Besting the Beast Part II: Sangfroid and Style in Your Essay

The long awaited sequel finally bore upon me with an immense onus, rousing me from Hypnos' grasp to totter to the keyboard and douse myself in the ambrosial nectar of word knowledge and now I am sated. But I segue, as is my custom from the matter at hand.

The Daedalian ideal is to be shirked, but while an exacting cast is necessary, punctiliousness is to be likewise shunned. The author (you) must covet a meticulous attention to style, syntax and diction. Think of your essay as a meal. It must not be laden with overripe orchards of vocabulary and obscure references but it must not be stark, bland or forbidding to the reader. Embrace the crisp, the essay's boon is its bite. Let the reader masticate your logic, chew through the meaty sinews of your rhetoric, savor the tartness of your thinking throughout. If i must be trite, less is more. Choose your words carefully and weave them together with utmost care. Establishing a precise, cool frame of mind is essential to success. Sangfroid is the byword. Here are more words:

• When choosing examples to underscore your essay topic, strive for variety. Do not choose Huck Finn, Abraham Lincoln, The Scarlet Letter, Walden, Martin Luther King or Gandhi because this is tantamount to force feeding the reader sleeping pills. These have obviously been done to the point where they are not only cliche, but boring, hackneyed, trite and utterly pedestrian.

• Don't let the time control you. Control your essay and control your score. Think before you write so as to maximize your time continuously writing. If you stop and start, stuttering through your essay, your time will evaporate.

• Focus. Be where you are. When you are writing your essay, don't waft through daydreams of three hours later, cavorting with your friends. Put your nose to the grindstone!

• Keep to the topic. Make sure the examples you choose are germane to the topic and show exactly how. Here is an example: Many persons believe that to move up the ladder of success and achievement, they must forget the past, repress it, and relinquish it. But others have just the opposite view. They see old memories as a chance to reckon with the past and integrate past and present. Do memories hinder or help people in their effort to learn from the past and succeed in the present? Plan and write an essay in which you develop your point of view on this issue. Support your position with reasoning and examples taken from your reading, studies, experience, or observations.

• Say you decide you use Black militant Malcolm X. In his autobiography (which makes for visceral, compelling reading) he speaks at length of his myriad experiences and interactions with the seamy underbelly of the criminal underworld and the uncompromising yoke of racism which he had to shoulder as a young man. This is a superb choice of person and book which allows for a plethora of opportunities for developing your essay.

With the correct tools you can develop your essay into a cogent, crisp, clear train of thought which will intrigue and excite your reader. I have given you some of the tools and now it is up to you to wield them. It is merely a question of keeping to the OLD WORD ORDER.