Writing a good paragraph

This continues my series of posts on undergraduate essay writing, in which I’m trying to distil and record some of the things that I say year on year for easy reference. Previous related posts are linked at the bottom of this post.

 

In many ways a writing a good paragraph is quite similar to writing a good introduction, although the difference is a question of scale.  In the introduction you’re looking to lay out the co-ordinates for your whole essay; in a body text paragraph you’re making a particular point that speaks to your overall argument via a textual example.

Again, this model might work most effectively for undergraduates studying on English literature and other text-based disciplines.  I think the principles are the same for any kind of analysis of cultural texts (film, tv, music, etc), but if you work in a different discipline it’ll have its own norms – check with your tutor if you’re unsure.

 

1. Clear argument statement.

This should connect text and topic/theory/concept, and say clearly its importance (not only saying that something is important, significant, etc).

 

2. Textual example

Situate the coming quotation in the text.  This will help the reader follow your logic.

If you haven’t done so in situation the quotation, lead into it directly and then insert the quotation.

Speak back to the quotation.  Remember that you need to say not only what the text is saying, but how it says it.  That is, how does the literary style affect the message – does it emphasise it? Obscure it? Is there anything about the particular language used (metaphor, simile, etc)?

While there’s no set amount of commentary required, I’d suggest that a good rule of thumb is that you should have as many lines of explanation as the original quotation.

 

3. Connect to bigger picture.

What does this quotation tell us about the topic you’re discussing?  Is it a typical or atypical example, or perhaps even somewhere in between?  Make sure you support your claims about historical moments or theoretical concepts with reference to an appropriate secondary source (or sources).

 

4. Summarise in your own words

Don’t, as a rule, finish paragraphs with “hanging” quotations – make sure that you end with a comment in your own voice.  Ideally this should gesture towards the next paragraph, or at least offer a logical segue into it.

Sometimes when you’re writing your first draft, you come to your best phrasing at the end of a paragraph.  Have a look and see if this is the case – sometimes you can make the last sentence your first to sharpen things up.

 

Obviously there’s not only one right way of doing things, and sometimes there’ll be pressing reasons for mixing this up – particularly the elements of section 2 and 3.  But I’d argue that generally you should be foregrounding the text in the literary essay.

 

Previous related posts:

Writing an introduction

Things to think about in undergraduate essay writing

Modernism/modernity Print+ cluster: Modernist centenaries, anniversaries and commemorations (abstract deadline 1 Sep 2020)

Modernism/modernity Print+ cluster
Modernist centenaries, anniversaries and commemorations

Editor: Dr Andrew Frayn (a.frayn@napier.ac.uk | @afrayn)
Deadline for abstracts: 1 September 2020
Deadline for accepted submissions: 30 June 2021

There is no doubt that 2022 will be a year of anniversary fever in modernist studies, as the centenaries of high modernism’s annus mirabilis and its key works such as James Joyce’s Ulysses, T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land, Virginia Woolf’s Jacob’s Room and many others are celebrated. This cluster invites abstracts for papers which discuss the relationship between modernist centenaries (and anniversaries more generally), commemoration, and modernist studies as a field. What can we learn from the experience of other fields which have been through recent major anniversaries, such as Romanticism and First World War Studies? What are the possibilities and problems which arise from the wave of centenary commemoration that we will face over the coming years? The relentless run of modernist anniversaries will inevitably shape scholarly work in the field. To take an arbitrary but indicative example, how prominent will the respective celebrations be of, say, Ulysses and May Sinclair’s Life and Death of Harriet Frean, and what will they consist of? How might discussions about canonical works be reshaped at centenary moments, and which narratives might be elided? What is at stake for modernist studies in the politics and practices of memorialisation?

The fascination with anniversaries is nothing new, and commemoration is always an effort to assert historically contingent forms of national identity. The tercentenary of Shakespeare’s death was prominent in 1916, mobilising a particular idea of Englishness during the First World War; cultural production around the fiftieth anniversary of that conflict such as the Theatre Workshop’s Oh What a Lovely War (1963) and the BBC TV series The Great War (1964) was influential in reshaping its meaning in the public sphere. The Semana de Arte Moderna (Week of Modern Art) in Brazil in 1922 (10-17 February) connected its modernism with the centenary of independence from Portugal but was reacted against violently; the same week saw the publication of the final instalment of Lu Xun’s ‘The True Story of Ah Q’, a pivotal moment in modern Chinese literature in its use of the vernacular. 1922 is also, for example, the year of Egyptian independence. Does a focus on anniversaries necessarily tend towards the reinscription of accepted narratives? To what extent is it possible to use anniversaries recuperatively or transformatively?

Papers are also invited on topics such as, but not limited to: the forms of commemoration; the relationship between the interest in commemoration and nostalgia and current political shifts to the right; the instrumentalization of humanities study, notably manifested in the need to “market” ourselves via public engagement and ‘impact’ agendas; the corresponding need to “market” ourselves to establish a position within a chaotic, precarious labour market; the whiteness of commemoration; the relationship between remembering, commemoration, and endorsement.

Print Plus submissions are usually around 3000 words in length; the platform provides an ‘online academic environment for multimedia argument-based research [… and] provides scholars of modernity a place to publish article-length pieces with the interactive/visual media embedded in their text’.  The guidelines are at the top of this page: https://modernismmodernity.org/about. This will be a peer-reviewed cluster.

Abstracts of 250 words should be submitted to Andrew Frayn (a.frayn@napier.ac.uk) by 1 September 2020. Acceptance decisions will be communicated by 18 September 2020. Articles will be due 30 June 2021. The cluster should appear by, at the latest, January 2022.

On not writing a 33 1/3 about Teenage Fanclub’s Bandwagonesque

I had a brief moment of contemplating writing a 33 1/3 about Teenage Fanclub’s Bandwagonesque when I saw the recent open call.  I won’t because I don’t think I have time or energy in the middle of pandemic uncertainty and what it means for the day job, and also because of one of the things that’s so beautiful about the album: its (sometimes deceptive) simplicity of music and lyrics means that it’s quite difficult to imagine writing something that isn’t very self-involved.  So here’s a few scraps.

The opening track, ‘The Concept’, begins in a wail of feedback before the lyrics come in on top of a reverberating, distorted G chord.  The opening progression of the top line melody (G – F# – E) is the same as The Beatles’s ‘All You Need is Love’, but this is a love story rewritten for the late twentieth century.  “She wears denim wherever she goes / Says she’s gonna get some records by the Status Quo / Oh yeah” croons Norman Blake, looking at an incongruous object of his affections.  By 1991 there’s not the same sense of utopia as in that 1967 TV broadcast.  This is a realistic love, in which the woman ‘don’t do drugs / but she does the pill’.  The tone is closer to the novelists from not so far away in Scotland who were beginning to cut their teeth in the early 1990s like Irvine Welsh and Alan Warner.

Listening to the band playing the outro to ‘The Concept’ at the Teenage Fanclub show at Manchester Academy 2 in 2010, I remember having a profound physical reaction.  Hairs standing up on the back of my neck.  Choking back a sob at the beauty of the interplay between the harmonies and Raymond McGinlay’s guitar solo (I am a pathological non-cryer).

‘What You Do To Me’: five chords (depending on how you count it), four lines of lyrics.  Cyclical, crystalline power-pop perfection.

I can never quite decide whether ‘Star Sign’ is for or against superstition.  Great song and riff though.

There’s something about the F Aug chord which makes the chord progression in ‘Metal Baby’ so seductive…

‘Alcoholiday’ is one of those classic love/drugs (love (of) drugs) songs (see also: The La’s, ‘There She Goes’).  But it also explores the uncertainty of the aftermath, lying awake questioning everything in the silence and darkness after a skinful, wondering whether you did anything really shameful.  The bridge is the heart of the song, and as Gerry Love sings about being ‘led a course you can’t command’, and concluding that ‘Baby, I’ve been fucked already’ it’s difficult to know whether he’s talking about sex, love, intoxication, addiction, outsiderdom, unemployment, political disenfranchisement, or an unholy combination of them all.

‘Is This Music?’  Bringing joy to shoegaze by pastiche for nearly thirty years.

Undergrad essay writing: a non-exhaustive list of things to think about

Here’s 12 things you might want to think about or check back on when writing your essays.  These are written with English Literature undergraduates in mind, but some of the general comments will apply to other essay writing, too.

1. Structure: Introductions, argument, and conclusions

The introduction really sets the tone for the piece, and I’d suggest writing a rough draft of it first to give you an idea where you’re going, but revising it last, when you know what you’ve written.  If you’re researching actively as you go and revising your viewpoint when you learn more, it’s pretty much inevitable that you won’t write exactly what you set out to do.

‘Your first sentence settles all; your first sentence determines the subsequent direction and quality of the rest.’

Haslam Mills, a noted editor of the Manchester Guardian, quoted by Neville Cardus in My Autobiography, (London: Collins, 1947), p. 105.

Make sure your essay has a coherent, linear argument, rather than a collection of points on a theme.  State your argument clearly in your introduction, and be positive: say “I argue that…” or similar, rather than “I aim to demonstrate…”.

If you’re not sure you’ve got the structure right, take a piece of paper and write down what each paragraph is about. Can you do each in a sentence, or a short phrase?  No?  If not, then you probably need to think about your structure.  That phase of editing can enable you to see material which belongs elsewhere, and to see whether there’s a better order than the one you’ve defaulted to.

Conclusions are tricky.  Ideally, you need to synthesise what you’ve said (not only reiterate your points).  Try to gesture to the bigger picture without bringing in new material.

2.  Using quotations

1. 1. Lead into quotations properly: you shouldn’t make a statement, place a quotation after it, and expect the reader to be able to understand your thought process of moving from one to the other.  You should lead into your quotations with something along the lines of ‘Eagleton argues that:’ or ‘While in the novel x appears to y, Hulme argues that:’  Make the segue fluid, so it would read as a proper sentence if you removed the quotation marks.
   2. Always comment on quotations you use.  Say how the quotation makes its point, and why that is important in the context you’re using it.  Do you definitely need all of the quotation, or is some of it simply filling space?
   3. Paragraphs shouldn’t conclude at the end of a quotation.  Use your own words to relate the quotation back to your overall argument.

3.  Author =/= narrator

The author doesn’t usually equal the narrator.  Unless you can prove similarities between author and narrator from biographical material – and even then you should be careful when making any such claim – then you should talk about what the narrator (or main character) does, rather than the author for the most part.  If you’re going to use (auto)biographical material, remember to treat it equally critically, as text rather than as ‘fact’.

‘Never trust what writers say about their own writings.’

Walter Benjamin, The Arcades Project, trans. by Howard Eiland and Kevin McLaughlin (London: The Belknap Press of the Harvard University Press, 1999), p. 875.

4. ‘The reader’

If you say in analysing literature that something has x effect on ‘the reader’, it immediately prompts the question for the marker, ‘what reader’?  There is no common reader of a novel; everyone reads from their own particular situation of chosen political viewpoint, accumulated knowledge and learning.  A subjective viewpoint is implicit in the essay form, so be definite about your ideas as long as you can provide adequate supporting evidence.

5. Use active voice.

It’s much better, and much more economical in terms of word count, to say, for example, ‘Ulysses shows that…’ rather than ‘It can be said that Ulysses shows that…’.  If in doubt, you can use the ‘by zombies’ test.

6. Be positive.

Avoid verbal ‘hedges’ and markers of uncertainty.  Simply, try not to use words like perhaps, maybe, arguably – unless it is a really very contentious point that you’re making.  In academic writing you are trying to persuade the audience that your viewpoint is the correct reading.

7. Avoid sweeping generalisations

Sure, ‘The nineteenth century was an age of great change’.  However, what in particular is the change that’s relevant to your essay?  Be as precise as you can, and support this from scholarship in history (or literary history).

‘In general, generalization is to lie, to tell lies.’

B. S. Johnson, The Unfortunates (1969; London: Picador, 1999), ‘Last’, p. 6.

8. Use precise vocabulary

Beware of over-emphasis.  Avoid the use of words like ‘constantly’, ‘always’, unless it’s literally true; don’t say things like ‘It is often argued…’ or ‘Many critics have said…’ unless you’re going to follow this statement with a footnote which adequately demonstrates your point (many critics have argued, with a footnote to just one, is not a good idea).

9. Avoid rhetorical questions

Unless you’re going to answer them.  And even then you might as well just formulate it as a statement for reasons of word count.

10. Reference accurately

Reference scrupulously and consistently at all times using an acknowledged academic style guide. The Edinburgh Napier requirement is MHRA style (http://www.mhra.org.uk).

11. All pieces must include a bibliography

This will usually be a list of works cited beginning on a new page (ctrl+enter in MS Word) at the end of the essay).

12. Proof-read your work

Look for typos which are also words – form for from, id for is, and classic homophones such as ‘bear hands’, ‘prophet margins’, and ‘pubic sphere’.  Make sure you’ve spelt authors’ names correctly.  Have you introduced and/or defined people, concepts, texts at the first mention?  Is the written style and line of argument easy to follow?

Writing an introduction: undergraduate essays

In the moments when my brain isn’t working very well (of which there are quite a few in the current situation), I’m going to start typing up a few bits of advice that I commonly give to undergrads, postgrads, and even colleagues.

We’re still in essay-writing season here, so the first one is on: writing a good introduction.

This is aimed primarily at the shortish undergraduate essay in English Literature and cognate disciplines but might also be useful to others.

Remember that this is just one way of writing an introduction – chat with your tutors about it, too.

For a 2500-3000 word undergraduate essay I’d expect this to be around three quarters of a page, although again this isn’t a hard and fast rule.  For a shorter essay you’ll probably need a brisker introduction; for a longer essay or dissertation you might be doing some of this in more extended form over a few paragraphs.

While you’ll always want to get something down for an introduction early in your writing process, you should also revise it at the end when you’re certain what you’re saying in the essay below.

1. Punchy opening statement

This needs to say something particular about your argument in the essay that’s going to follow, addressing some of the key terms.  It needs to go beyond sweeping historical generalisations: I was told as an undergrad, back in the Dark Ages, that if you wrote something along the lines of “the nineteenth century was an age of great change”, you’d never get above a 2:2.  While I don’t think that’s necessarily true, it is worth thinking about how you can be as specific as possible!  To follow through from that example, if you’re claiming that there was a change, what’s the nature of that?  Is it about something specific in terms of politics, gender, sexuality, race, literary narrative, form, or another concept?  How dramatic was the change?  Was it solely positive or negative, or were the gains and losses?

2. An eye-catching quotation

And here I mean the best, really the most magical, the quotation from a primary text or a historical or critical source that absolutely sums up everything that you want to say in the essay, or says it in a really vivid way.

Make sure that you speak back to this quotation in your own words.  It’d be a good idea to use your response to this quotation to nuance your opening statement and develop your ideas further.  Can you use a quotation like this to define your understanding of the key term, perhaps?

3. Identify your text(s) and why they resonate

What does the text that you’ve chosen have to say about your overall point?  Is it in line with what’s happening in the bigger picture?  Does it align in some ways but not in others?  Or is it a counterexample to a prevailing trend?

If your essay is on more than one text, what do we gain by reading these together?  Are they similar?  Subtly different?  Wildly different and showing a range of opinions/positions?  You could perhaps slip in another really good short quotation from a primary text here if you haven’t done so above.

4. State the order/structure of your essay

We call this signposting, and it helps the person reading/marking your work to understand where the essay will go.  Is your essay organised by theme/topic, or by text, or a combination of the two?  How do those two things interlink?  Do you discuss some theory/context before moving on to discuss textual examples by text/theme?  Make this final statement clear and direct.

 

Obviously this is only one way that you can do this – there are often compelling reasons to do something different depending on the context.  But I think this is a pretty reliable guide to things to include, and I would generally start by doing them in this order.

Happy essay writing!