One of the most integral and essential parts of any UPSC examination is essay writing. Considered the most challenging aspect of writing the UPSC exam – this segment demands all you have in you. This blog will tell you how to write an essay in UPSC Mains.
Not only will we tell you how to write an essay for UPSC, but we will show you how it is done – with our special technique, which we have formulated. Our essay writing method will be your sure shot way of nailing the essay section. Before we get into the good stuff, we would like to get a few things out of the way.
With everything we provide to you, a few things will have to come from your side – dedication, willingness, hard work, and your time. All these things are essential than the study material, tips, methods, and techniques. These things are important in any field or profession.
Whatever you do in life, please do not do it partially.
With that, let us jump into the topic: How to write essay in UPSC – the preparation, the method, the practice, and the execution. What is so great about the process that we provide to our students? You will have to find out for yourself – join the best IAS course, and trust us – you will not regret it.
For this piece, though, we will be letting you on a brief explanation of the process that every single student of ours has to follow. Let’s go.
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How to Write Essay in UPSC
Just like the blog we published on Revision Strategy for UPSC – which you can refer to, this will be a step by step instructional blog. We will begin with some basic pointers –
1. Practice
This is a bare minimum for any profession out there. Keep at it, keep grinding, keep putting in the work if you want to excel at it. You may learn how to write a good essay, but the practice you put in will teach you how to write a great one.
Additionally, as an excellent way to increase your grasp on essays, you can mentally start noting down the points you will use in essay writing. So, it need not be your study time, just watching the news and learning something new through the news (no pun intended), and you can summarize the whole piece in your mind by making points.
This will help in increasing your memory power as well.
2. General Knowledge
General knowledge plays a vital role in the UPSC examination. The more you know about a topic, the easier it is to write about it. You can’t know all the topics in this world, so you will practice mock examinations and focus on the important topics (find a pattern and practice).
Most common topics relate to politics, bureaucracy, national-level topics, etc. Practice these daily, and you can also find out more common topics on the internet.
3. Factual Knowledge
Since the essay you will write in the UPSC examination will be formal, it is better to include real-time facts and figures. This is an excellent way to represent your essay and tells a lot about you. Including these additional data will help you have a solid essay, and it is just easier to remember than mugging up the whole topic.
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4. Format Practice
Before you even start writing essays on the main topics, practice the format, the presentation, the order, the purpose, the grammar and punctuation, and so on. Once you are familiar with the format and find your method of writing the perfect essay, you can begin writing essays on particular topics. This way, you will have the right flow, the right syncopation, and the right focus.
Essay Writing Tips for UPSC Students
The Thought Tree’s faculty members have developed some great techniques and methods to inculcate the habit of grasping the essence of any topic provided. This means that before writing the actual essay, any student needs first to understand what is being asked from them.
Often, the students look at the choices of topics given in the exam and feel that they can write a splendid essay on it, but what they write is sometimes biased, sometimes misinterprets the topic, or sometimes too plain. Our faculty makes sure that you get the right amount of everything in your essay and rock it.
To get the entire process of essay writing that we teach our students, you have to get the UPSC course. We will tell you the basic stuff in this blog. So, some UPSC essay writing tips are coming up –
1. Art of Writing
Essay writing and a UPSC essay on top of that is not just a test of whether you remember what you studied or not, or whether you remember the facts and events. It is a study of how well rounded you are.
- Creativity – It tests how creative you can be with your knowledge presentation and representation of all that you understand. You must be creative in sentence formation, choice of words, ideology, and what you take away from that topic in conclusion.
- Capacity – It tests your capacity to hold knowledge, your capacity to think as an administrator, and your capacity to generate potential ideas that you may use in the future for the betterment of society. It also tests your ability as a calm and cool person since essay writing makes candidates go crazy.
- Ability – It tests your ability to be concise, coherent, and clear. The essay you write should have all these things. It should not have a lot of fillers (concise in terms of not having too many useless sentences), it should be coherent (as in it should be backed with facts and stats), and it should be clear (as in it should have clarity on the message you want to convey).
On top of that, it also tests your ability to conclude the essay. Your conclusion should be able to capture all of your essay’s essence in one paragraph. It should give the checker the essence of what your whole essay is all about.
2. Format of Writing
The format of the paragraphs in the essay should be consistent, and the length of the sentences and paras should be consistent as well. This shows your ability to be consistent and organized, values that are necessary for an administrator. This is one of the most important UPSC essay writing tips.
3. Choice of Words
Your choice of words should always be there with you. It helps when you have alternative words for every occasion since it helps in the non-repetition of the same old words that everyone uses. It also shows how versatile you are in terms of work-life.
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4. Relevancy
Keeping the essay as close to the subject matter as possible is something that might seem easy but is not. You have to keep close to the topic and only use your sentences, facts, and numbers in that topic’s context.
5. Don’t Be Biased
Be balanced in terms of your opinions about the topic. If you tend to be too opinionated, then the examiner will look at you as someone who can be biased in the future. Being balanced is a quality of a good administrator.
6. Think Before Writing
Collect your points and thoughts and everything in your mind before you start writing. This helps in starting on the right foot. Before you start writing, make some strong points in your mind and use them efficiently.
Read More: How to Prepare Current Affairs for UPSC?
7. Don’t Gamble Around Words
Your main idea and message should be clear to the examiner. Do not keep on rambling around unnecessary things.
These were some of the best tips on how to write a good essay for UPSC. We will further talk about how you can classify the types of paragraphs of your essay. These can be broken down into 3 main types –
1. The paragraph can be in support of the topic chosen. You can give your opinions on why you think the given topic is beneficial or explain the points favouring the topic.
2. The paragraph can be against the topic chosen. You can also provide your views as to why you think that the topic, along with being beneficial, can also be detrimental. It’s like you have to give the pros and cons of the same topic.
3. The last type is neutral, or from a narrative point. Mostly used in conclusion and the beginning. You have to introduce the examiner to the topic, how you want to approach it, and what you took away.
So, I hope you get the answer to your question “How to write Essay in UPSC?”. If you want further help from our experts, you can join our UPSC course. We will provide you with mentorship and guide you in the right direction. All the best to all the IAS aspirants; we are proud of you!
