How to Use ChatGPT to Write an Essay?

After the launch of generative AI or ChatGPT, the world has seen many changes in every sector of life. It has revolutionized the writing industry, and many people are using it to enhance the quality of their work and get cheap essay help online.

The secret lies in the instructions or prompts you write for ChatGPT. If the prompt is well-written, ChatGPT gives excellent results. Otherwise, it gives generic content that might not be very effective.

Here, we have compiled a detailed piece to give instructions about using ChatGPT to write your college essays. You can incorporate these tips into your daily practice and utilize the full potential of ChatGPT for your tasks.

However, you must consider that many colleges and universities have strict policies of not using AI or ChatGPT to write academic essays or assignments. Always read about your institute’s policy before getting assistance from AI.

Best Tips and Tricks to Use ChatGPT to Write an Essay

Following are some proven tips and tricks to get better results from ChatGPT.

1.     Topic selection from ChatGPT

Either you can select the topic yourself or ask ChatGPT to brainstorm some of the best potential topics for your essay.

You can go as broad or specific as you want. The standard practice is to let ChatGPT find topics itself, and then you pick the most suitable topic to generate more specific topics. You can use this process to come up with 3-4 potential themes to select the best one.

2.     Creating an outline (You Vs ChatGPT)

The best way to use ChatGPT to write an outline for your essay is to write it yourself first.

Put all of your efforts and understanding of the essay outline into it. Classify the structure into headings like introduction, body paragraphs, and conclusion. You can also write some relevant points under these headings. It will give you an idea of what you should write under these headings.

Then, you ask ChatGPT to write the essay outline. You can instruct it to make it short or detailed, as you prefer. ChatGPT can write content in any way you want it to. You have to write prompts in your unique style.

When it gives you a generated outline, you must edit and compare it with your own. Pick the best from both outlines and create a final version. It should target all the topics/sub-topics of the essay question.

3.     Finding the right sources

We can use ChatGPT to make the research more comprehensive and detailed. You can prompt ChatGPT to explore the best relevant case studies, research papers, websites, and blogs that will make your content more comprehensive.

However, you cannot rely on the chatbot entirely, as it sometimes produces incorrect results. It has limited information that cuts off after September 2021. Hence, you cannot get the latest and updated data from ChatGPT. However, its paid version, ChatGPT 4, can fetch information from the internet.

Still, the best practice is to get references from ChatGPT and then do your own research related to it. The chatbot can only give you the URLs from where you can get the latest articles and research.

4.     Create content for each section

Once you have finalized the outline and created a structure, you can prompt ChatGPT to create content. Create a best prompt by incorporating the information you want to include in the essay.

You can do this in two ways.

The first way is to let ChatGPT write the entire content in one go. And the other way is to write different prompts for different sections. Many experts suggest the latter method to get the best results because it will allow you to edit and customize the prompt as you want.

5.     Make ChatGPT your assistant editor

Now, you have the results produced by ChatGPT. The next step is to edit the content extensively and make it more humanized. It should have your personal touch. The robotic language and impulsive words may sound unnatural. So, avoid copying the entire AI-generated content.

You can pre-write your best-performing prompts and use them every time you need to edit the content of a section or an entire article. This process will take a while, and after several trials and errors, you will get a refined prompt that will eventually give you the best results.

When you are done with the big picture edits and revising, it’s time for the line editing. It includes correcting the grammar, sentence structure, paragraph structure, and other minor errors you might have missed unintentionally.

6.     Add more examples and case studies using ChatGPT

After that, you can explore more examples and case studies to add to the essay. ChatGPT is excellent at coming up with analogies, scenarios, and examples that can make your essay more attention-grabbing.

You can pick and choose the most relevant examples to add more nuance and depth to your content.

7.     Paraphrase or summarize the content

Another beneficial hack is to use ChatGPT as a rephrasing, paraphrasing, or rewriting tool to enhance the quality of your existing content. If you have some paragraphs or sentences that need changing, you can prompt ChatGPT to change its tone, length, and style. In this way, you can optimize the content which is most relevant to your style.

More Tools Like ChatGPT to Write Your Essay in 2024

Many free and paid tools like ChatGPT can help you write exceptional essay content. You can prompt them to write, edit, check, and analyze the essay for better quality.

Following are some of the famous tools to use today.

1.     Jasper AI

Jasper AI is the AI writing tool that helps writing content according to your specifications. You can write product descriptions, captions, essays, articles, and pretty much anything you want. Its easy-to-use interface and intuitive document formation process are something you cannot get in ChatGPT. Therefore, many people use Jasper AI with ChatGPT to write their essays.

Key features of Jasper AI:

  • Plagiarism checker to ensure that content is unique
  • Variety of writing tones and styles
  • Document editing and formatting
  • Analytics and metrics to check the quality of writing

2.     Bard

Bard is launched by Google as its AI chatbot that can help you generate long-format content. From logic, math, science, language, and coding, it can do pretty much anything. Many students use Bard to generate more relevant and to-the-point content.

Key features of Bard:

  • Provide updated information
  • Quick replies that are more concise and answer the prompt directly
  • Can analyze images or videos and generate text
  • Personalize it with your style preference to generate text in your tone every time

3.     Bing AI

You can use Bing AI to write content in different styles, formats, and tones. It is Microsoft’s product that you can customize according to your writing style. What makes it a much more powerful tool than ChatGPT is that it can give excellent results for follow-up questions.

Key features of Bing AI:

  • It can handle complex instructions.
  • If you have already written content, you can summarize it.
  • Write detailed comparisons to enhance the depth of your content.
  • It gives real-time results and updated content.

4.     Writesonic

Trusted by worldwide brands and millions of students, Writesonic is a rapidly growing tool that you can use to write excellent content. From writing engaging stories to super-technical content pieces, it can write content in any style. Moreover, you can customize it to your own style to generate the best content every time.

Key features of Writesonic:

  • It has designated tools for writing long-format articles
  • Produces plagiarism-free content
  • Can brainstorm unique ideas and perspectives with the writer

5.     YouChat

It is a versatile writing tool that can help you generate content that is relevant and unique. Since it is connected to the internet and can pick up updated information, it is widely used by students. It can generate everything from short-format content to long-format articles. Also, it gives more authentic results every time.

Key features of YouChat:

  • Complete assistance to ensure a smooth user experience
  • Can help in detailed research and give quick results
  • Edit the content and explain complex concepts

Conclusion:

If you want to get ahead and utilize the AI tools for your essay writing projects, the best way is to master prompt writing skills. These tools make the writing efficient, error-free, and more nuanced. It also cuts the cost of hiring an expert editor in the initial phase of revising the essay. Secondly, you have to research the information yourself as well when you write the essay.

Using techniques like outlining and revising with the assistance of ChatGPT can enhance the quality of your essays exponentially.