While you will probably write many essays throughout your academic career, it's unlikely that any teacher will assign you a manifesto. Just in case you ever want to be a politician, a policy maker, or if you just decide you have a great plan for the future that you want to write down, it's important that you know how to write your manifesto.
An essay is a short, informative piece of writing. It usually consists of five or more paragraphs that include an introduction, a body, and a conclusion. An essay's purpose is to inform a reader using four basic methods: description, persuasion, exposition, and narration.
While an essay may be written on projections for the future, most essays focus on events or stories that have already happened. Topics can range from science to literature and from fiction to non-fiction. A manifesto essay can meet the definition of both terms as long as the manifesto follows the basic structure for an essay.
A manifesto is a declaration of a writer's plans, views, and motives. These writings can range from a few paragraphs to hundreds of pages in length. There is no universal structure for writing a manifesto. The intention of a manifesto is to inspire, whether it's made public for other readers or only meant to be read by the writer.
Writing a manifesto means writing down your goals, your purpose, and your plans for the future. Political candidates often publish manifestos publicly so that voters know what their views are, where they stand on specific issues, and how they plan to govern and address social issues. Companies and organizations often have a team write a manifesto, or mission statement, as a way of solidifying what the groups' different goals and agreed-upon purposes are. A personal manifesto is a piece of writing that some people use to help keep them focused on meeting their goals.
Some very famous manifestos have changed history. For example, the United States' Declaration of Independence is a manifesto written by the founders of the United States that laid out their intention to become a sovereign country separate from England. Karl Marx's The Communist Manifesto defined a political system that gained immense popularity in some parts of the world upon its publication. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s famous "I Have A Dream" speech was a spoken manifesto.
It's not likely that your essays will change the world, but your manifesto certainly can.