Academic essay writing: the thoughts of a somewhat wayward student

Writing essays is hard work—even writing a postcard without resorting to stock phrases is not exactly easy. Yet this is hardly surprising, because writing is not natural to primates!—in fact, it is not a natural activity at all.

I confess to being averse to planning my essays. This could admittedly be put down to laziness; but I feel rather, that it is because I do not want to be tied down to a paragraph–by–paragraph plan which tends – if I may so express it – towards the somewhat tedious process of having to ‘fill them in’. Because an essay is just like a letter—in the sense that, although you begin with a general idea of what you are going to say,  it only takes its particular expression and shape as you write it, and it’s the act of writing that brings out things that were unimagined when you started. So it is that I fear loss of spontaneity—feeling, as I often do, like the essayist William Hazlitt, in that, ‘I seldom see my way a page or even a sentence before me . . .’ Yet Hazlitt was a great writer; his essays wonderfully discursive; and therefore not a good model for literary academic writing.

So, my damning process – which could admittedly lose me marks by revealing it – is        to begin the opening paragraph with a description of what I intend – what I will try –       to express or show in the essay; but without revealing my conclusion—which I would hope would intrigue the reader (so that it’s almost ‘the essay as novel’: posing the question, ‘What is going to happen in the end?’—not, of course that will ever be as exciting as the best novels are). So what do I do after I’ve written my introductory paragraph? I just carry on writing until I’ve reached the end! And then see if I’ve written too much or too little, and adjust the text accordingly: cutting down or expanding. However, I do know what I want to say, and I do not lose sight of that. And, it’s very like making a painting: it is utterly impossible to envisage the final result—no matter how much planning has been put into it, or preparatory sketches made.¹

However, I would say that it’s imperative, while writing, never to lose sight of the question posed by the title of your essay—or of your purpose if it’s a close study of a particular poem, book chapter, etcetera, and try to make every word count. (Also, the advice of one of my tutors’ to link the last sentence of a paragraph to the first sentence  of the next is invaluable). Yet if paragraphs have to link through their first and last sentences, do not the sentences of each paragraph also have to link continuously through the paragraph—each one dependent on its sister or brother sentences? Well, yes, of course they do. Otherwise there’s a danger of writing something that strays beyond the boundaries of the main topic of the essay. Much as if you came across a piece of fish in the middle of your pork pie.

Yet it is, I think, particularly difficult when it comes to paragraphs—because academics who study grammar and/or linguistics deal exclusively with the structure of sentences: no larger unit of language yielding worthwhile study. If you look up ‘paragraph’ on Amazon, a fair abundance is listed. But if you look up ‘English grammar’ it almost seems as if you could go on to infinity.

Well, I have no theory of (academic) paragraph structure, but I’ll have a stab at it:

First, I see it as a discrete unit, dealing with (or analysing) some particularly relevant aspect of the subject, as delineated by the Essay’s title. Second – as per my tutor’s firm advice – the last sentence of a paragraph must link to (or carry over to) the first sentence of the following paragraph.

However, assuming that your paragraphs are all self–contained, and relate well to one another, there is still a danger that you will find at the end of your essay that you have by subtle degrees veered off your topic, to the extent that your essay’s first paragraph does not relate well to your last paragraph. And I confess that this is perhaps the strongest argument against my ‘unplanned’ approach.

But again, I have to say that I did not know how this blog was going to turn out when      I started it; and looking back on it, I seem in parts to have written no more than common sense; yet that common sense is now drilled into me with more force than it was before. However, it does seem to me that my potentially ruinous course of (semi–unplanned) writing ought at least to have a written ‘skeleton plan’—such as will shore up the body of my essay.  Then I would think how best to begin: which characters and scenes were the most important; which passages from the work where expressively the strongest as supporting my theme/argument (and which passages, although truly wonderful, I would simply have to ignore as being strictly inadmissible’—because if you step aside, and introduce such passages, then it will show—just like snow in high summer!)

And, when it comes to planning, and rewriting, we do have to go through a very considerable amount of rewriting: printing the essay out, correcting it, writing more or reducing what we've written. Printing it out again—because typos and etcetera simply evade the eye on the screen. And then, certain things come out in the (hand) writing, and other things come out while writing on the computer. So that the floor around my computer gets littered with printouts and hand–written sheets—it's the only way I can write these essays. Yet, somehow – despite what I have said above – I do believe that, by the simple process of putting into one full paragraph everything that you want say in your essay, and then deciding in another full paragraph the order in which you intend (or will, if you like) organize your essay, you should find richer ideas in your head – that is your mind – than your former ‘inklings’ had given you—and you will be able to write spontaneously. Even, paradoxically, though you may have to write, and write, until you  come to the fullest expression of what you want to say as is possible for the person that you are. The aim – even if unachievable – is to write sentences that no one else can improve on. Even though one of the few writers ever to have achieved this is James Joyce in Dubliners. I told you it would be hard!

As this is a blog I’m allowed to make a slightly oblique move from my last sentence:

Mark Tredinnick, in his excellent book – Writing Well: The Essential Guide' (Cambridge, 2008) – has this to say:

At primary school they encourage you to use describing words. They're trying to help you notice more about the world-its colors, its highs and lows, its speeds, its textures and designs-and get it into your words. But when you grow up, your writing teacher wills probably tell you to stop using so many adjectives and adverbs.

"Write with nouns and verbs" is one of the elements of style. Those are the load-bearing walls, so make them bear the load. 

I seem to remember the same advice being given about the writing of poetry, which of course – if practiced – should ensure that superfluous words will be struck out: and if the poem collapses as a result, we can be sure that it was bad in the first place.

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¹ Picasso often got bored, because sometimes he could envisage so clearly what he was going to do that, in his impatience to finish a work, he would fill spaces with arbitrary, and often quite garish colours—he had, as might be said, a wearying fecundity. There’s one of his paintings in the Fitzwilliam: it could be thrown on the bonfire without the slightest loss to the world of art!