Tips for Writing the Final Paper

With the final paper due this Friday, it seems worth recalling some of the key components to writing a strong literary analysis -- especially about comics (which is, of course, what we will all be writing):

- Balance your research sources with specific and direct analysis of the text itself -- especially the fact that it is comics!

- In other words, please remember that as useful as the overall plot/narrative of the book is, the visual component and the way that it is told is equally important.

- Your descriptions of the way that things look -- or what specific images may connote, or look like, or recall, or seem to allude to, etc. -- is what will ultimately define your interpretation. In other words, it is your responsibility as a literary critic to see things (here, literally!) that some less careful readers may have missed or misrecognized.

- Remember to use comics’ terminology accurately. For example, a frame is different than a panel! (And along those lines, there's no such thing as a cell -- that's for film and animation!)

- The phrase "...conveys _______ in a way that words alone could not," or anything that sounds like that, should be surgically removed from your vocabulary. Instead, tell me what that way is! Be specific, pointed, and precise!

- Things you can look at: the weight of the line, the strength of the line, coloring, grid/layout, perspective, what gets obscured (i.e. through composition and/or framing -- like women's eyes in Jimmy Corrigan!)

- Remember that book titles get italicized (short story and article titles get quotation marks).

- Cite page numbers in MLA style for your research (And for your graphic novel, if it has them. If not, then please be even more clear about the page/scene/moment that you are discussing.)

- Your conclusion should provide the most interesting culmination of all of your many points and observations. In the end, what is this book about, or what is it seeming to say (or show) about something?

- Please remember to give your essay a title.

- If you find yourself exploring something that we discussed and/or addressed as a class, remember to push this further and go beyond whatever came up.

- Be interesting.