How to form your essay title

More often than not, you'll get your essay title set for you by your course tutor. However, from time to time you'll find that you have to make up an essay title of your own. It's going to take a little bit of creative thinking. But don't worry, it's not that hard if you know what to do.

Create some tension

Autobots vs Decepticons. Coke vs Pepsi. Roe vs Wade. All the great stories come from a conflict. Your essay's going to need some conflict too. You need something to discuss. If it was just a question of agreeing or disagreeing with the essay title you could simply write 'yes' or 'no' and then go home.

Which, I think we can all agree, would be nice. But you can't. So you're going to need some tension. Let's take a media studies example. Some newspapers are moving their content to a pay-per-view model. OK. So far, so boring. Let's do a quick Google. What do we find? On the one hand, Rupert Murdoch - the owner of News Corp - says having free newspaper websites is 'flawed'. On the other hand, a CNET poll says that most consumers don't want to pay for online content. So what will happen? Who will win? And there's your essay title:

"News Corp want to charge for online media content, but most consumers indicate that they are not willing to pay. What is the future for internet news?"

You can write most of an essay by asking, and answering, three questions:

What's happening?
What happened that led to it happening?
What's likely to happen next?

You can adapt these questions for any subject - let's say history. You simply ask, what happened, what led to it happening, what happened next - and what might have happened next?

Try to make it interesting

Don't think of your essay as a boring, fusty bit of academic work - think of it as a living, breathing piece of writing that's as relevant as an article in a magazine you bought yesterday. You're the one in control of your essay - if you let it become tedious and irrelevant, that's what it will be. On the other hand, if you get excited about it and you write about things that are interesting to you, the person marking it will appreciate that, and most likely will be an excited and interested reader.

So what are you interested in? Maybe you can see a link between the Wars of the Roses and the modern conflict between Republicans and Democrats in America. OK, maybe you can't - but make the comparison, and you've got somewhere to start your essay. Maybe you think the development of modern-day psychoanalytical technique's a little bit like the X Factor (of course, it isn't…but wait! Look at the way different styles and schools developed after Freud's death, and different practitioners became famous or popular for a while, then dropped out of favour with the public. Doesn't sound so silly now, does it?).

Have fun. Compare ideas and see where it leads. Work with what interests you - it will show through and lead you to other areas of interest, too.

Use a working title

You don't have to stick with the title you started with. As your essay progresses you will undoubtedly find things you can use in your title. So if you're really stuck, start with something not quite so serious - "Francis Fukuyama is stupid," let's say. Now, there are lots of historians who think that Francis Fukuyama is stupid, although they probably don't say so in quite so many words. There are also lots of historians who think that Francis Fukuyama is great. In fact, there are people who think pretty much anything. There are people who think Elvis is alive and well and living on Mars, but let's not worry too much about them. Take a couple of historians from each camp and compare what they have to say. Quite quickly we can move from "Francis Fukuyama is stupid" to "While the arguments made in The End of History are compelling, subsequent political changes showed them to be fallacious. Discuss the events that led to Fukuyama's conclusions, and the events that then disproved them." And there's your essay title.

One more time - have fun! Writing your own essay title can seem a little bit daunting, but in fact it opens up a whole lot of possibilities for you to play with ideas. Don't be scared of getting it wrong - you can always rewrite.

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How to form your essay title

Create some tension

Try to make it interesting

Use a working title

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