There is a compulsory Essay Paper in the UPSC Civil Services Main Exam. It carries 250 marks out of the total 1750 in written exam or UPSC Main Exam. Essay paper plays a crucial role in determining the final selection and rank of the candidate. The essay paper tests the personality of the individual and how he approaches any topic. The Essay Topics are very dynamic in orientation. One can write a good essay only when he can comprehend the idea of the topic.

Subtle glance at the topics of essay writing may make us feel rushed to begin writing it right away but it’s important to take some time to go through brainstorming step to make sure you have a clear knowledge of main idea and plenty of supporting points. In this step after having a good grasp of what the topic is asking, you should figure out how you will respond in a structured way.

Brainstorming is a method of generating ideas over a particular topic in a creative manner. It includes to thinking over a topic in maximum possible ways. It provides free environment to present individual ideas, without attracting criticism from any one. Every generated idea is recorded and considered as solution to a problem. There are certain brainstorming rules such as novel and innovative ideas, the quantity of ideas over the quality and uniqueness of ideas. This helps to consider all the possible dimensions of the topic or the theme. Then these dimensions are critically analyzed to by giving supportive or counter arguments and example. we will discuss it thoroughly in the brainstorming section.

After brainstorming over the dimensions, we may move towards the critical thinking or analyzing each section or point noted down.

After Brainstorming, we critically analyse each and every dimension.

Let’s see how to do it.

How to Brainstorm for an Essay?

• Develop a goal for our brainstorm, we can go into brainstorming without knowing exactly what we want to write about, but we should have an idea of what we hope to gain from brainstorming sessions so that we can make of writing more effective.
• To start with, we should brainstorm many ideas. We won’t necessarily use all of the ideas we come up with, but it’s helpful to have lots of ideas to choose from when planning our essay.
• Starting with bad or infeasible ideas might seem counterintuitive, but one idea opens up the possibility of another one. Make a list that includes all of your initial thoughts, and then we can go back through and pick out the best one later.
• Passing judgment on ideas in this first stage will only slow us down. So, let our thoughts unleashed. Students usually write better essays when they’re exploring subjects that they have some personal interest in. but what If UPSC presents us with an open-ended prompt, take it as an opportunity to delve further into a topic we find more interesting. The question is how? And the answer is the right rough work approach.
• Do you want to write a thought-provoking piece? An informative one? an engaging one? Think about the end goal of writing while we go through the initial brainstorming process.
• During brainstorming you just jot down any concepts that come to your head linked to the given topic, in note form, and in random order. Let us look at a simple example. The question may be:
• The Internet has revolutionized the modern world, but it has also created new problems and inequalities. Do you agree?
• We need to find ideas for both parts of the question the revolutionizing effect of the Internet, and also its problems.

We might come up with the following:

From above points it is clear that brainstorming helps you to come up with a concrete idea and points that helps a candidate to develop a contour around which the entire essay is written. The basic or central idea helps a candidate to evolve a structure and hence writing the essay without any distraction or swaying away from central idea.