Dr. Coski's Tips for Writing Literature Papers

The following tips are essential to writing a good literature paper. Most of them apply to writing other types of papers as well.

1. Provide an introduction with a thesis statement.

The introduction should announce your topic, give a limited amount of essential context, and above all provide a thesis statement. The introduction should never consist of more than 10-15% of your paper. The thesis statement should be written after you have completed your analysis (see tip #2). The thesis statement is not the same as your topic. Rather, it is a statement of an arguable point proven true by your analysis (which is why it should be written after your analysis is done).

2. Write a discussion of the text, not a summary.

In a literature paper, your job is not to tell your reader "what the author says." That would be summary.  Your job is to look beyond what the author explicitly says to get at what appears "between the lines" – in other words, you should discuss the ideas implied or suggested by the author's images, tropes, narrative structures, vocabulary, and so on. You should explain what these elements add to the explicit meaning of the text. The discussion should comprise about 70-80% of your paper. Then, after you finish your analysis, you should write your thesis statement (see tip #1).

3. Provide a conclusion.

The conclusion is not a recapitulation of your thesis statement. Rather, it should answer the question "so what?" by showing the importance of your thesis in a broader context. Typical contexts include the socio-cultural, aesthetic, or intellectual tendencies of the author's own time period. Like the introduction, your conclusion should never comprise more than 10-15% of your paper.

4. Write at least three drafts.

You should never, ever turn in your first draft. First drafts are always awful. It doesn't matter whose it is – yours, mine, anybody's – first drafts are terrible, period. Second drafts are barely better, and only when you get to your third draft should you even begin to think that maybe what you have written is worthy of a passing grade. Note that three is the absolute minimum number of drafts you should write – it is not a recommended target number. In graduate school, I never turned in anything less than a fifth draft. Today, in my professional writing, I typically write ten to twelve drafts of an article before submitting it to a potential publisher. The more drafts you write, the better.

5. Devote at least two days to each draft.

Do not write drafts in rapid succession. After you complete your first draft you should set it aside and not look at it or think about it for at least twenty-four hours. This is the only way to reexamine your own work with fresh eyes. Then spend a day writing the second draft. Set it aside again for at least twenty-four hours. Come back and spend a day writing the next draft. Repeat as often as your deadline allows. Let the calendar implications of this sink in: to write the bare minimum of three drafts, you need five days.

6. Edit for factual accuracy.

It does no good to examine the death scene of character X, if character X didn't die. This sounds strange, but it is not uncommon for people to simply misread a work and create a brilliant analysis of a scene, image, or idea that doesn't even exist in the text.

7. Edit for logical rigor.

Make sure that the logic you apply in your discussion actually holds water. Literary analysis is not about feelings or intuition. It is about rigorous, disciplined, logic applied to accurate facts (see tip #6).

8. Edit for internal consistency.

Don't contradict yourself. Nothing destroys your thesis statement faster than affirming one thing early in your paper, then asserting the opposite later on.

9. Edit for style, grammar and spelling.

For grammar and spelling, aim for 100% accuracy. Any lesser ambition is a disservice to your own work, and to your reader. Stylistically, be clear, organized and succinct. 

10. Use spell check.

It sounds obvious, but many people neglect this. When you think you have completed your final draft, run the paper through spell check to eliminate any mistakes you missed.

Just for Reference

You are reading draft fifteen of this text.
The first draft was nearly twice as long as the final draft.
The final version was spell-checked prior to posting.