Where ideas live

One of my tutoring students wants to write good essays. It's fun to work with such a motivated person. It made me want to write an essay.  I wrote it for her.

Where Ideas Live

An essay is like a snug cottage. It is a small and comfortable dwelling for your thoughts. Like any home, the essay is an expression of the one who lives there. It is full of things that the author cares about. The writer chooses words like furniture. She wants each piece to be authentic and placed where it will look best. The essay, like a private home, may reveal secrets. It may hint or tell you outright something fresh that you never before suspected.

The essay’s introduction is its front porch. It welcomes the reader and gives a hint of what may be found inside. It makes the reader want to open the door and read more.

The paragraphs are rooms. Each one has a special purpose, or topic. It is important to place furniture in the appropriate room. The stove does not belong in the living room! In the same way, sentences and details ought to fit right in the paragraph. Sometimes you will have to do some moving around. For instance,  I had the second sentence (“It is a small and comfortable …  thoughts.”) in the ending paragraph. As I worked on this essay, the sentence seemed to fit much better where it is now.

The essay, like a little home, must have clarity and order or it will be a mess. You must sweep out unnecessary words. They are useless and confusing, like too much furniture.  For example, at first I began this essay with, “An essay is a lot like a snug little cottage.” When I read it over, I saw I could shorten the sentence without changing its meaning. It is also important that you can move easily from one paragraph to the next. The more you write, the tidier your essays will be.

The back door is the essay’s conclusion. Before you leave, you glance back quickly, reviewing all the rooms you just explored. You breathe in the atmosphere of this cottage – the colors and scents of the word that make up its particular style. One day you may come back again, but as you open the door you get the feeling you have had a satisfying visit. When you hear the click of the back-door latch behind you, you know you are finished.

There are many larger and more imposing structures in the great city called literature -– palaces that are books, and skyscrapers full of short stories. But if you look closely, chances are good that you will find the heart of each structure is a related collection of rooms, or topics, each explored in a paragraph -- an essay.