essay writing prompts

Writing an essay: Topic ideas that will make your paper stand out


There’s a science to finding a topic for your essay that works for any subject and any grade you’re in. Students who hate choosing their own topics will benefit from learning this formula in order to come up with original topics that their teachers will love. Take a look at this method and try it for yourself the next time you have an essay assignment.

Consider the following topic as an example as one that was made up for a history essay.

  • Event: Famous speech
  • Subject: Winston Churchill
  • Setting: World War 2
  • Achievement: Inspired a nation
  • Year: 1946

Now let’s take a look at each one of these and see how you can identify them to create your own topics.

Event

The event element of your essay topic will focus on what happened. This is really the main action phrase that defines the topic in many ways. In our example, the event is a famous speech given by Winston Churchill. The speech is a cause, and the cause set off a chain of effects which we will discuss later.

Subject

The subject refers to the person or object involved. If your essay is about how the sun photosynthesizes plants, then the sun and plants would be considered the subjects.

Setting

Usually the place or circumstance, make your setting known in your paper. This is so that you give the reader an idea of what your essay is actually about, or where it took place.

Achievement

This answers the question of what the subject did—or what was done to it—to cause a reaction. This can also be seen as the ripple effect caused by the event as mentioned above.

Year

This is obviously the time from wherein your topic event has taken place. This is an often neglected part of essay titles, but consider using it in your next one to give your reader a peep into when your essay took place.

Don't let the word ‘year’ throw you off. It just refers to time. A topic example of, When Jimmy found out about his family’s new restaurant, shows ’when’ as the time word.

The end product of your ESSAY

Winston Churchill: His famous 1946 speech during World War 2 that inspired a nation.

You can use this same method for your topic. Try it now.