7 Ways to Improve Your Essays

Some might find it funny, taking essay writing tips from a generative AI company, but who better to learn how to write better essays from than a technology programmed to write human essays for you?

StealthGPT knows essays. We know what academics love to read. If you want to write powerful, persuasive, academic essays then this guide will give you the 7 keys to unlocking your best writing.

So, what are the qualities that make a good essay? It’s not a collection of qualities ranging from the basics, like syntax, diction, grammar, style, and formatting to deeper considerations like persuasiveness, the hook, argument building, and more.

Throughout this guide, I’ll show you what StealthGPT generated using its Stealth Writer tool as a sample.

Table of Contents

• Key 1: Five Basic Concepts

• Key 2: A Strong Thesis

• Key 3: The Hook

• Key 4: Building an Argument

• Key 5: Transitions

• Key 6: Counter Arguments

• Key 7: Conclusion

• Conclusion

• FAQ

Key 1: Five Basic Concepts

I know it’s a little misleading, telling you one tip is understanding five concepts, but I’m going to make this quick. There are five basics you need to take into account when starting your essay and I don’t need to write a whole essay to explain each of these. They are:

• Form: The logical order of your essay. Make sure your essay flows from introduction to body paragraphs to conclusion which tightly wraps up your essay with a bow.

• Writing Style: Don’t be boring. Good writing expresses a persona that highlights writing skulls including vocabulary, rhythm, artfulness and fluency of English.

• Conventions: Punctuation, sentence structure, and grammar. If your essay is lacking in these basic conventions, it doesn’t matter how much style and credibility you’ve injected into your essay, readers won’t take it seriously. Ensuring you stick to conventions is as simple as proofreading.

• Supporting Documents and References: Academic writing always considers your resources and citations. You want to demonstrate proof of intensive research with references and quotations with proper citation to whatever format you’re using be it MLA, APA, or Chicago.

• Topic: Know your topic or essay question. Know the argument you’re making on behalf of that topic. Know the resources that will help you build that argument. Don’t come into an essay unprepared. All these things need to be known to you well before you start. Brainstorming is a serious step in the essay writing process that you will need to do before diving into your first draft if you want to write an effective essay.

You will find all these conventions present in Stealth Writer’s essay:

Perfect punctuation and grammar. No spelling mistakes and even a personalized writing style and word count requirement if you ask nicely.

Key 2: A Strong Thesis

The thesis statement is the most important element of any essay. It is the main point or claim of your essay. Usually, a thesis appears at the end of the essay’s introductory paragraph with each body paragraph logically building upon your argument to support that thesis afterward.

A good thesis is arguable, not description of a subjective reality. The point of your thesis and essay at large should be that the read may be able to argue with the point of your thesis until you persuade them with the argument you present and support in each following paragraph.

Before choosing a thesis, you should consider if it’s so obvious that people wouldn’t argue against it or if it’s so simple it wouldn’t require an entire essay to argue.

Unlike each of those previous five conventions, I could write an entire essay about what makes a good thesis. Here's a Harvard article about writing a thesis that I found helpful.

Key 3: The Hook

An essay’s introduction is more than just the piece of writing where you place your thesis, it’s the essential lure you’re gonna use to seduce readers to start and finish your essay. You need to learn how to hook your readers by baiting them into reader further. This includes not revealing everything right away, build upon a mystery by choosing language that leads the reader one breadcrumb at a time.

Your introduction shouldn’t just include a thesis but sentences that hook your readers by giving them unexplored lines of inquiry toward your thesis that absorb them into your writing.

Writing a hook can be difficult but thankfully, the College Essay Guy has you covered too.

Key 4: Building an Argument

Separate your argument into points. Any element of your argument a reader may dispute should be a separate body paragraph for you to persuade them.

Each point of your argument will require a body paragraph following your thesis. Each body paragraph will require a topic sentence. Topic sentences need to present an argument linked to the central idea in our thesis that you build upon in the rest of the paragraph.

Now once you’ve made your argument, you need to provide relevant evidence. This is where you use proper citations without plagiarism to convince your reader. Evidence isn’t all you’ll need though, once presenting them with citations, you will need to analyze what you’ve cited to appeal to your point. In other words, tell us how the evidence supports the topic sentence of your paragraph.

Using Stealth Writer’s new In-text citations feature, you can input as many quotes as you need and it will automatically write them out in whatever format you require. Here’s how we put it to use in our essay:

As you can see, any quote can be linked back to its citation which you can either input manually or automatically using this feature.

Key 5: Transitions

You essay writing skills alone aren’t enough to lead your reader through an essay. Great essays need to leverage content and information to transition from one paragraph to the next or one sentence to the next.

An important method to utilize when transitioning to a new idea is to jump off introducing that new idea by relating it to an old idea you’ve already mentioned previously. You can compare or contrast the new idea to the previously mentioned one. You can agree or disagree with the old idea using the new idea. You can show cause and effect relating the old to the new idea, or you can explain the old idea using the new idea.

Simply presenting new information to the reader without giving them a base of familiarity is off putting and often too complicated to follow for readers.

Key 6: Counter Arguments

Because you’ve chosen a thesis that is arguable and you’re trying to persuade readers to your position, there is no better method of getting them onboard with you than first acknowledging then debunking and dismantling the counter arguments to your point.

Always be considering counterarguments to conclusions you’ve drawn from evidence, assumptions you’ve made, evidence you haven’t presented, and an alternative interpretation of your evidence. Because readers will always be thinking of different counterarguments to your points as they read, you shouldn’t just be adding them into your work once you’ve completed writing your essay and building your argument.

Writing a counterargument needs to dispel any standing it has in your readers mind. First, you have to present the counter argument. Then you have to counter that argument and explain why either the counterargument is flawed or too weak to undermine your argument. Be mindful of how you present a counter argument, saying things like “nevertheless my argument still stands” diminishes the credibility of your counter.

Key 7: Conclusion

Each discipline has different standards for what makes a good conclusion but in any case, what makes a bad conclusion is just a simple summary of what you’ve already stated throughout the essay. What you want to do in a conclusion is address two aspects to an argument the “so what” and the “now what”.

Address the “so what” by setting the stakes that depend on your arguments persuasiveness. Then leaver your readers with the “now what” by addressing how they can now see the issue in a new light after your argument, what questions can be raised following the research and argument constructed that couldn’t have been made at the beginning of the essay, what larger context is your argument a part of, or what actions can be taken in light of your argument.

That’s how you tie your essay up into a perfect bow, instead of just summarizing the previous sections.

Conclusion (of this guide, not your essay)

Implementing these tips into your next high school or college essay will have your professor thinking you’re a better writer. Whether you use an AI writing tool or just good old fashioned research and writing to make that essay, these seven keys will improve your output.

If you’re interested in subscribing to StealthGPT, students only require a student email to have a discounted rate of $0.99 for the first month. You can visit our pricing page to see what plan is best for you.

FAQ

Is Using Generative AI Plagiarism?

Traditional plagiarism is stealing someone else’s words or ideas then not providing proper credit or crediting yourself. Because generative AI generates original content, you are not stealing anyone’s words or ideas when using it. However, academic institutions still consider the use of AI as a ghost writer for academic writing as academic misconduct under the pretense of “AI plagiarism”. You can learn more about the ethics of AI in academia from our blog post.

Who Uses Generative AI?

A report suggests that half of students are using generative AI for school work now but the software isn’t limited to academia. Professionals use AI writing tools for SEO, blogging, and social media just like students use it for essays and assignments. Funnily enough, faculty use it as well for a variety of tasks from creating curricula to syllabi.

What Is Undetectable AI?

Because AI detectors have been implemented by most universities, undetectable AI software like StealthGPT was created so you can generate human-like writing using AI. Previous to this, Chatbots generated text that was a dead giveaway as far as its authorship went, now by duplicating the trends of human writing like the complexity and randomness of word choice, sentence structure, and sentence length, undetectable AI tools can generate text that is indecipherable from human text to both AI detectors and professors alike.

If you want to learn more about how to make AI text undetectable our blog provides all the details.