Why We Need To Write Essays
And more importantly, why they should be fun.
A thing I’ve become frustrated with in recent years is the increasingly prevailing idea that an essay is a piece of writing produced exclusively within the bounds of academia and/or on the pages of a broadsheet newspaper.
An essay, at its core, is a piece of writing on a subject — typically, it poses an argument or interpretation by the author, especially in response to another piece of writing or media. Much of the time, these arguments and interpretations can involve critical analysis and consideration of a text or piece of media.
A movie review where an author discusses their thoughts and feelings on the presentation of a film could be an essay.
A fan’s meta collating and interpreting the evidence for their favourite ship within a piece of media could be an essay.
A thread on Twitter where someone ranks their favourite items from a specific category could be an essay.
In short, people can and do write essays for fun — they just don’t call them essays.
There’s nothing wrong with academic writing, nor with journalistic writing, but what bothers me about the presentation of essays as something purely of and for these environments is twofold. In the first instance, it…
