School essays can often be difficult to write and dull to read. The DRAPES method is designed to manage essay planning and come up with ideas for content more easily. Each letter in DRAPES stands for a different component of a good essay: D is Dialogue, R is Rhetorical Question, A is Analogy, P is Personal Experience, E is Example, and S is Statistics. By using these components, along with some basic rules of writing an essay, support for ideas and topics will be easier to come by, and the essay will be more interesting and convincing.
Note: This article assumes you are writing a four-paragraph essay.
1Organize your thoughts. Use a sheet of blank, lined notebook paper to write down your thoughts. Each paragraph should have its own section on the paper. Every section except for the introduction should have the main idea of the paragraph and two or three DRAPES components. The introduction section should contain the topic of the essay, the reasons to back it up, and two or three DRAPES as well. There are six parts required to fully utilize the DRAPES, one for each letter:
- Use dialogue. Use a professional's opinion. This could be anyone, such as a doctor, your parents, or The President of the United States. You can use either a direct quote (i.e. "In a recent interview, Doctor Smith said 'Hats help prevent disease!'"), or reword the statement into the sentence (i.e. "Doctor Smith said that hats are good for people.") If you use a quote, be sure to put it in quotation marks.
- Use rhetorical questions. These are questions which can make the reader think, but not one they have to answer, such as "How could someone refuse a free television?". The idea is the statement makes the reader think, and if it is at the beginning of an essay, they will probably want to read on. These are good to have in an introductory or conclusion paragraph.
- Use analogies. Use similes and metaphors to emphasize your point. A simile compares two things with "like" or "as", such as "The water is as clear as glass". A metaphor says that something is something else, such as "The mean dog is a demon". You can also improve your essay by slipping in a few Anecdotes, or short stories that convey your message.
- Use a personal experience. Write about something that has happened to you that is related to the essay's main idea. For example, if you are writing about why divorce is terrible, you might say that you had divorced parents, and this made you depressed. The experience should be strong enough to bring the reader to agree with you.
- Use examples. Write examples of your position of the essay to make it look good, and use example which make opposing positions look bad, especially in a persuasive essay. Examples and personal experiences often are written together.
- Use statistics. Use percentages and ratios to support your position. Remember to tell where these statistics came from. For example: "According to a recent poll by students at Harvard, hats are 16% more popular than watches on campus."
2Write the introduction. The introduction is the first paragraph. This should do a few things:
- Interest the reader. Draw the reader into your writing. The first sentence should be responsible for this. Often, a rhetorical question is the first sentence in an article, because it is so effective in making the reader think and wonder what the topic is exactly about. Another good option is to use a famous quote.
- State the topic. Be sure that you give the exact topic or problem that the essay discusses. This should be stated in the second paragraph, after the reader has been drawn in. They are then will never be left guessing what exactly you are writing of.
- Give your position. Leave the reader in no doubt of what your position is on a topic. This is particularly important in a persuasive essay.
- Contain sentences using the planned DRAPES. You have already planned the DRAPES you will use, so write them down as sentences in the paragraph. Rhetorical Questions and Analogies (or Anecdotes) work particularly well for an introduction.
3Write the main paragraphs. These are the paragraphs in between the introduction and conclusion. Each paragraph provides support for one of the reasons you wrote of in the introduction. When writing these paragraphs, remember to:
- Stay on topic. Keep all of your information related to the essay's topic. Also, only write about the single reason the paragraph is supporting. You should only write about one idea in each paragraph. Do not write about reason two in paragraph one, or reason one in paragraph two.
- Use DRAPES. Again, implement the DRAPES that you planned into sentences in the paragraph. Dialogue, Analogies (or Anecdotes), Personal Experiences, and Statistics are the best components to use in the main paragraphs.
4Write a conclusion. The conclusion should contain everything the introduction said, except in different words and in a different order. If you used an analogy in the introduction, use a different analogy in the conclusion, if you had a rhetorical question in the first sentence, you may want to restate it as the last sentence, etc.
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- If you are writing a timed essay, such as a standardized writing test, the method still works. Feel free to make things, such as statistics, up, unless otherwise told by the teacher. However, don't go as far as saying something ludicrous, such as George Washington's approval of Ipods.
- Use good vocabulary. For example, instead of writing "It was fun" write "The activity was stimulating and exciting". This will also help if you have to write a high number of words in your essay.
- Make your article amusing and exciting to read. Try to make the reader laugh, cry, or smile. Most important, though, is to make them want to read more. An exceptional first sentence will get the attention of the reader, and will make them read through the essay.
- Never write the word "you" in an essay, except in a question. The reader can read this as an accusation. Instead, use "I" or "one".
- Be careful that you don't use too many quotes! Quotes should not be any more than 25% of your paper.