How To Write An Investigative Essay Or Feature Article

What Are The Investigative Essay Writing Techniques?

Investigation essays are essays that seek to uncover some facts or information. They are similar to research papers and are incredibly important in some fields, including the sciences. However, investigation essays can be about questions in any discipline that empirical data can answer, and finding out the answer does not necessarily have to require experiments. Below are useful guidelines by iwriteessays.com

Before writing

ü  Start the process by asking a question that you want to answer—a question that’s not too broad and not too narrow

ü  Do not look only for sources to support what you already think (or think you know) about a topic—be open to learning, and to complicating your discussion.

ü  Take careful notes, including your own reactions, summaries, paraphrases, and questions about the articles and book chapters you read

ü  Consider your audience: whom in particular would you like to read your article/essay?

Putting it together—you need:

Context—i.e., how you will frame your discussion

 Background: lay out the groundwork necessary for readers to understand key concepts and issues, including defining terms as needed. Note: While you may provide some of it in a chunk (think of Marcia Angell’s ¶ how the brain and neurotransmitters work) you will probably also need to introduce some of it as you go—large chunks of technical language and concepts are hard for readers to digest.

• Content

 If you are struggling to know what to say, you probably have not read enough. As Elise Hancock reminds us, we need to know more than we are going to write, to write something confident and worthwhile.

• Make distinctions and comparisons between or among issues, explanations, points of view
• Include a variety of good evidence:
• Examples, including stories & scenes and studies
• Facts & statistics,
• Comments from writers and experts,
• Personal observations and/or those of professors, classmates, friends and movies
• Include evidence on more than one side of a question; anticipate readers’ or experts’ questions or criticisms. (We call this counterargument.)
• Your own reasoning—in the way you direct readers’ attention, make comparisons, ask questions, and provide emphasis, link ideas
• Keep coming back to the question you are trying to answer (and, if it is an essay, keep building toward your thesis—the answer to your question.)

Good writing!—i.e., clear, vivid prose that uses images, metaphors and analogies, and other rhetorical devices to invite readers in, keep them interested, and make them happy to be reading and learning.