10 Steps for Writing a Great SAT Essay

Since 2005 the SAT test has included an essay component to judge how well a student can develop and express ideas in writing.  According to CollegeBoard, the company that administers the test, each essay is scored by two “experienced and trained high school or college teachers” who won't know each other's score. They also won't know the student's identity or school. Each reader gives the essay a score from 1 to 6 (6 is the highest score) based on the SAT essay scoring guide.

Sounds kind of intimidating, but it doesn’t have to be if you approach the eating of this elephant in single bites. 

Here’s some suggestions to help:

1.            Have a strong point of view.  One of the three things the SAT essay wants to measure is your “ability to develop a point of view on an issue presented.” 

This means that even if the question posed is dull, your reaction to it cannot be.  You simply must take a side on whatever issue is presented.  If the question is, “Which is better, rocks or bricks,” and you’re thinking, “Argh, I don’t care.”  Change it around in your mind to “Your dog is ugly and lame, and mine rules.  True or false.”  Find a way to make it matter to you, if only for the 25 minutes allowed on the essay, because everything else flows from your opinion, and how you get it down on paper.

2.            Make sure you’re answering the question.  Since an off-topic essay will receive a score of zero, you’d be better off sleeping through this section of the test than trying to push the subject in another direction.  So, before you start writing, come up with two excellent reasons why you are correct and jot them down.  Then, as you write, stay focused, and ask yourself with every sentence, “Is this helping to develop my argument, and am I answering the question posed?” 

3.            Use a “Beginning, Middle, and End” Structure.  You have a strong opinion about the question asked, and a commitment to staying on point, but the blank page looks pretty scary.  Well, it doesn’t need to be if you look at it like four boxes (or paragraphs) to fill in.  The way you approach filling these boxes is illustrated nicely by an old rule of thumb for speech writing.  It goes, “Tell ‘em what you’re gonna tell ‘em.  Tell ‘em.  Then tell ‘em what you’ve told ‘em.” 

In a four paragraph SAT essay, “Tell ‘em what you’re gonna tell ‘em,” is your first box (often called the introduction).  Here you introduce your opinion and the two excellent ideas you've jotted down to support it.  Begin this paragraph with a strong declarative sentence that states your case in a simple, direct way.  Something like, "My dog is extremely attractive," will do.  Then take your two excellent reasons and lay them out in order (one sentence each).  You can stop there, and simply be done with the paragraph, or close with an acknowledgment of the opposition.  For example, "Some may believe otherwise, but I disagree because..." can be a good transition to the next box.  


Now it's time for more detail.  The next two paragraphs are where you develop your ideas.

Paragraphs two and three are the body of your essay, or the “Tell ‘em” part.  Here you take your two excellent reasons and elaborate for one paragraph each (more on this later).

In the final paragraph, also called the conclusion, you just tell ‘em what you’ve told ‘em.  A quick review of the argument you’ve made, and perhaps a final statement of your overriding opinion on the matter (a la, “Therefore, I believe the evidence shows that my dog is beautiful and totally unlame.), and you’re done.

 4.            Be aware of the clock.  You have 25 minutes to finish.  That’s plenty if you relax and get right to work.  Read the entire prompt.  Don’t rush through.  The time you take to digest the question and the author’s argument will be well spent.  When you’re done reading, look the author square in the eye and take a side.  You can agree or disagree, it’s up to you.  Then jot down those two great reasons why you are correct, and start filling in your four boxes.  We all have a tendency to daydream, and that’s fine.  We can get right back to that in just twenty-five minutes, after we’ve written a stellar SAT essay!

5.            Use specific examples from your reading, studies, experience, and observation.  That sentence is straight from CollegeBoard’s own grading criteria, and it is good advice for writing any essay.  What it means is back up your opinion with evidence.  If you start paragraph two by saying, “My dog's beauty is obvious to all who gaze upon her,” include clear reasons why.  Is her coat shiny, are her teeth white, is her bone structure symmetrical, does she have a fabulous smile?  Put it in there, in the correct the box (or paragraph).  But don’t overdo it, because an essay with one or two thoughtful, well-developed ideas is more likely to get a high score than one with a multitude of unrelated scraps of proof.

 6.            Develop your ideas logically.  All this means is, make sure A leads to B and then to C.  For instance, if I charged into your house and yelled, “A giant marshmallow just landed on the mall," and then said, “Man, baseball is fun,” you would probably feel a disconnect in my thinking.  This is because there is nothing connecting these two ideas. 

Ideas should flow from one to the other with bridges in between.  If I put “I used to eat marshmallows at the ballgame when I was kid,” in between the two exclamations above, they would flow better (though still not great) because there would be a bridge between them which has something to do with each.  A, B, C.  Beginning, Middle, End.  Follow this order when you’re developing your ideas and your reader (and grader) will be glad you did.

7.            No treading water!   Many academic essay writers hold an irrational belief that they can simply say the same thing over and over, in a slightly different way, and somehow fool their graders.  You can’t!  So don’t even try.  This ruse won’t work and it will, ironically, take at least as much time as saying something new with each sentence.  Think how bored you would get if your friend cornered you for 25 minutes and said the same thing over and over.  It’s the same thing in writing.  The SAT essay wants to see if you can develop a thought, and the only way to do that is to move on from where you started.  And if you don’t, you’re just running in place (or treading water).

 8.            In movies and essays, beginnings and endings matter most.  Screenwriters know that audiences need a reason to care about their story as soon as it starts, so they often begin their movies with a bang, literally.  This grabs the viewer's attention and instills a desire to keep watching. 

Remember the last film you saw that began with small talk and wandering aimlessly around?  In these poorly written movies, you get fidgety and wonder what the point is.  It’s the same in essay writing.  You need to start strong to grab your reader’s attention, and the way you do this is by stating your case clearly in the opening sentence of the essay, and at the beginning of each paragraph.  This will make people want to pay attention to you, and pull them forward in the reading.

And by the same token, you need to finish strong.  “Star Wars” is a great movie.  Cool opening, great character development, fun battles.  But if Darth Vader decided an hour in that he no longer wanted to be a villain, and instead called a truce with Luke and opened a hot dog stand, you wouldn’t like “Star Wars” because that ending stinks.

Remember this in the closing sentences of your essay and paragraphs.  Make excellent, on-point statements to introduce and conclude your ideas and your writing will sing.

9.            Review and Revise  -  So much of writing is in the rewriting, and no one ever writes a perfect first draft of anything.  For this reason, use any leftover time to review what you’ve written for mistakes.  Clean up anything that jumps out, but resist the temptation to throw away huge chunks of text because the time limit simply does not allow for that. 

10.            How Do You Get to Carnegie Hall?  Practice, practice, practice.  The  CollegeBoard's website has excellent advice and practice questions.  You can review essays of every grading point (1 through 6), and practice answering sample questions from actual tests.  You should do this with a paper and pencil (required equipment on the SAT) because working on a computer makes revision easier, and just feels different than writing longhand. 

The multiple choice questions will help you to spot trouble in tenses and other frequently made errors.  It’s also a good idea to review this stuff with someone who can give you an informed and honest answer about your progress.  A big chunk of your grade on the SAT essay will include not just the stuff we discussed above, but also whether you can follow the conventions of standard written English.  Reviewing this material will help you get comfortable and confident long before the 25 minute clock starts ticking.

Of course, if you need assistance in your preparation for the SAT essay, you can always contact CaliforniaWritingCoach.com.  We will be happy to help.


*  Next week:  More on How to Write a Story

How to Write a Story, Part 4: Hurting Your Hero's Feelings

Okay, remember when we learned that all stories are about a character with a problem and how they solve that problem (or get beaten by it)?  Well that's still true.  But there's something else too.  The problems we discussed the other day are external problems.  That is, problems that occur outside of your hero's body.  A monster chases her.  A tidal wave closes in.  Bad guys storm the building where her husband works, or a dog can't remember where he hid his bone.  All of this stuff is external, meaning, it can't just be thought through.  Your hero has to interact with the outside world in order to find a solution.

Clear so far?  Excellent.

These external struggles are your plot problems.  You find one big one, like needing to escape from an island of man-eating dinosaurs (as in "Jurassic Park"), and from that you build your plot.

The other kind of problem that heroes' have is an internal problem.  That is, how they feel about the situation they find themselves in.  Or, how they feel about the plot problem. 

Bad action movies are wonderful examples of this because they're usually written by macho guys who can only portray emotion in the most obvious ways.  The heroes in these stories have usually been scarred by some similar situation, like, "I can't go into that building to rescue the hostages, because last time I did I got a dozen innocent people (including my partner) killed!"  The time between that episode and the one currently facing him will have been a period of intense doubt (and likely problem drinking).  They will have become bitter, and almost definitely will be refusing the call to action this time around.

All of this stuff is mental, or internal.  If the hero in this action movie just charged in without fear or consideration of what it all may mean, we, the audience, probably wouldn't register the problem as being particularly large (to him).  And the movie would be less interesting.  But if our hero is frightened and doubting himself, then the problem seems so much bigger, and the question isn't just will he save the hostages, it's will he stand up to his own misgivings and insecurities and find what he needs within to complete the mission.  Or, essentially, can this journey make him whole again?

Always remember that we build stories in an opposite way from how we handle difficulty in our real lives.  In this world we want to solve our problems fast.  In story telling we want to make those problems bigger and bigger and bigger before we solve them.  Giving your character an internal problem will help you do this while making your hero seem more like a real person, which allows your audience to sink deeper into the story.

So... pay attention while you're reading your favorite books or watching your favorite movies and television shows.  See how fast you can recognize the outside problem (the one that drives the plot) and the inside problem (the one that informs the character).  I'll bet that the sooner you have these answers (and hopefully believe them), the sooner you'll be enjoying the story.

Now go find your writing chair!

How to Write a Story, Part 3: Throwing Rocks at Your Hero

Okay, so you've been finding your writing chair and sitting in it for at least thirty minutes to an hour each day.  Very good!  And now, in addition to your list of awesome ideas, you know who your hero is.  Maybe she's a talking a bear who wants to be an accountant, a bad guy trying to turn good, or a princess who is desperate to escape from her castle.  It matters not at all, as long as you've decided on a hero and given him or her a problem to solve (or get beaten by).

Like architecture, ship building and rocket construction, stories have a basic structure.  The great news about this structure is that it is totally easy to understand.  As a matter of fact, it takes about one blog posting to get the essentials down.

The bare bones are these:

It's probably easiest to talk about story structure in movie terms.  Movies almost always have three three acts, and these acts have names.  Act One is called the Set Up.  Act Two is the Confrontation.  And Act Three is the Resolution.

In a two hour movie, this breaks down to roughly 30 minutes for Act I, 60 minutes for Act II, and 30 minutes for Act III.  Screenplays are about a minute of movie time per page, so they wind up being around 120 pages.  These are just rules of thumb, but what's important is the basic math of it.  The beginning is about 25% of your story, the middle is 50%, and the end is also 25%.

Here's what you do in each act.

Act 1:  Tell your audience who your hero is, how they live at the start of the movie, and then stick 'em with the problem.

Act 2:  Torment your character with their problem.  Have them use logical methods (the ones that occur to you) to get out of their fix.  And with every new attempt to solve the problem, make it worse.  Of course, you need to give your audience hope that things are just about to get better, but in Act II they won't (or else your story will be over).

The end of Act 2 should be the worst moment of all.  The last attempt to fix things should totally backfire and cost them everything; their hope, their possessions, their friends, and all else that matters in their world.  This is the low point of the whole story, so really make it awful.

Act 3:  Solve the problem in a cool and unexpected way, then show how your character lives now that she has overcome her struggle.

There's a little more to it, but this more than enough to get you started organizing the ideas you've brainstormed into the appropriate spots in your story.  And don't feel like your story has to be a movie or two hours long, or any of that.  Just use the math we discussed to break your plot into it's basic pieces.

And finally, there is a real easy way to remember all of this is:  In the first act you chase your character up a tree, in the second act you throw rocks at them, and in the third act help them climb down.  

That's it!  Now off to your writing chair.

How to Write a Story, Part 2: The Secret of All Story Telling

Okay, so I'm about to tell you the secret of all story telling.  No need to thank me, or even to keep this secret.  It's so simple, after I tell you you'll think, "Why didn't I already know that?"

Here it is:  All stories are about a character with a problem and how they solve that problem (or get beaten by it).  Generally speaking, if the character gets beaten by their problem, you are watching (or reading) a tragedy.  If the character overcomes their problem, well, it's probably a regular - meaning, "It all works out in the end." - drama or a comedy.

Some examples of tragedies are "Romeo and Juliet" and "The Perfect Storm."  Here the characters are faced with something like forbidden love or a massive tidal wave.  They struggle against these forces for the entire movie, play or book and ultimately lose.  Then we leave the theater feeling terribly sad, but perhaps illuminated about the nature of something - maybe love, petty vendettas, greed or... even nature.

In almost every other kind of story the hero wins in the end.  So... let's talk about that kind for a second.

The hero (our worm from yesterday) is just the main character of the story.  A fancy term for this character is the protagonist.  Conversely, the villain is called the antagonist (but more on that in another post).  The way to identify the hero in the movies you watch is to figure out who has the central problem, the one the whole movie revolves around.  For example, in The Wizard of Oz, Dorothy needs to find the Wizard so that she can get back to Kansas.  Sure, the Lion wants courage, the Scarecrow wants a brain, and the Tin Man wants a heart, but the reason we're on the Yellow Brick Road in the first place is because Dorothy needs to get home and only the Wizard can help her.  Any of her traveling companions could give up and slink back into the forest and we would still follow Dorothy to Oz to find out if she solves her problem.

Now the key to a good story is to make sure that hero is doing almost all of the work to solve his or her problem.  If they're not, then it will feel like they're just along for the ride.  And interestingly, if someone else is doing most of the problem solving work, the problem itself, and therefore the movie, is actually theirs.  Meaning, they are the hero, not the original problem stricken soul.

Let that sink in for a minute.

Okay, the very last thing to consider regarding your hero and their problem is this:  The problem needs to be big enough to sustain your story.  If your protagonist only has to walk to the end of the driveway to get the paper, well, that's too easy to sustain an audience's interest.  Now if they walk to the end of the driveway and a monster starts chasing them - then we're getting somewhere.  And if that monster turns out to be their long lost father, I think we may have the beginnings of a movie!

Alright, think about your hero while you're doing your brainstorming.  Let the ideas flow and write them all down, but while you're gathering these story telling elements ask yourself, "Who is my hero, and how do these fabulous new ideas I'm having affect or define her problem?"

And remember, make sure to find your writing chair for thirty minutes to an hour today!

Happy writing!

How to Write a Story, Part 1: Getting Started

Filmmaker and conspiracy theorist, Oliver Stone, apparently has a sign above his desk which reads, "Writing equals butt plus chair."  That pretty much says it all about writing.  Happily, though, this equation, some paper and a pencil are all you need to get started.  As a matter of fact, it's all you will ever need (though you will eventually require more paper).

Finding the time to write can be daunting.  There's a million other things to do, all of which seem like more fun.  But unlike many of the other arts, no expensive equipment is required (though I use a laptop, and you probably will too), nor any grueling training.  There are some basic rules of story telling, which we'll get into in tomorrow's post, but for now, all you need is something to catch the ideas as they occur to you, and a willingness to get crackin'.

So, what to write about?  Well, every subject is potentially a great one; and, conversely, each can turn out to be not so great.  A great story can be told from simply watching your dog play, and it's possible to write a real snoozer about robot dinosaurs in a shootout with zombie cowboys (Hold on, I may actually use that.).  The thing that makes you interesting and unique - your personality and point of view - is what will make your writing stand apart from everyone else's.  What will make it good is your willingness to continue finding that chair and completing Oliver Stone's equation.

"Okay, already" you may be saying, "just tell me how to get going and I'll take it from there."  Outstanding, here's five quick steps to starting your story:

1.  Find a quiet place and sit down with paper and pencil.  You will need thirty minutes to an hour, and a promise not to judge anything you write.  All ideas are good ones at this point, even if you don't know yet what you want to write about. 

2.  Let your mind wander.  This isn't math so there are no correct answers.  Concepts don't even have to be related yet.  Just jot down everything that occurs to you.  A flower, an ocean, a seagull, a rocketship.  It's all good, and you never know how these ideas may start to attach to each other.

3.  Start thinking about a hero.  Your hero doesn't need to have super powers, or even to be heroic.  If you want to do the superhero thing, then great, but you don't have to.  He or she can be a rock star, a tree, a worm, or a whale.  You just need a main character for all of your fantastic ideas to swirl around.

4.  Find out what your hero likes (and dislikes).  Interview your hero.  The amazing thing about writing - and I never would have believed this before I started doing it - is that eventually your characters will start talking to you.  Just like if you owned a real talking worm, your make-believe worm will begin telling you about itself; where it lives, what it likes to eat, who its friends are, and what kind of car it drives.  At this stage, just listen, and write it all down.  We'll send him off on a journey soon enough.

5.  Find your chair tomorrow.  When you're done writing for the day, leave your work alone.  Don't go back over it until tomorrow.  Remember that it's way, way, way too early to decide what's good and what's not.  At this point you are a farmer and your ideas are seeds.  And just as there's no way to look at a bag of apple seeds and decide which one will be the most beautiful tree with the most delicious apples, well...  You get the idea.

The most important thing is to just find that chair tomorrow, if only for a half an hour, sit down and keep grabbing ideas.  We'll get further down the road in the next post.

Hello, Young Writers!

S.E. Hinton

In 1965, S.E. Hinton was a sixteen year old living in Tulsa, Oklahoma.  She had been writing since grade school and decided to try her hand at a novel.  The book she started, and published two years later when she was a freshman at Oklahoma State University, was The Outsiders.  Today there are 14 million copies in print and it still sells more than 500,000 a year.

When I heard about this, I was fourteen and sitting in my freshman English class in Edmond, Oklahoma.  The Outsiders movie had just come out (and been a huge hit) and here we were about to study it like Shakespeare.  When the teacher told us S.E. Hinton wasn't even an adult when she wrote this book, I thought, "Hey, there might actually be a reason to pay attention in school!"  And the fact the she lived just an hour and a half down the road was almost too exciting to be true.

Well, I have followed that excitement about writing ever since, and have made a career writing all kinds of stuff, including novels, screenplays for movies and television, a couple of plays, blogs, and even a magazine article or two.

It's never too early to start taking your writing seriously, and I want to help you improve.  In this blog I'll offer advice on getting started, refining your work, and finding the central themes of your stories.  It's easier than you think.  And the great thing is, it's basically the same process whether you're writing a book, a screenplay, a college essay, an assignment for class, or just telling a story to a friend.

Writing is fun, and not terribly difficult to learn to do well.  Check in here a couple times a week for new posts, and if you need some tutoring help, I'm available for that as well (You can get my contact information on the sidebar.).

That's all for now.  Happy writing!