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Generating new academic essay topic ideas

Along with organizing an essay, one of the most challenging aspects of writing an essay is deciding on the topic. In many cases, the class instructor will assign topics, but students usually need to decide on the focus of the topic. For example, if your instructor assigns an essay about friendship, you will need to decide how you want to approach the topic. Since “friendship” is a rather large topic, you will need to narrow it down to a topic that can be developed in an essay. You might focus on how friendship helps defeat depression or how friendship with animals can help elderly people live longer and healthier lives.

When you can create an essay with an unusual topic, your instructor will be more likely to be interested in what you have written. When your instructor is interested, you are more likely to earn a top grade, even if you have an occasional error. Unfortunately, coming up with an unusual and interesting topic is challenging. Fortunately, there are many ways to develop new academic essay topics that can be enjoyable to write and to read. Here are a few tips:

  1. Write about something you know: You will be surprised how many thing you know that other people do not know. Maybe you know yoga or you have an interest in comic books. Whatever it is you know try to apply it to the general topic your instructor assigns. So, if you are supposed to write about friendship and you love shopping, you can write about how shopping together can help develop strong friendships.

  2. Make the topic arguable: Since all essays are persuasive in nature, even how-to essays, descriptive essays, and narrative essays. Each essay will require a purpose statement. If you just write about friendship, you do not have anything to argue or defend. But, when you add something you know, you can automatically make it arguable, even your topic is not a life-or-death arguable topic.

  3. When in doubt, do a search: If you are stuck on a way to craft a new academic essay topic, look around you. One way to get inspiration is to do a quick image search. If your topic is friendship, type it into the search bar and see what images you get. Scan through until you find something that inspires a topic. Creating an unexpected topic will make writing your essay more enjoyable to write.