Writing your Paper: General Guidelines!

1. The argument: general introduction

The argument must be an interpretive hypothesis your paper formulates and demonstrates. The argument should be recognizably yours. !!You should take responsibility for what you argue, so you should always say “I”, not “we”. You are not an impersonal entity, but a human being, with a name and a surname, who is making a claim, and who wants to persuade other people that he or she is right – and, very often, that someone else is wrong. !

This means that the argument should always be in conversation with other arguments. Arguments are always connected to previous debates, to what we know, and to what we know we don’t know. Much like Victorian explorers, you should also complement of rectify a preexistent body of knowledge. You should explore uncharted territory in order to add new countries to existing maps.!

Being a hypothesis that needs demonstration, the argument should be supported by textual and contextual (historical, cultural, literary) evidence. !!If you don’t use quotations and comment on them extensively, you fail to provide evidence. !

2. Preparing the argument!

The argument should be formulated and tested a long time before starting to write, talking to teachers, colleagues, experts. As a student, you exist in a community. You are not Frankenstein in his castle, you are part of a world-wide team of scientists. Your work has a social dimension. !!What you write should enter a conversation, or try to redirect it. Your argument should say: “ Hey guys, you forgot this, take a look, it’s important””

On the practical level, what should you do to prepare your argument? !!The first and most obvious piece of advice: you should read a lot and take a lot of notes before writing. !!You should carefully select the textual quotations you mean to use, develop your analysis and interpretation gradually, and make sure that they can be argued logically and consistently. !

Note that you may not use all of the quotations you select, but it’s good to have a firm grasp on the text(s) you want to discuss: you may for example decide to provide short references to secondary passages that could contribute to the demonstration of your thesis.

At the practical level, this means that questions of style and presentation should come into play later, only when you have an argument and you have developed a sense of how to demonstrate it persuasively. !!Very often, however, you have new ideas even at the writing stage. This means that you may have to change the argument and modify the overall structure of your paper considerably.!

2.1. Using theory to make a good argument!

A theory offers you categories you will use in our analysis: “genre”, “suspense”, “narrative”, “inference” are, to mention a few obvious examples, part of very different theoretical apparatuses (semiotics, narratology, etc) that sometimes overlap. Their meaning can change considerably depending on the apparatus(es) you deploy.!!

Theories are important for a number of reasons. For one thing, they make you see things. They give you models that help you rationalize your perception of phenomena. Theoretical understanding is based on ready-made, but open-ended, definition of phenomena that help us perceive and explain them.!

Theories, however, are not written in stone. They exist to be contradicted and perfected. This is taken for granted in strictly scientific research. According to the influential epistemologist Karl Popper, all scientific theories should be falsifiable. !!If you read something that does not lend itself to test and falsification, it’s unscientific balderdash. Literary criticism is filled with such things, with vague claims that don’t mean much. Be wary of vague concepts. They serve only those who formulated them. !

You should also keep in mind that using a theory is not like joining a religion (although at times some theoretical schools have acquired the status of a lay cult: see, for example, deconstruction and the stunning influence of Jacques Derrida in the US in the 80s). You should use more than one theory in order to develop a rich understanding of textual phenomena.!!E.g. You can combine, in the same paper, the idea of “parody” as developed by Hutcheon and Daniele Barbieri’s theory of graphic narratives.!

The place of the theory in the paper changes, of course, according to your purpose, and to the public you have in mind. For example, if you are writing for an audience of narratologists, you may want to highlight that you are using a specific theory more carefully and extensively, engaging in a conversation with the field of narratology. !

In most literary criticism, it is common to integrate the theory in your discourse, because you don’t address an audience of theorists. In criticism, you don’t engage in a conversation with theory (“narratology”, etc.), but with a specific field of literary studies (Defoe studies, eighteenth-century studies, etc.). !

3. Transforming an argument into a structure!

A paper should be well structured, and this means that the paper should be consistent, that it should be governed by logical sequentiality. Everything should play a part in the demonstration of your argument. Every step should lead to the next one. Your argument should build up in a gradual, and wholly consistent, cumulation of significant statements.!

You should always check, therefore, that each part of your paper is consistent with your argument. !!At a local level, moreover, you should make sure that paragraphs are well connected. Always check the last sentence of a paragraph and the first sentence of the paragraphs that follows. The last sentence of a paragraph should set up the onset of the next paragraph.!

3.1. Paragraphs !

Paragraphs are logical units, and the building blocks of your papers. Please note that in Italian paragraphs are larger sections with a title or a number, while the smaller blocks of texts we are discussing now are commonly called “capoversi”. From now on, we will call them “paragrafi” also in Italian.!

As I have highlighted, paragraphs should have solid connections, both external and internal. Loosely connected paragraphs can be acceptable in creative writing – for example in Tristram Shandy and in Ulysses – not in academic writing. !!Paragraph should also have solid internal organization. There’s no such thing as a template for a perfect paragraph. However, we can highlight some principles based on common sense (for a thorough, useful discussion of paragraph structure see A. Fowler, How to Write). !

In general, paragraphs have one or more introductory sentences that establish a connection with the previous paragraph and prepare the more specific sentence(s) that articulate the core meaning of the paragraph. !

To sum up: make sure that each paragraph is well connected to the preceding paragraph and to the following one, that it contains a clear-cut topic sentence, and that the idea in the sentence is developed, demonstrated, and supported in the sentences that follow.!

4. Quotations!

Quotations play a crucial part in humanistic papers. Economists, chemists, and physicists have experimental data. We have quotations.!!Quotations are the data we use to support our argument. However, quotations in themselves are not enough. They should be analyzed and interpreted. !!In other words: each quotation is followed by lines of comment. !!

Each quotation gives you an opportunity to develop your argument, to highlight more nuances, or supply more evidence, of the phenomenon you want to explain. Each quotation gives you the opportunity to specify your position.!!You should also quote from critical or theoretical works if you want to define the methodological foundations of your argument (theory) or complicate/contradict a previous critical idea (criticism). !

5. Specific kinds of paragraph: the introductory paragraph, the conclusions!!

You should frame your paper with an introductory and a conclusive paragraph.!!Introductory paragraphs supply context information for your argument. For example, they can summarize the results of previous studies on your subject. Or they can highlight the lack, and the need, of studies such as the one you are going to present to readers.!

They should, moreover, contain your thesis statement: a clear sequence of sentences that state, in advance, what you are going to demonstrate in the paper. This will help readers follow the line of reasoning you want to pursue. !!For example: “In this paper, I will argue that Quentin Tarantino’s movies are characterized by a consistent use of analexis that has the function of normalizing improbable events, re-setting the expectations of the audience.”

The conclusive paragraph should sum up your findings, adding final remarks that can also open up new paths for research. It usually includes ideas that do not appear in the thesis statement. ! !

6. Style and idiom!

It’s obviously difficult to write idiomatically in a foreign language. Your (and my) sentences could be grammatically correct, but unidiomatic. !!Writing idiomatically is the result of long training and self-training. You can’t learn how to write idiomatically overnight. Through practice and study, you should develop your own idiomatic idiolect: a set of phrases you can use safely. !

However, you will always explore new territories. At times, you will feel insecure about your style. Learning how to write in a foreign language – as well as in one’s native language, to say the truth – is a never ending process. !

— Imitation. Before writing a paper, read theoretical and critical writing you like, try to imitate the style of a master who manages to convey his or her idea strongly and clearly (for example W. M. Abrams, or Ian Watt).!

— Using specific dictionaries. For example, the Oxford Collocations Dictionary, which exemplifies the idiomatic use of most words, is a powerful writing tool.!

— Using the internet. If you google sentences or phrases, you can check how frequently they are used in English. Note that you can also check how often sentence structures are used by substituting superfluous words with an asterisk: “Google is a * tool for on-line research.”

7. Peer review!

Exchange papers with your peers to make sure that your argument is intelligible and persuasive. In good cultures of writing, reading each other’s works is essential. !Always keep in mind that writing is a social activity. Solitary geniuses don’t exist, and if they ever existed, they were not really solitary – they had had good teachers, and read a lot.!

In other words: if T. S. Eliot had Ezra Pound, !Roberto has Silvia