Cause and Effect Essay Writing Strategies

A cause and effect essay is used in order to describe how certain events lead certain things to happen, or how certain things have led events to happen in the past. There are many different subjects a cause and effect essay can be written about, including scientific phenomenon. However, they are especially common when used to describe the cause and effect of events in social situations, psychology, and even in world history.

There are many things to know in order to write a great cause and effect essay. One of the most important things that you can do is to have a strong basis and understanding of writing in general. Udemy’s Quality Paragraph and Essay Writing course can guide you through the process of crafting better, stronger paragraphs as well as through the process of drafting better essays overall, which can help you in all of your academic endeavors, and even into the world of business.

Brainstorming Your Essay

The first thing to do as you begin your essay is have a brainstorming session, in which you go over everything that you might include in your essay. If you have been given a prompt or a topic to write about, then you already have a starting point. If you need to come up with your own topic, you will have a little more work to do. Learning to brainstorm effectively is crucial for many types of academic and even business pursuits, so you may consider checking out Udemy’s Mind Mapping course in order to improve your brainstorming skills.

When coming up with topic ideas, you may consider starting with either a cause or an effect. For example, you may want to write an essay about what caused World War One. From there, you can look at what you already know, as well as your research, to get to the cause.

Now that you have a cause as well as an effect to write about you can do some preliminary research to determine whether there is enough proof that these things are linked to write your essay. For historical events, you may want to write out a timeline that shows a direct link between the cause and effect of these issues. Otherwise, group the various reasons the cause led to the effect you are writing about. This will form the basis of the outline that you will write for your essay.

Writing the Essay Outline

With your brainstorming done and your notes in place, it is time for you to start developing an outline for your essay. The outline will help you stay on track, and will make sure that your essay is more cohesive and does not jump around from place to place (which will usually help to improve your overall grade).

The introduction of the essay should fully discuss what you are going to be talking about, and the cause and effect that you are going to be linking together and attempting to prove.

Remember that you will need a strong thesis sentence for the introduction. The thesis is something that must be easily debated – you cannot simply state a fact. It should not be heavily opinion-based, either.

Once you have the basics of your introduction planned out, you will then take your notes from earlier and organize them into the body of the essay. Remember that you do not want to simply jump from event to event when writing the cause and effect. You will need to take the time to discuss why the cause had a direct impact on the effect, and even discuss why the effect could not have occurred without a different cause.

It is good to have at least three basic points to discuss, though more can be acceptable depending on the topic as well as the needed length of the essay that you are writing.

Finally, take the time to come up with the basics for a conclusion. In this conclusion, take the time to emphasis the strong correlation between the cause and the effect. It should not repeat the thesis sentence exactly, but should clearly reflect that your essay has proven your point.

Writing the Essay 

Now that you have your outline, it’s time to write the essay itself. If you’ve taken the time to develop a strong outline, this should be easy, as all you’re doing is filling in the blanks. Remember to pay attention to things such as your transitions. Each point that you should bring up should have some sort of transitional sentence that neatly flows into the next point that you’re going to talk about. While this is important with all types of essay writing, it’s especially important in a cause and effect essay, where you are trying to show how two seemingly different things are connected.

Then, once you have finished writing the essay, don’t forget to give it a second look and to edit it and rewrite it as necessary. Remember that if it feels stilted to you as you read it, you can always take steps to change it, and this will make the cause and effect much more clear to your reader, which is very important when it comes to helping you prove your thesis and make your point.

Udemy’s course on writing academic papers can be a great resource for any individual that is looking to develop stronger writing skills, whether they are in high school, college, or any other type of educational course where writing is required. Keep in mind that many different types of papers can technically be cause and effect essays, including research paper and thesis papers.

Those who feel that they need to start learning to write at a more basic level may find a course on grammar to be very useful them when it comes to improving their writing skills. Check out The Elements of English Grammar for a fun and informational course that can teach you everything you need to know to write better, which will provide you with great benefits in every aspect of your academic career.