What to Know about Writing a Philosophy Essay

LetterPile.com reports:

"Writing philosophy essays doesn’t have to be boring...The trick is to make it interesting for you. There are different ways you can do this...[Y]ou have to ensure that you cover everything that is asked of you in the essay question. Here is how...A dialogue is a discussion between two or more people (or perhaps even one person and their conscience, or a better self). It is written much like a stage play is written. So when you write a dialogue[,] imagine that you are writing a stage play. It requires some sort of narrative at the start to introduce the characters (and perhaps the scenario) and then a discussion between the characters...You can include more characters if you need to. Importantly, however, you need to ensure that you answer the essay question in your discussion. This will include some preparatory work before you go ahead and write your masterpiece. In particular, this will require analysing [sic] the essay question and some initial planning...The first thing you need to do is to consider what you are going to do in your essay. This is a very tricky question, for how do you know what to do!? But we can break it down into two broadly different types: [E]ither you want to argue for a particular position, or you are really unsure and just want to conduct a discussion on the topic. Either option is as good as the other. Just remember who you are writing for. Basically, you aim to write for an educated layman. You don’t assume that they have any prior understanding of the topic on which you are writing, but you can assume that they have some degree of academic acumen. A great deal of planning should go into your essay before you start writing it...What you end up doing here greatly depends on the type of essay you are planning on writing. Remember, this is only a planning stage. You will not yet be writing the dialogue, [but] only planning what you are going to write...Make each character in your play hold a different position...The idea is to create a kind of brain map of the points you want to cover in your essay, so the writing stage is easy (well, easy enough!)...Most essays have an introduction, main body and conclusion. A dialogue is no exception. Well, it should have something that resembles these things, but it is a lot different. You cannot tell the reader exactly what you are going to do in the essay, but you should lead the[m] through it (with the dialogue) so they can follow what you are saying...Make it fun! That is to say, make sure that you enjoy what you are doing. There is no point in making the effort to write your philosophy essay in a dialogue and not enjoy[ing] it! Other than having fun, you would do well to read other dialogues. Almost all of Plato’s work is in dialogue form, and there are other good dialogues around, also."