The TSR Community Awards 2025 are now live >>

How do you even start an essay when your brain’s just… blank?

I’ve had those days where the cursor’s mocking me. Best hack I’ve found is to scribble whatever pops into my head for 10 mins—random notes, half-baked ideas, anything. Then I nab a basic structure (intro, 3 points, conclusion) and mash it together. It’s messy, but it gets the ball rolling. What’s your go-to when you’re stuck staring at a blank page?

Reply 1

BCU Student Rep

Official Rep

Original post

by Teenakaur2401

Hi @Teenakaur2401

One of my techniques is to write down the question in the middle of the page and then write down anything I can think of around it, including ideas for my points and what each word of the question means.

The other thing that I do is spend some time reading things from the reading list to see whether that gives me any ideas for what I could write and reference.

Sophie.
BCU Student Rep.

Reply 2

LancashireRep5

Official Rep

Original post

by BCU Student Rep

Hi @Teenakaur2401
One of my techniques is to write down the question in the middle of the page and then write down anything I can think of around it, including ideas for my points and what each word of the question means.
The other thing that I do is spend some time reading things from the reading list to see whether that gives me any ideas for what I could write and reference.
Sophie.
BCU Student Rep.

Hey there!

My name is Siobhan and I'm a third-year student at the University of Central Lancashire. This is a great question, and I love seeing everyone's ideas! Personally, for me, I do one of three things:

•

I create a mind map of rough ideas and colour co-ordinate it into topics and sections so I can clearly see what I need to work on.

•

I meet up with an academic supervisor, lecturer or friend to go over the learning objectives and bounce my ideas off them. This helps me understand if I'm on track or not.

•

See if there are any examples of my assignments and see what they did well on or did not do so well on and learn from that. It is very important to just use this as guidance and not to copy every detail as you will lose your originality.

Siobhan (Student Ambassador for the University of Central Lancashire)

(edited 9 months ago)

Quick Reply

Latest

Trending

Articles for you

How to write an excellent personal statement in 10 steps

How The Student Room is moderated

To keep The Student Room safe for everyone, we moderate posts that are added to the site.

Try out the app

Continue on web

How do you even start an essay when your brain’s just… blank?

Quick Reply

Related discussions

Articles for you

How The Student Room is moderated