Drafting Your Essay: Product and Process

Transcription

1 Drafting Your Essay: Product and Process Ways to Avoid Common Pitfalls First Things First Have your thesis in front of you. Have supporting evidence on hand, collected during the prewriting stage, that you will use to develop your thesis Understand what it takes to make an argument.

2 Focusing on the product: What does it take to make an argument? A claim-- --your thesis Supporting evidence-- --much of it assembled from prewriting facts opinions examples Connecting reasoning logic authority emotion Using Supporting Evidence A fact can be verified as true or false. An opinion is an interpretation or judgment rendered from the facts. Opinions are neither true nor false, but-- --make no mistake about it--some opinions are better than others. Why? An example is a particular instance of something you seek to prove. In a class such as Gateway, quotations or incidents from texts or films can often be used as examples.

3 Good essays use all three types of evidence. Suppose you re working on this thesis: Mary Shelley s Frankenstein surprises modern readers because many find that the daemon s humanity exceeds Victor s. What kinds of evidence could you use? A poll I conducted in my residence hall showed that before this past summer, almost everyone thought that Frankenstein was the monster, not the creator, and that the monster was a bloodthirsty killer. (FACT) From the beginning, Shelley demonstrates the daemon s desire to connect to other living creatures, while Victor repeatedly and selfishly isolates himself from the friends and family who love him. (OPINION( OPINION--supported, perhaps, by EXAMPLES from Frankenstein of a scene illustrating the daemon s humanity and Victor s selfishness.) Connecting Evidence to Claims: Logic Appeals to logic are common in college writing, and especially in essay writing. Because their knowledge of Frankenstein is based on popular myths that bear little resemblance to Shelley s work, it makes sense that most readers are surprised when they encounter the actual text. The daemon shows great kindness to the peasants whose cottage he watches and plans for a time when he can make direct connection with them. Victor, on the other hand, pursues his obsessions in the laboratory or walks alone and wallows in self-pity, forgoing opportunities to derive strength from his relationships with others.

4 Connecting Evidence to Claims: Authority Appeals to authority are also common. Appealing to experts as authorities is an obvious strategy in writing papers; but in most good essays, the writer attempts to establish him/herself as an authority, too. I conducted a poll (did research) before making my claim about readers ignorance of Frankenstein. Connecting Evidence to Claims: Emotion Appeals to emotion can be used successfully in college writing, too, if used carefully. It is heartbreaking to read the scene in which the daemon attempts to communicate directly with humans by speaking to the blind father. As with types of evidence, most good essays use all three argumentative strategies.

5 And Now on to Process... Your initial draft will not be your final essay. Such thinking allows you to pay more attention to what you want to say; you know that you have another stage at which you will attend carefully to how you say it. If you have done a good job in the prewriting stage, you will discover much of what you think as you write. Thus, concentrate on just getting started. Other Words of Advice Unless the poetic muse strikes with great intensity, don t try to write the entire draft at one sitting. Expect writer s block; ; when it happens, quit and begin later.. Or, use freewriting to get you started again. At this stage,, focus less on grammar, punctuation, diction, and spelling than on content.