Response Paper Advice

Choosing an Option. Think carefully about which option you choose to write your response paper on--whatever option you choose, you should be able to say why it is important. The more you think about this, the more effective your introduction and conclusion will be--you will be able to answer the "so what?" or "why should we care?" question with which most readers approach every piece of writing.

Generating an Argument. At the most general level, in your response paper you must present an argument about or offer an interpretation of at least one of the texts we've read in class thus far. You should have a central question that you are trying to answer in your essay, and you should be working to persuade your audience that your answer is plausible by offering whatever evidence seems most relevant to your argument and audience.

The best way to make sure you are making an argument or offering an interpretation is to put forward a position that's truly debate-able, that's interesting to you, and that you believe you can show to be interesting to your classmates (the audience you should imagine for your essay). It doesn't make sense to devote a significant number of words to an argument so vague or general or obvious that anyone would agree with it. Rather, your job is to sort through the possible answers to the question or issue raised in the option you've chosen and convince your audience that your answer or position is the most plausible.

A lot of this work of sorting through possible answers to come up with the one you find most plausible should take place before you ever sit down at a keyboard or desk to compose your paper. You should reread the story(-ies) you're writing on, mark significant passages, write questions or observations in the margins, take notes, brainstorm, make up lists or charts or concept maps, doodle, try to produce an outline, free write--whatever "pre-writing" process works best for you at getting your interpretive juices flowing. Often the things I tell you not to do in the final draft of your paper are excellent pre-writing strategies. You can think of them as building blocks that you can shape and then put together in different combinations, until you begin to move from putting together your observations and relating them to each other to actually coming up with an argument or a thesis that you want to try to prove. I can't recommend strongly enough that you go to the links page's section on researching and writing well, and check out the Princeton or Purdue writing center handouts on brainstorming, pre-writing exercises, and developing a thesis--you wouldn't believe how many people skip this essential first step of collecting and manipulating their ideas and observations, and instead stare blankly at a blank page or computer screen, hoping inspiration will strike. Don't fall into this trap of expecting your ideas to emerge fully formed and in complete sentences. The sooner you accept that writing is a process of discovery--that you will figure out what your real argument is as you struggle to find the words that will best develop it--the better you will be able to deal with the inevitable frustrations and dead-ends that come up as you are trying to figure out just what it is you want to argue. There's a lot of preparatory work to be done before you can expect to begin drafting the roughest of rough drafts, and the quicker you develop your own brainstorming strategies for "priming the engine," the more efficient your writing process will eventually become.

Drafting and Revision. Because the paper length for your critical essay is so short, compression and conciseness are key. You should try to pack as much into this small space as possible. But don't bite off more than you can chew--it should be possible for you to answer the question you choose within the page limits of the assignment. This means that you have to choose your option particularly carefully, as well as rank the evidence for your argument so that you focus on the most telling moments in the text. Finally, you must be particularly ruthless about syntax and diction--make every word count, and cut or revise any words or phrases that aren't doing important work for your argument. However, this kind of revision for conciseness should take place only after you have fully explored your ideas, the best ways of communicating them, and the best means of persuading your audience that they are true/plausible. First get your ideas down, then put them as effectively as possible, and only then revise for length, precision, and conciseness.

Hence, when you move on to the drafting and rewriting stages, you will most likely find that you need to write a first draft that is much longer than the page limit in order to a) figure out precisely what your main argument is and b) figure out how best to convince your readers of the plausibility of your argument. Therefore, it is in your best interest to give yourself time to not only write that longer first draft but also to go through a serious re-vision process--to select, prioritize, reorder, condense, and cut in light of putting your ideas as clearly, concisely, precisely, and persuasively as you possibly can. The upshot of this is that you should never, ever, decide not to pursue a line of thought in writing because doing so will take you over the page length. Follow the idea where it takes you. Most experienced writers don't write their first drafts with a set blueprint in mind--they generally discover what they mean or change their minds while writing. Worry about page lengths only after you've thought through the issue in writing to your satisfaction. Once you've figured out a) and b) above, you can then move on to making the difficult choices about which sentences are too wordy and which paragraphs are really digressions from your key idea that you don't have space to develop and how to make your argument economically.

As you're doing this, remember that a key part of persuading your audience that your answer is plausible and your evidence is relevant is anticipating how they might react to your answer and evidence. By imagining possible objections or counter-examples and then either explicitly or implicitly forestalling them in the written essay, you show your audience that you are taking them seriously and that you have thought carefully about the question. It's much more persuasive to deal with a major objection or counter-example to your argument than to pretend it doesn't exist. In fact, one of the best ways to make your own thesis stronger is to try advancing a thesis that contradicts yours. Some people find this process of imagining counter-evidence and counter-arguments more helpful to do early in the pre-writing stage, others when revising their first draft. Find out what works best for you by trying out different approaches this semester.

One consequence of the need for conciseness is that you may find that you need to rethink the "five-paragraph" essay structure you were probably taught in high school. (You know: the kind where you have a "funnel"-style introduction in which you move from a general observation to your specific, three-part thesis statement; a body consisting of three paragraphs of "evidence" for each of the three parts of your thesis, complete with topic sentences that restate each part of the thesis and a transition into the next paragraph's topic sentence; and a "reverse-funnel"-style conclusion that restates the thesis and takes it from the specific to the general.)

Although you should definitely hang onto the key elements of the five-paragraph essay--an introduction, body, and conclusion; a main argument; some kind of topic sentences and transitions; a sense of structure; and a consideration of evidence--you should definitely avoid the "funnel" and "reverse-funnel" styles of introduction and conclusion and absolutely avoid needless repetition. Cut to the chase. Develop your own personal voice and style of analysis and persuasion. The only thing your introduction must do is "hook" your readers and make them want to read the rest of the essay (this is usually done by giving them some sense of where the rest of the essay is going or what the point of the essay is; often, having brainstormed on the inevitable "so what?" question most readers approach any piece of writing with, will help you write an effective introduction). The only thing the body of your paper must attempt is to persuade your readers of the validity and plausibility of your answer to your central question. The only thing your conclusion shouldn't do is restate the thesis or move from the specific back to the general. Instead, your conclusion should "shift gears" in some way, approach your answer from another angle or discuss what follows from it. Above all, be aware of the form and structure of your own writing: think about what points you want to make in what order--about the most effective way of ordering your essay so that it helps you persuade your audience of your point's validity.

The Challenge. Remember that a short essay does not mean an opportunity to make a point or two and get out quickly, but instead is a challenge to you over how ambitious and complex your main claim is and how best to support it within the space limitations.

ENGL 206: Survey of American Literature, Fall 2002
Created: 9/18/02 8:38 pm
Last modified: 9/18/02 8:38 pm