in particular. It may also help future journalists on their way to proficiency.
2. Zen in the Art of Writing by Ray Bradbury
An immortal classic from the author of the most stunning science fiction novels of the twentieth century. This isn’t a textbook aimed to teach you writing, but rather a collection of essays that tell us about the life of the writer and Ray’s own experience of learning to write. He reflects on the qualities that every writer should have and the way to develop them, freeing your imaginations from concerns and prejudice of the critics and the sheer excitement the process of writing brings into your life.
In addition, the style of writing is flawless in this book – the author is Ray Bradbury himself, after all! Also, he adds lots of practical tips to his reflections: from searching for the ideas to ways of developing them into full-fledged texts, from finding your own voice and style to perfecting the conventional literary tools we may see in his books. The recommendations given in this book are mostly general, not made solely for essay writing, but they can fit any writing task equally great and give you a serious and fundamental writing experience.
3. On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft by Stephen King
Another book from the literature star of the century, the King of Horror as media call Stephen King. The author pays a lot of attention to his own origin story, but it isn’t autobiography or plain boasting. Stephen King shares his own experience of finding his style and starting writing, his exploration of what makes people feel different emotions and literary tools able to inflict such emotions.
The books by Stephen King have a very definite conversational style that became the author’s trademark. It isn’t suitable for the essays in its pure incarnation, but if you want to make your text a bit less academic and closer to earth, the tips of this book may come in handy. This book is also written in the same style, so it feels not like a textbook, but as a hearty live talk with a benevolent teacher.
4. The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person’s Guide to Writing in the 21st Century by Steven Pinker
Despite there are lots of textbooks that teach the style of writing, they are mostly too academic and – let’s be honest – plain boring. This one takes a much more modern approach and tries to present the classical axioms simpler and in a more understandable way. The form is easier and sometimes even humorous, but the amount of knowledge stays the same. Pinker guides you through the academic course of writing, painlessly showing you all the main literary tools.
He also appreciates the living and developing language, not being stuck to the “proper” one. Though he makes you learn the rules of writing, Pinker also encourages you to figure out when it’s convenient to break them – to find your own style, to express the climactic moment, or do something else. But to break the rules you should know what to break, so, despite this book is one of the easiest courses amongst its academical cousins, it still might be challenging for the beginners.
Conclusion
There are a lot of books that teach writing and essay writing in particular. But the only and the best way to learn writing is to write. It doesn’t matter if the first essays are clumsy or not. You are practicing and each new one will be slightly better than the previous one. You can train yourself on writing on different topics, just choose the most interesting for you. Also. you can use online resources of information like Law Aspect (if you want to write on legal topics), Wikipedia, and even online libraries. Be bold, don’t be afraid to try something new and find your voice. The world is waiting for your ideas, show them to it!
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