Organizing
Your Writing
This
handout provides tips on improving your writing for essays and explications.
The form I suggest is fairly basic; experienced writers may wish to try
other, more flexible frameworks for composition, but this method is clear,
straightforward and reliable for any topic.
The most important prerequisite for good writing is, of course, good
ideas, but the lucid and organized presentation of those ideas is crucial.
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1 |
The basic essay structure,
which you may remember from high school, is an introductory paragraph followed
by three or more expository paragraphs and a conclusion.
The key thing to remember is that this is a highly structured and
formalized method. Every paper needs
a main idea (described in the intro paragraph); and every paragraph needs a main
idea, summarized in the topic sentence. Furthermore,
each paragraph needs to flow into the next (TRANSITION!!), and all of the
paragraphs need to be predicted in the intro paragraph.
A good way to achieve this is by making an outline.
Each entry (
Sample
outline:
I. Intro:
Smurf
society is radically patriarchal and misogynistic (anti-woman).
This is demonstrated in the limited roles allowed to females in Smurf
society, as well as in the patterns of male-female Smurf interactions.
II. Female Smurfs have limited roles in their
societies.
a.
In
a colony of several hundred males, there are only three females. (Where
are the females? Dead?
Imprisoned? Pushing vacuum cleaners?)
b.
These
females, rather than having their own positive identities, are defined according
to their differences from males, as indicated by their names: Smurfette, Mama
Smurf and Smurfeena.
c.
The
characters of these three females are simplistic fractions of a whole woman
(erotic woman, maternal figure, and tomboy, respectively) because, perhaps, the
males find "complete" females threatening.
d.
The
principle female, Smurfette, is an exaggeration of negative stereotypes of
"feminine" qualities, such as fearfulness, ignorance, and emotional
instability.
III. In interactions between the genders, females are
secondary.
a.
All
leaders are male. This patriarchal
tendency in the Smurf universe even extends to non-Smurf society, in which the
leaders of good and evil are a king and Gargamel (male).
b.
Females
take secondary positions to males in most scenes (Mama Smurf is always an
accessory to Papa Smurf).
c.
In
most scenes, the males initiate the actions, while the females react.
When the females initiate action, it is usually to make a mistake or
cause conflict.
IV. Conclusion:
Women in the Smurf world are allowed few modes of personal expression and
limited channels of development, unlike their peers, the Powder Puff Girls, for
example, or She-Ra, who have the freedom to play with gender roles and define
"femininity" in terms of their own, unique individuality.
F
In
the facetious example that I have given you, the main ideas are italicized.
The paper has a main thesis or argument, which is given in the intro, and
boldfaced. The two supporting
arguments are mentioned in the Intro paragraph, and then developed in paragraphs
II and III. Each of the supporting
arguments is in turn supported by specific examples from the "text."
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2 |
Supporting
your main idea
with
citations from the text is crucial in making a persuasive argument (and
in convincing your grader that you did actually read the text).
Not only do you need to introduce textual references, but you need to
explain their relevance and introduce them seamlessly into the body of your
essay. This kind of
"refining" work should be done at the level of the rough draft, rather
than the outline. The outline simply
clarifies your main points and gives you an opportunity to find and evaluate
your supporting points.
How to cite the text:
BAD (C/D):
Romeo
and Juliet is about inter-generational conflict.
Romeo and Juliet fall in love and their parents won't let them get
married so Juliet pretends to kill herself and then Romeo kills himself and then
Juliet kills herself for real.
OKAY (C):
Romeo
and Juliet is about intergenerational conflict.
Romeo deceives his parents. Juliet
fights with her parents. They kill
themselves and cause their parents grief.
GOOD (A): Romeo
and Juliet is about inter-generational conflict. Traumas
resulting from misunderstandings between parents and children happen throughout
the play. In the first act, Juliet's
parents arrange a marriage for her without considering Juliet's feelings, which
leads to and ugly rupture later in the play.
In another instance of tension between the values of the different
generations, Juliet's father, who always expects the younger generation to
follow his lead without question, harshly upbraids Tybalt for his aggression
towards Romeo. This disjunct between
parents and children occurs in a less dramatic way in Romeo's family than in
Juliet's; his parent's in Scene I confess to being estranged from their son's
emotional life, which obtuseness contributes to the final tragedy.
F
The
first sample consists of undigested plot summary.
It doesn't break the evidence from the text into discrete units, nor does
it explain how the evidence relates to the argument.
F
The
second sample uses particular examples, but doesn't elaborate on why they are
relevant. In addition, the examples
are not very particular.
F
The
last example is highly detailed , and demonstrates how the issue of
"inter-generational conflict" recurs throughout the play.
Notice also that it is longer. A
good answer is often longer. Answering
a question thoroughly takes up more space!
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3 |
The final action needed to turn out a really good paper is to take it to the next level. Or,
in classic English Dept. parlance: "So what?"
Whenever you make an assertion, particularly when you are formulating
your main thesis, ask yourself why your assertion is interesting or relevant or
worth the trees that were chopped down to make the paper on which it is written.
Thesis:
"Hamlet
is about mortality"
Ask yourself:
So what?
What is Shakespeare saying about
mortality?
How does the theme of mortality
interact with other themes?
How does this theme affect the
development/conclusion of the play?
How does it relate to other
texts?
What is its relationship to its
historical period?
Etc., etc., etc...
After asking these questions,
you will develop meaty thesis statements like these:
·
"In
impairing Hamlet from carrying out his filial duty, fears of mortality lead to
guilt and murder."
·
"Hamlet's
obsession with mortality prevents him from exhibiting his true nobility through
most of the play; his final acceptance of mortality allows him to extract a kind
of triumph even from his ultimate defeat."
·
"Although
the play does not solve the mystery of mortality, Hamelt inspires acceptance, which may account for that play's
superior popularity relative to King Lear,
in which death ushers in a new, nihilitic world."
·
"Hamlet
was a true Renaissance man; his
fascination with death is the flip side of the Renaissance's love of the
temporal, while his unabashed introspection is a symptom of the period's
exaltation of the individual."
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4 |
The
final step is one most students dread, and the one many literary neophytes
stumble over: the Conclusion.
Contrary to popular belief, the Conclusion is not merely the place where
you try to find synonyms for everything you said in the Intro.
Rather, it is the chance to elegantly summarize your arguments and
introduce that last humdinger of an idea which the evidence your paper has given
clearly points to. This is also a
place to take it to the next level. Tie
your argument in to other issues. Draw
in another text. Note a relationship
to a historical trend. Show
how your argument has real world applications.
In the Sample Outline I gave you above, I used to conclusion to suggest
that there are better female role models than the Smurfs.
In a longer version, this observation could either be used to highlight
the inadequacies of the Smurf universe more exhaustively, or to advise parents
away from the Smurfs more vehemently. Whatever
the suggestion is, it should be one that is almost self-evident from the
information you have given, not a controversial assertion that would require
four more paragraphs to be justified.
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Addenda |
Always use clear transition sentences between paragraphs.
These should connect the two paragraphs and clarify to the reader why
they occurred in the order they did. Avoid
disconnected laundry lists of observations.
Each paragraph also needs a topic
sentence (often the same as the transition).
A paragraph should be about 1 single idea:
think of it as an ideological or philosophical unit, or installment.
It should be unified and cohesive, and its single idea should be clearly
indicated by the topic sentence.
Always use transition words between ideas within paragraphs to indicate the
relationship between the ideas. These
include: although, in addition, likewise, moreover, similarly, such, yet,
however, instead, nevertheless, in spite of, on the other hand, not only, after,
before, later, now, subsequently, then, henceforth, first, second, finally, as a
result, because, consequently, for since, therefore, thus, because, since,
before, after, when, even though, in order that, while
Avoid using words of whose meaning you are unsure
– use the thesaurus warily – it can be a pitfall.
Clear and simple is preferable to ornate and inaccurate.