4. Polishing

You’ve drafted your essay. Now what? Well, a lot. Essays come into fully realised form in the polishing stage, not in the drafting. It’s a bit like how a film arrives in its finished form. Film editors turn raw footage into something with structure, or into a more complete, settled structure. Or think about how a chef makes a great dish: they’ve cooked the food, but it still has to be presented enticingly. You’ve got your essay down, but there’s still work to do. The point now is to work with what you’ve done. Here the emphasis falls less on generating new material and more on turning the material already generated into something better. 

Mapping your Claims
If you’ve written an essay that contains 3 core claims, as I suggest you might do in the ‘Structuring’ section, then consider structuring a chunk of your introduction as a linear explanation of those claims in sequence. ‘In this essay, I first argue X, second Y, and third Z’—that sort of thing. Do you say in a clear way where the essay is going and also why it’s going there? Do you think it will be easier for your reader to follow your ideas if you don’t do this? You’d be surprised how often essay-writers forget to give their readers a sense of direction. 

Coherence
Check that the essay you’ve written matches what you say you’re going to write about in your introduction. Go back into your introduction, when you’ve drafted it, and make what you promise to do map more accurately onto what you then, in fact, do. Provide what you guarantee. You can think about introductions as a kind of contract, outlining an agreement for what follows. Have you made good on that agreement? Is the contract trustworthy?

The ‘arc’
An advanced point, this: Does your essay have a long, overarching, integrating texture—a guiding sensibility with which everything else aligns? Does the essay feel like it’s going somewhere at the start, reaching somewhere in the middle, and definitively getting there at the end? There are many different ways to achieve such structural cohesiveness, and no one-size-fits-all advice to give in making it happen, but you can at least ask yourself the question.

Repetitions
Sometimes you need to repeat certain ideas or emphases. Sometimes you don’t. If, in polishing your essay, you notice repetition, ask yourself if it’s needed or if it amounts to an error that needs to be removed. Repetitions can help readers to keep a certain point or set of points in mind. But sometimes repetitions are just, you know, repetitive.

Tips
- check your phrasing—clear, direct articulation is always better than jargon-stuffed prose (unless your particular assignment requires you to use jargon, or, more generously, technical language)
- the same point: check that you have said what you meant to say—read your essay aloud, or have someone else read it to you, in order to check sense and clarity