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essays and analyse their strengths and weaknesses. Which areas have your
tutors praised? And where have they suggested areas for improvement?
Make a list of aspects that you would like to develop.
4.4 The stages of writing an essay
The structure of this book roughly follows the first broad stages of rhetoric
that we saw in the last chapter: inventio, dispositio and elocutio. We have con-
sidered reading, research and the structure of argument before we turned to
Essays 89
arrangement, the writing of the essay. It s clear that this procedure also makes
sense when thinking about the final processes of writing an essay: you think
about the question, research it, then arrange and write it. But this structure is
still too vague and commonplace to be very helpful  and, in fact, I have gone
some way to suggesting that you should consider yourself researching at all
times and not only after being presented with an assessment question  so
when you turn to the many essay-writing guides available, you ll find that they
break down the process into anywhere between around three and ten stages.
Often these stages relate to the actual writing of the essay itself, rather than the
whole experience of studying for a module, selecting a question and research-
ing it, etc. However, I have identified seven crucial steps which most experts
would agree on, which incorporate the whole process: (1) thinking of or about
the question, (2) research, (3) making a plan, (4) the thesis statement, (5)
writing the main body of the essay, (6) beginnings and endings and (7) editing.
You may be surprised at the order of this sequence and you are free to experi-
ment with it. I am not proposing a drill like the five-paragraph essay: indeed,
the process of writing an essay may follow a circular rather than linear move-
ment with the repetition of some of these steps. Now we are going to look at
each one in more detail.
4.5 Thinking of or about the question
In some universities, as I outlined in the first chapter, you ll be examined on a
topic at the end of a module by answering one essay question from a list that
your lecturer has determined. In others you may write more frequently and/or
to questions that you have composed yourself. Whether selecting or writing an
essay question, you should proceed with care; a significant number of essays
are unsuccessful because they don t answer the question, are unrelated to the
question, misunderstand the question or, even, are bored by the question.
There are as many pitfalls in choosing a  safe question as in choosing a
 difficult one. If you feel extremely comfortable with a topic, it can be easy to
give a rather stale and predictable answer that perhaps won t fail but may not
inspire your reader; it s also possible that in perceiving a question as simple or
straightforward you may be missing something.
Choosing a question Here s a simple question to ask yourself before you
think about your assignment: which of the texts that you have read on your
course stands out? This is not a question about which texts you like, or which
you have enjoyed; it could be the reverse, the answer may be a text that you ve
found difficult in some way. (Examining why you or other readers and critics
90 Studying English Literature
have found a text s structure or morals incomprehensible, for example, can be
extremely productive.) If you have an answer to this question, then you should
rule out any assignment that will not enable you to explore it.
A common formula of essay questions is a quotation  sometimes from an
identified source, sometimes not  with a question,  Do you agree? , or injunc-
tion to  Discuss at the end. As with provocative texts, if there is a quotation
that you feel strongly about, then you have made your choice. You should
always try and write about a topic that will sustain your interest through the
long process of researching and writing about it. This is important to remem-
ber when you are faced with a range of questions that cover topics you are
uncertain about. Again, I d advise you not to shy away from difficulty auto-
matically; often an attempt at a less  mainstream question may be rewarded
for its originality and the novelty of researching something new can be inspir-
ing. It is probably more productive than offering a formulaic answer to a ques-
tion that most of your peers have answered. (Now may be the time to put
yourself in your tutor s shoes: imagine she or he has to read forty or more
scripts; thirty people have answered the same question but ten have volun-
teered essays on other topics. Would you rather yours was the twenty-ninth [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]