The Sixth Paragraph: A Re-Vision of the Essay

This article is a breath of fresh air to me. When I was first taught how to write an essay, I always rebelled in my mind and resented the structure and lack of possibilities I associated with essay writing. I was born a writer, so maybe I felt especially held back when given an essay as an assignment. In fact, when I first took the ACT, I opted into the writing portion, and decided I wanted to write four paragraphs instead of five. I was thirteen, and at the time I didn’t see the use of a conclusion. They were always the one frustrating part for me to write because I thought they were useless and utterly boring. When I was taking the ACT and not in a classroom setting with a teacher babbling in my ear to write five paragraphs, I took it upon myself to embrace the freedom I appeared to have and just not write the fifth paragraph. Naturally, this affected my score on the writing portion. I always wondered why essays had to be so strict – surely one can write effectively without such protocol! Luckily, Paul Lynch, who wrote this piece, agrees. After all, the earliest essays were so informal with fluid and free thoughts that they are not even considered essays anymore! Of course, knowing how to write a normal essay is quite useful academically (hence my ACT experience) but it shouldn’t hold people back as writers. You have to learn to wiggle around to loosen the straightjacket without being senseless or an ineffective writer. Teachers will always need you to write academic essays to “demonstrate your understanding” of an assigned subject. However, since everyone is spoon-fed this idea since elementary school, it’s easy to forget that we can also learn and “achieve understanding” through writing.

~ by Writing Art Life on August 29, 2011.