A“great ACT essay” and a “great essay” are not the same thing. Truly great essays take hours or even days to plan, research, and write. The ACT essay can’t take more than 30 minutes. That means you’ve got to write an essay that reflects your genius in less time than it takes to watch The Simpsons, right? Wrong.

The ACT knows that 30 minutes isn’t enough time for anyone, anywhere, to write a genius essay. Forget genius. Forget about trying to write an essay that changes the world. When the ACT says to you, “Here’s 30 minutes, write an essay,” what they mean is: “Write a standard essay that does exactly what we want.”

To give the ACT what it wants, you need to have a very firm essay-writing strategy in place before you sit down to take the test. You then need to apply that strategy to whatever question the ACT essay poses. In this chapter, we’ll teach you a strategy for writing a great ACT essay that will work every time, on any topic. It all starts with fast food.