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A GUIDE TO WRITING PAPERS, by D.B.(reproduced by permission)
Here are a few hints to help you write successful essays. As obvious as any of these reminders might seem, such things slip one's mind all too easily in the heat of creative passion (or under the pressure of a deadline).
Remember: It is your responsibility to write so that you will be understood. You should always assume that your papers will be read by someone who has no access to your thoughts except the words you write. You will discover that it is dangerous to trust even a sympathetic reader's ability to guess what you intended to say. If what you write is unclear, ambiguous, or open to misinterpretations, it will make no difference that you sat down at the typewriter with your head full of brilliant insights. Besides, if you are not writing clearly, there is good reason to suspect that you are not thinking clearly either.
1. HAVE SOMETHING TO SAY.
The whole point of writing is communicating something. First, be sure that you have a firm grip on the problem you want to address in your essay. Secondly, you should have an argument. It needn't be anything earth-shattering and original, but there does need to be a point to it all. If "argument" sounds too intimidating, think of it as one big idea you want to get across. A paper should never read like a laundry list of disconnected points on a topic.
You may not have a clear idea of your argument when you begin. Very often it is necessary to start writing in order to discover your ideas--and their limitations. The important thing is that you try to figure out exactly what it is you would like to say, and develop your ideas.
Remember that even when the topic is assigned, the essay is still yours to write. Assigned topics and questions can never be taken as simple recipes for the essay you are to write. They direct your attention to issues but you are responsible for finding your own way from there. Read over the question and make sure you see the problem it is attempting to highlight. It is up to you to decide on the angle from which you want to approach the discussion.
2. ORGANIZE THE DISCUSSION.
Choose a focus for the discussion and stick to it. A paper is about one topic, or a very small number of interrelated topics. This may mean making difficult decisions, but be ruthless. Each element of the paper should move the reader toward some destination, whether it is an intermediate point or a general conclusion. Don't try to get by with the shotgun method and don't throw in points out of a misplaced compulsion to be comprehensive. Each sentence should serve a purpose toward a larger goal in the paragraph or the paper as a whole. Remember that you are trying to persuade the reader to adopt your point of view on something. If you want to say something which you think is relevant, but its relevance is not obvious, explain why you think it is relevant.
Order your ideas and specific points so that you can stick to one sub-topic until you have said what you have to say about it. If you will need to come back to it later, say so. Within the paper, make sure that sentence follows sentence, paragraph follows paragraph, point follows point, and sub-topic follows sub-topic in such a way as to represent an orderly and coherent line of reasoning.
Give the paper a structure. Organization has to be more than just a logical ordering of points. To be effective, the organization has to be apparent to the reader. In practice, this means two things: First, give the essay a clear focus. Secondly, the reader should be moved along a well-marked path. An essay, however it may appear to flow gracefully from point to point, needs to be constructed of clearly articulated parts. At the very minimum, this should include a beginning, a middle, and an end.
The introduction is particularly crucial in a short essay. Tell the reader what your problem is, and how you intend to go about resolving it. The introduction should also make clear why the topic is significant, in some context. The first step to an effective essay is to convince the reader that there is a real question to be answered. Your introduction should not only introduce the topic in general terms and set up the context of your discussion, it should also introduce YOUR argument and provide the reader with a key to the organization of the essay.
As you work through the discussion, tell the reader what you think you are doing and where you think you are going. Provide 'signposts' throughout the essay to indicate the significance of each part of the argument and to keep the reader oriented. Pay particular attention to the transitions between points and make sure that you don't make jumps that the reader won't be able to follow. Remember that most of what is interesting is to be found in the connections between things, and that these connections will often carry much of your argument. If there is a connection between two points that is important to your argument, don't just rely on their physical proximity to clue in the reader--discuss it.
Your conclusion should draw together the various strands of the essay into a final summary statement of the idea the reader should take away from the paper. Think of it as the punch line of a story. Don't just tack on your personal feelings or criticisms at the end of 6 pages of pure summarizing and call them your conclusions. You are trying to persuade a reader that your position is a valid one, so take up your position from the beginning and defend it to the end. Don't introduce new ideas in the conclusion or end with claims you haven't introduced or supported in the body of the paper.
3. SAY WHAT YOU MEAN...
This is harder than you might think. Words can be treacherously ambiguous. Read over each word, each sentence, each paragraph of the paper and ask yourself: does this really convey the meaning I intend to convey? Is some other word, phrase, or sentence structure likely to be less misleading or more precise? Choose your words thoughtfully and add qualifications when necessary to clarify and bring out the significance of an assertion.
Make certain that the crucial points in your argument are clear-- don't stop at broad hints. Don't assume that the significance of a claim will be obvious to the reader. Say how and why you think something is significant. Avoid the temptation to be vague and suggestive, and don't allow yourself to mistake grand phrases for brilliant insight.
4. ...CLEARLY.
Use ordinary straightforward language. Unless you are unusually fastidious in your ordinary conversation, you will need to be more precise and consistent in your writing than in your speech. On the other hand, do not think that you have to use a different vocabulary, full of large and unfamiliar words. If you do, your reader will probably not understand you; worse, you may not understand yourself. Try to express yourself in clear ordinary English and don't think you can be profound just by using unusual words. You may want to use some technical terms, but be sure to say what you think they mean. Don't simply take over words and phrases from an author without explaining what you think the author means by them.
Be as precise and as concrete as your vocabulary allows. Avoid unnecessary abstractions and generalities. One way to catch yourself is to try to think of an example which would illustrate the idea you are trying to get across. Even if you don't use the example in the paper, the effort of figuring out what something would mean in the real world can help you realize that you have no idea what you mean.
Avoid overly complex or convoluted sentences. Don't string together too many clauses and overload a sentence with too many different ideas. Avoid constructions which require the passive voice, or an inverted word order. Pay attention to noun, verb, and object of each sentence--that is, make certain it is clear who is doing what to whom.
5. SUPPORT YOUR CLAIMS.
Offer reasons for your assertions. A statement by itself, with no attempt to support or defend it, only tells your reader what you think. Few readers will value this sort of statement of your opinion by itself. When you make assertions, give reasons why they are true (or why you think they might be). This will not only support your claims but clarify them.
Give references. Whenever you mention, use, or rely on something that someone else has written, you should provide a citation to your source. When you make claims of the form "Smith writes that..." or "Smith believes that...," you must say exactly where he writes "...," or what passage you are using as evidence that he believes "... ."
A warning about quotations. Use them judiciously and sparingly. Don't rely on long and frequent quotations in place of your own explanation of a point. Never use a quotation to make a point that you don't make yourself. It is always tempting, but resist the temptation even if it seems that the author says it better than you can. Quotations should always be cast in a supporting role, never relied on to carry the action forward. They may seem a short-cut to laying out an author's argument, but heavy reliance on them actually makes it more difficult to draw sharp or convincing conclusions.
6. A NOTE ON THE PROBLEMS OF CRITICISM.
If an author is confused, inconsistent or wrong, you should try to trace the sources of the difficulty, not just denounce him or her as a fool. If a theorist makes an assertion, look at the purpose that assertion serves in his or her argument. Try to puzzle out the question it is addressing and ultimately the theoretical perspective from which s/he attempts to address it. Be careful about criticizing an author for not succeeding at something which s/he had no intention of doing. The first task is always to figure out an author's project in its own terms. This is the most crucial task in effective and truly devastating criticism. Once you understand what an author is doing, then you can criticize the work on several levels--for limitations in the definition of the problem as well as for failings in the proposed solution-- and you can make the criticism stick.
Be wary of the temptation to score easy points on what appear to be contradictions in the author's argument. Apparent contradictions often call attention to precisely the point the author is trying to make--that is, what might seem a contradiction to others is not a contradiction at all from the perspective that the author is offering. Such contradictions are the key to the theoretical contribution of the work.
There is always a certain danger when discussing an author whose conclusions or ideological coloring you find unacceptable for reasons related to personal values. Don't mistake conclusions you don't happen to like for a flaw in the argument. Keep in mind also that the author may not like the conclusions any better than you do. Remember that the author is not necessarily choosing the conclusions to which theoretical observations lead or saying that this is what we all should want the world to be like.
Remember that an author's pessimism, optimism, or any other implicit or explicit valuation of the world doesn't necessarily discredit the theory. Neither does a prediction that doesn't come true mean that one can scrap the whole perspective with a clear conscience. An author can be generally wrong yet still provide important insights and useful analytical tools. An argument may be wrong, furthermore, in valuable and instructive ways. Don't be hasty and dismissive.
7. REVISE
This is really the key to the whole game. Very few people can crank out a lucid, coherent and well-crafted essay in a single draft. Be your own editor. Write a draft all the way through, then go back and revise it. This means more than simply correcting grammar, spelling, and typographical errors. It means really working the essay over: change words that aren't quite what you mean to say; break up overloaded sentences; identify good ideas and flesh them out; strike out extraneous material; re-think muddy passages. Re-organize the whole thing if necessary to achieve clarity and compactness. This is often where the real thinking goes on--in the process of careful revision.
REVISE, CLARIFY, POLISH.
If you get nothing else out of this guide, it should be this practical lesson. First, get an early start. Don't just read and take notes up until the last minute. Everyone has their own approach to working, but there is one general rule: sit down and start writing just as soon as you can. Get a rough draft out right away, even before you really feel ready to write. Don't put it off while you think about what you want to write. You won't be thinking seriously or rigorously until you really face the problem of the blank page. Many times you won't know what you think until you have written it. You certainly won't be able to tell where your thinking is muddled, or what needs further thought. Get your ideas out on paper and then go to work on them.