How to Write a Paper for College Literature Classes Tampa FL

Steps

1. Consider the text on which you are writing as a living entity, an organism which exists apart from its author. Do not even think about the author while you are writing your paper. You cannot begin to fathom the depths of an author's mind, so do not even attempt it. Few things make a literature professor more incensed than an undergraduate claiming to know why the author wrote a particular text or what he/she means by it. Let the text tell its story in your paper without providing a biography of its author. This step might seem counterintuitive because your thesis should provide a fresh look at the text under consideration, and of course you want to know why the text was written in the first place. Nevertheless, your task as a student involves unraveling the text itself and discovering what it tells you.
2. Look at all aspects of the text as hiding places for its secrets.
   1. Examine the characters closely as you read (and usually re-read). Ask yourself questions about their
      1. actions and reactions
      2. primary, secondary, and sometimes tertiary motives
      3. temperaments, likes, and dislikes.
   2. Study the text's use of time. Consider if it
      1. changes frequently from past to present (sometimes this trait indicates an instability that might be interesting to explore) or
      2. ventures into the future. Are there a lot of rhetorical questions asked by the characters or more subtly by the situations portrayed? In other words, are they unanswered (or unanswerable) questions? The text might be gesturing towards a theoretical approach you can take by studying the text in terms of literary theory.
   3. Use a tip from real estate: Location, location, location. Study scene shifts just as carefully as those of time. Is a method of transportation such as a train, automobile, airplane, etc., the primary scene of action? Ask yourself where the text wants to go with its story and why? If much of the story happens in the same place, perhaps the text wants to comment on the static nature of the characters.
   4. Consider the narration of the text. How many points of view are there in the story? If there is just one, try judging the reliability of this point of view. Question its authority and motives.
3. Use whatever method works best for you as a writer in getting your thoughts down on paper/computer screen. The important thing is to get them down. Either write an outline first or just hash out your ideas and then try to organize them.
4. Establish a provisional thesis. The thesis almost always changes as you revise.
5. Submit a first draft to your professor.
6. Follow his/her suggestions and let someone from the campus writing lab read your first revision.
7. Revise again. If you feel comfortable with your paper, turn it in, preferably, by the due date.

Article provided by wikiHow, a wiki how-to manual. Please edit this article and find author credits at the original wikiHow article on How to Write a Paper for College Literature Classes. All content on wikiHow can be shared under a Creative Commons license.