Approaches
Approaches — argumentative · narrative · descriptive · expository
12 min read · Updated 2026-05-25
What are the four classical approaches to essay writing?
The four classical approaches to essay writing are argumentative, which takes a position and defends it with evidence; narrative, which tells a story and lets the meaning emerge; descriptive, which paints a scene in sensory detail; and expository, which explains a concept or traces an evolution. A strong UPSC essay is rarely pure — it picks a dominant approach and blends the others in cameo.
The story
In the 2017 UPSC Essay paper, candidates faced the topic "Joy is the simplest form of gratitude." One candidate — let's call her Mira — opened her essay with a clinical definition: "Joy, as defined by philosophers from Aristotle to Schopenhauer, refers to an emotional state of well-being …" Another candidate — let's call her Priya — opened with this: "My grandfather was 87 years old when he learned to read. He had spent sixty years pulling rickshaws in Pondicherry. The first sentence he ever read aloud to me, from a Tamil newspaper, was a weather report. He laughed for three minutes. I asked him why. He said, 'Because for the first time I know what tomorrow will look like before tomorrow comes.'"
Both essays were on the same topic. Both candidates had the same syllabus material. Mira chose an expository approach — explain the concept, define the terms, walk through the literature. Priya chose a narrative approach — open with a scene, let the meaning emerge from the story. Mira scored 88. Priya scored 152.
The lesson is not that narrative beats exposition. The lesson is that choice of approach matters more than mastery of content. A beautifully argued essay loses to a beautifully told one on a topic about joy. A beautifully told essay loses to a beautifully argued one on a topic about judicial review. Knowing which approach to pick — and how to execute it — is the second-most important skill in essay writing after structure itself.
Why this matters for UPSC
UPSC topics over the last decade have varied dramatically in register — abstract-philosophical ("Wisdom finds truth", 2019), contemporary-political ("South Asian Society is Pyramid of People", 2014), value-laden ("Happiness lies in the company of generous hearts", 2018), or analytical-policy ("Has the non-aligned movement lost its relevance?", 2017). The candidate who deploys the same approach for every topic — almost always expository — caps out at ~100 marks. The candidate who matches approach to topic routinely scores 130-155.