Guide to Writing an Academic Research Paper

Writing an essay is always a daunting prospect even for the experienced writer, so I have put together a brief guide which might help you to write your own essays. This is a guide for a simple essay but might prove useful to get you started if you are experiencing a worrying lack of inspiration: with experience you will develop your own procedures and learn to write a more sophisticated paper by unpacking the complexities, contradictions and ambivalences present in the literary text. Ideally, an academic paper should be of at least 3,000 words, properly foot-noted, referenced, with a complete bibliography, in which you present an individual reading, argue and justify your interpretation. Literary criticism is an activity with its own rules and modes of conduct, and although there are many methods to approach a text and write a paper here I outline a conventional approach. However, it is always useful to read other academic essays to get a sense of what is expected.

Task 1) General information about the work of your choice.

It is important to know when the text was written, what it is about and begin to unravel the text’s complexity: claiming that a novel has a “message”, or even a summarisable “meaning” is a very reductive approach because it assumes that the writer wrote the work simply to get across a simple point, whereas the most characteristic trait of a literary text is that it provides a space for the writer to complicate matters, introduce ambiguities and explore contradictions precisely to avoid a simple view of the world.

The following issues should be considered when you think about your essay, though not necessarily included in the essay:

a) brief biography of the writer
b) synopsis of the novel or general overview of the text
c) plot, description of characters (remember that in discussing any character in any novel one is not interested in that character as an individual, let alone as a “person”, but is using the character to gain access to a richer sense of the work as a whole, so it may be useful to think about the characters in relation to each other), setting (social, historical, geographical), the narrator (type, attitudes/values/morality/view of life) and the narratee and reader, perspective (in that the house of fiction, as Henry James says, has many windows from which to view the scene), structure (the overall shape of the text, organisation of chapters or sections, and the shape of individual scenes).
d) identification of conflict or conflicts
e) themes for research: list of possible subjects that interest you. Why are you inspired by the book? What baffles you? What don’t you like about it?

As a first step, it is always useful to think about the oppositions that structure the text and how they signify. These may include the opposition between good and evil, male and female, light and darkness, colours, spaces (the city versus the country, inside versus outside), youth versus old age, animate versus inanimate, active versus passive, individual versus society, individual versus himself, nature versus civilisation, etc.

If you find it difficult to identify the many factors that come into play in any narrative text I suggest you have a look at Narrative Fiction: Contemporary Poetics by Shlomith Rimmon-Kenan, or the more advanced Narratology: Introduction to the Theory of Narrative by Mieke Bal.

Task 2) Definition of the problem or topic you have decided to write about.

The definition should not be either too broad or too narrow, and should not in itself be a conclusion. We are not interested in writing overviews but in producing an analysis of specific problems presented by the text in order to avoid generalisations; for example: “Narrative Technique in the Eighteenth-Century Novel” is too broad, whereas “The Use of Parallel Narrations as a Narrative Technique in Richardson’s Pamela” is more suitable. Remember that you are trying to define the subtlety of your particular text, even though the basic situation may be common to many works of literature, so always keep in mind that the author’s technique is all-important. You should analyse both the content of a work and the method or techniques employed by the author, and discuss how they work together to produce certain effects and responses. Here we are interested in how a text works and why these methods are or are not effective for the reader. Choose a relatively narrow and sharply defined topic which nevertheless opens out into larger and more important issues. Nothing is more fatal than to attempt to cover a large field of inquiry. It is therefore useful to oversimplify a problem, which you can then make more complex as you go along. The range of topics in literature is very wide indeed. Some students want to explore the work of a particular author, others are interested in a theme or issue, or may want to address some historical or literary-historical problem by tracing it through the writings of selected authors. Often critics may seek to test how a given theoretical approach may be applied to a particular text or group of texts. It is therefore important to think about the type of paper you want to produce.

Remember also to choose a topic which may be dealt with within the agreed word and time limit.

Task 3) Analyse one passage of the literary text you have chosen.

With your topic in mind, choose a relevant passage and interpret it including the following:

a) A short statement of what the passage is about.
b) A search for an opposition or tension within the passage.
c) Analysis of the details of the passage, possibly relating them to the opposition already noted.
d) How the passage relates to the novel as a whole and/or novels in general.
e) A search for anything distinctive about the passage, particularly in the area of style, that has been overlooked in the previous stages.

Analyse one passage of the work of literature or one poem of the collection. Close and focused reading is essential in order to know your text well, and it is usually best to start with a simple view and then let the evidence of the text determine the development of your argument. After reading the work as a whole, take a close look at the opening page of the novel, or, if this proves unilluminating, at a passage fairly near the beginning featuring one or more of the principal characters. What we are interested in at this point is to communicate the density of texture of the particular work of literature. Often, apparently insignificant or odd details or boring passages may serve as a way into the text which may lead to an understanding of its overall significance when read carefully and imaginatively.

Task 4) Analysis of another passage of work of fiction or a poem.

Looking at a first passage or section may indicate a theme or group of problems which should prove central to the novel, so select a second passage where this theme is developed. Support your ideas with plenty of quotations and paraphrases, but do not lose the thread of your own argument by bringing in too many quotations. Avoid long quotations. Present enough evidence to prove that your interpretation is well supported by the text(s), and make sure to explain how the evidence you present logically supports your interpretation.


Task 5) Draft an outline of your ideas.

Remember that a strong, clear argument should run through your paper, supported by the relevant text. A good paper should work from the evidence of the text rather than bring in the text to substantiate a point already made or to illustrate a theoretical approach. The purpose of an outline is to show that you have a promising line of research and to indicate how you will develop it: the steps should be clear and logical. The following list of headings will give you an idea of what is required:

Title: You are not bound by this because it can be altered to suit the finished product. However, it is important to have a title, however provisional it may be, in order to follow this line of argument. We all love imaginative titles, but they do not help when we are working with a particular text and trying to argue one point or another.
Thesis: State as quickly and clearly as possible what your argument will be, and what primary text(s) you intend to use. This means that in one sentence you should be able to tell your reader what you are going to do, why you are doing it and how. If you are using a particular theoretical approach, make sure you clearly state why it is relevant to your text. Your thesis statement should be in your opening paragraph.
Materials and structure: Go into detail about your materials, giving some indication as to their aptness for your project, and how you think your discussion of them may be organised, paragraph by paragraph, in the final product. A provisional structure is important so make sure it is clear to the reader how many sections there are going to be, what is going into each, and how they will connect with each other. If possibe, give them titles.

Think of this as an exercise in persuasion.

Task 6) Analysis of a third passage of novel.

Now that you have identified a central theme or themes in the novel you should be able to pay closer attention to the nuances and shades of meaning in another passsage, in order to make your analysis of the novel more subtle. Keep in mind that searching for meaning does not mean searching for a didactic message, a simple message is not reconciliable with the subtlety of good art

Task 7) Select and analyse a fourth passage.

Select a passage that will endorse, and possibly extend, what you have found so far. Have you achieved a sufficiently complex sense of the novel?

Task 8) Rewrite your thesis statement and your outline.

The thesis statement tells your reader what the essay will be about, and what point you will be making. In order to do this you must turn your topic into an argument, that is, give it direction. Every good essay, paper or dissertation will take the form of an argument, an attempt to demonstrate something by means of analysis and presentation of evidence. An argument is not an assertion, and remember that it is often stronger if you recognise the force of points that might be made against -or that qualify- the case you are advancing. Try to suggest ways in which these objections or qualitifcations might be answered. There are many possible ways of achieving this. Some examples are:
- an argument for or against an existing critic (or critical position) in relation to the text or group of works you are studying
- an argument about the importance of a particular influence on a writer, or influence exerted by him or her
- an argument for the importance of a little-regarded piece of evidence to the discussion of the work of some author or group of authors
- an argument about the value of a new theoretical approach to the genre of a work or group of works
- an argument about the significance of a little-known or undervalued author or work
- an argument about some historical or literary-historical aspect of literature
- an argument showing how a particular theme or concept may be related to a group of texts
- an argument bringing together some aspect of a well-known literary text with a lesser-known text or texts.

Task 9) Sources and secondary critical works, including other relevant work by same author.

A crucial part of deciding your topic is making sure that you can get a hold of the materials you need. Start compiling a bibliography as soon as you start work: make sure that you record all the bibliographical information you will need so include the place of publication, publisher and date and, in the case of articles in journals, page references. It is often useful to read more than one work by your chosen author to acquire a better understanding of his/her aesthetic project, recurrent ideas, politics, style, etc.

One useful source of recent essays published in academic journals is the MLA Bibliographhy, which may be consulted online at the library.

Task 10) First introductory paragraph of essay.

The introductory paragraph serves to introduce the problem, and in it you give a rough outline of the case you are going to present. Do not waste words at the outset, avoid jargon, write clearly and crisply.
All paragraphs should begin with a topic sentence, followed by an explanation of the point you begin with. Avoid retelling the story: your task is not to tell what a text says or means but to tell what makes it effective and how it works. Your introduction is important because in it you tell your reader what you intend to do, and why.


Task 11) Fleshing out the basic argument.

In the body of the paper you assemble the evidence, analyse it, and put forward your argument based on that anaylsis. The substance of the paper develops as you turn to various incidents or episodes in the novel. One easy way of building up an argument is to use a sequence of text/analysis/conclusion paragraphs. Remember that a body paragraph should focus on only one main idea and that the main idea should be expressed clearly in the first sentence of the paragraph, with the rest of the paragraph used to support and develop that idea. In general, a body paragraph should be at least six sentences long.

Task 12) Write a conclusion.

A conclusion is important because you briefly summarise what you have done, explain its significance and, if appropriate, suggest how the topic might be expanded.


Task 13) Editing.

Usually your first draft will be over-length and you will need to slim it down. Make sure that you analyse what you quote and that you avoid the temptation to tell or describe the story. Logically and grammatically integrate all quotations into your own sentences: no quotation should be standing alone in an essay. At this last stage you should revise your sentences and focus on their effectiveness, making sure that they are linked as clearly as possible and concise. Lastly, revise puncuation and grammar. Make sure that you include a bibliography and that the essay is properly annotated according to one of the accepted stylesheets such as the MLA Handbook. If you do not have access to the MLA Handbook I suggest you follow the guidelines used in the Anuario de Letras Modernas.

Suggested Reading:

Umberto Eco, Cómo se hace una tesis : técnicas y procedimientos de estudio, investigación y escritura.

John Peck, How to Study a Novel.