Editing your essay down to what matters

First drafts contain a lot of throat-clearing: setup, context, explanation of things the reader can infer. Cutting them is usually the single biggest improvement available.

Go through and delete every sentence that doesn't contain either a specific detail or a genuine insight. If a paragraph survives with two sentences, that's a better paragraph.

Then read it out loud. Anything you stumble over is a sentence a tired reader will stumble over too, and out-loud reading catches it faster than rereading silently.