Imagine that you are sitting in an exam room at your school or university, your blank exam book sitting open before you on the table. You can hear the clock ticking stealthily behind you, and your palms begin to sweat as you look down at the outline you’ve prepared. You’ve reviewed your material, you’ve found your citations, and you’re ready to show the exam reader that you know your stuff. There’s just one problem: You have no idea how to start the essay.
The scenario I’ve just described is one that I saw many of my classmates face during our winter term senior english final. Having searched for quotations for hours the night before, many of them walked into the exam room confident about their ability to strut their stuff. But once they were faced with a blank page, they froze. All of the hard work that they had put into finding the quotations was undermined by bland openings, fuzzy phrasing, and other stylistic problems that creep in when a writer is panicked. Why is it that starting can be the hardest part of all? And how can you overcome that moment of panic and write an opening that demonstrates your mastery of the material?
The strategy that I developed to cope with this situation is what I like to call “The Key to an Essay.” I call it a key not because I believe it is essential, but because it helps you to “unlock” the rest of the essay. Typically, this is something I’ll only use in the situation I outlined above–a timed essay during an exam block (or an in-class essay) where outlines and other materials are permitted.
So what, pray tell, is a key?
A key is a descriptive passage or initial thought that helps you to jump into the material at hand. You create a key by imagining (or pre-writing) your opening in your head and then inserting notes into your outline. The goal is to leave yourself a road map that will help you to both re-create those thoughts in the exam room and make it easier to plow through the rest of the essay with confidence.
That sounds pretty vague–and it is!–because a vast range of things can serve as the key to your essay. Mostly, those fit into 3 categories:
- A description
- A quotation (typically to be used as an epigraph.)
- A well-constructed, strong sentence or question
For example: the passage that I used to start this post would count as a description. The way I might shorten that scene to fit into my notes could be fairly longhand, such as “Description: Exam room, booklet, clock ticking, sweaty palms, freezing in front of the test, what do you do?” Or it could be as simple as “exam room description.” (On my english final, one of my keys was “description english forest: vikings -> romantic poet,” which denoted a paragraph describing both a forest and the evolution of english storytellers from viking through romantic times.) Only you will know how much detail you’ll need in order to break through that moment of panic in the exam room–or, ideally, to avoid that moment of panic entirely.
For some people, getting started smoothly means having a perfect sentence–the sentence–to get them rolling. Sometimes that can be a great strategy if you tend to get anxious and are able to maintain a good flow once you begin writing. (I overall find that strategy a little too restrictive, because I begin to second-guess the sentence I’ve prepared once I’m in the exam room. Since the whole point of having the sentence is to avoid second-guessing, it seems sort of counter-productive for me! But to each their own.) It definitely takes some trial-and-error to determine how much you need to set down to avoid feeling anxious while still leaving yourself some freedom to actually write and create during the exam period.
To a lot of people, this strategy sounds very obvious. After all, outlines include main points, quotations, and thesis statements. Shouldn’t they also include your opening? (Yes, yes they should.) But oftentimes, elements that seem more like craft or artistry tend to get left out of outlines. The best essay openers are oftentimes the ones that seem off the beaten path. After all, a short description–of virtually anything!–is more interesting than the dreaded “In [author]‘s novel, [title], [protagonist] [verb]s.” But if you find that you tend to become less creative on the fly, maybe a little bit of outlined spice is just the ticket to getting your essay started with a bang. In my experience, confident beginnings tend to lead me to better-reasoned middles and more clearly-drawn conclusions. Why not do yourself the favor of making your success as easy as possible?
Last thought of the day:
Writing and sex have a great deal in common. Both require frequent practice to keep you in good condition, and your reception can change dramatically based on your audience.
