In English class (am not from English speaking country) and exams, I always pick the fiction essay category. The school here (back 20 years ago, dunno how they do it now) has formatted essays (like writing a (in)formal letter, or a report) choice for easy marks. I don't like writing those. For what it's worth, I got on average A's on my English exams. There's a minimum word count to reach for free essays, and I used to get comments from my teacher to cut it short and not go past double the word count lol. Sadly I don't remember what that word count was. I am very thankful for my teacher for encouraging my class to read and practice writing English so much. I even have a pocket thesaurus/dictionary I carry everywhere back then alongside whatever novel I was reading that time.

Point is, idk what my point is lol. Just sharing.

Edit: so okay maybe a point can be said about interest of the topic in writing (essays). I did bad on any other topic essays (geography, history, not science though I scored those essays).