Top 5 steps on How to Write a Cause and Effect Essay

10 Feb 2022 6 min read

Introduction

Essays are what helps you get your thoughts, analysis, and points across to a larger audience. A cause and effect essay is notable for inspiring critical thinking & scrutinizing various worldly issues and events.

What is a cause and effect essay?

A cause and effect essay aims to analyze the situations leading up to an event and its consequences – in simple words, it is the study of the cause and effect of an event or phenomena. These literature tools are utilized for debates and academic discussions over delicate and crucial topics. Cause and effect essays can be written by leaning towards a particular point of view, inspiring a thesis. An excellent example of cause and effect essay topics is the rising cost of fuel.

So, are you wondering how to write a cause and effect essay? You’re not alone, and this guide will help you get through.

How to write a cause and effect essay in 5 steps?

  1. Step 1: Exploring Your Topics & Choosing the Best

    Choosing from a list of cause and effect topics can be challenging, right? The best way to overcome this dilemma is by listing down potential topics. You can start by exploring various sectors or domains, something you will enjoy writing and researching. These domains can be anything from history, culture, society to science, economy, and sports.

    After deciding on a domain, you can go through a range of topics and sort them based on difficulty, appeal, and significance. Cause and effect essay examples:

    History: War on Terror, the decline of the Ottoman Empire, India’s road to independence.

    Society: LGBT rights & 4th wave activism, the wage gap, change in attitude towards migrants.

    Economy: Recession in the 21st century, rising oil prices, increase in the cost of living.

    Once you have zeroed in on potential topics, you can choose the best topic for yourself. Keep the following points in mind before proceeding with research:

    When wondering about how to write a cause and effect essay, question yourself – Is your chosen essay topic significant for the audience?
    Choose a topic on which you can conduct sufficient research from credible resources.
    Choose a topic you’re interested in; you will enjoy the research part and curate a logical cause and effect essay thesis.

  2. Step 2: Determine an Agenda for Your Essay

    A cause and effect essay should pique interest in a reader’s or listener’s mind and make them curious about the causes leading up to an event and the subsequent effects.

    Determining an agenda for your essay can produce a powerful thesis that can help put your views forward. Your selected topic for cause and effect essay may include multiple causes with one effect, one cause with multiple effects, multiple causes with multiple effects, or a chain of causes and effects.

    Choose the angle for your essay, meaning you can scrutinize your topic’s causes or the effects. If your topic is poverty, then out of multiple causes, you can choose to shed light upon a single cause you find essential. Similarly, you can shed light upon multiple effects of poverty. Such an exercise provides flow and logic to your cause and effect essay.

  3. Step 3: Do Your Research

    Good research makes good essays – perform ample research for your topic’s background; you will need it for the introduction. You will come across multiple research materials for causes and effects; always choose credible resources backed with scientific studies and expert literature.

    Frequently add statistical data, authoritative footnotes, and anecdotes to give weight to your thesis and inspire curiosity in your readers.

    Also, always add scientific references and links to credible resources in your essay, from where you have picked your material – this will help back your points up.

  4. Step 4: Structure Your Essay

    A solid cause and effect essay structure is vital; it determines the flow of ideas, a chain of thought in readers, and reflects logic and significance in your work. A good cause and effect essay format should be as follows:

    Introduction
    In the introduction part of your essay, write about your topic’s background – structure it in such a way that it reflects relevance with your audience or readers; this will help you gain your reader’s attention and make them more open to your views. When fishing for cause and effect essay topics, keep the above idea in mind.

    You can conclude your introduction by stating your claims or thesis statement, paving the way for the next section.

    Essay Body
    State your thesis in the upper part of your cause and effect essay body. What is a cause and effect essay thesis? In an essay thesis, you are supposed to state your claims – in a cause and effect essay; your claims are based around a particular set of causes preceding an event and a particular set of effects succeeding an event.

    Assemble your claims in such a way that they arouse interest and action in your readers. One of the best cause and effect essays examples is poverty, and you can state your thesis statement as follows:

    “Poor social hygiene is a major contributor to poverty leading to horrible quality of life and increased mortality. An improvement in government infrastructure, social system, and education can trump poverty.”

    As you can see, in the above thesis statement, we have stated the primary cause of poverty and its effects – this is followed by an idea intended for influencing the readers to take action.
    In the lower part of the essay body, you can include conclusive evidence in the form of scientific studies, statistical figures from authoritative resources, a list of valuable keywords and real-life stories to back your thesis.

    You should reference multiple resources and state more than a few facts to get your points across – this also helps in conducting your cause and effect essay in the correct direction, make a logical conclusion, and offer multi-view analysis.

    Utilize systematic transition words to shift from one explanation to another. Also, include antithesis points and varying studies; this will ensure fairness and a more comprehensive viewpoint.

    You can refer to cause and effect essay samples or get aid from writing services to produce the best material.

    Conclusion
    The cause and effect essay conclusion is an important part; you should summarize your work in the conclusion by referencing crucial points.

    Do not forget to conclude your essay with your thesis statement and back it up with conclusive evidence to reinforce your ideas.

  5. Step 5: Get to Drafting

    Now that you are ready with an interesting topic, your agenda for the essay, significant research, thesis material, and essay structure – how about we get to the actual drafting? Sounds fun, right?

    Your first draft can be intimidating; you might have to make frequent edits and refer to cause and effect essay examples to get an idea of where you are headed. However, your subsequent drafts should be easy because you will get an idea of the sentence structure, flow of ideas, presenting material with logic, grammar errors and transition points.

    Choose transition words, synonyms for putting forward ideas about causes and effects, and utilize plenty of examples in your essay.

    The best tip we can give you – get started, and things will fall into place.

Conclusion

Now that we have stumbled upon our conclusion for the How to write a cause and effect essay guide, we would like to reinforce an idea – choosing a suitable topic backed with ample research, a penetrating thesis, and a powerful essay structure accomplishes the task for you.