The Writing Place

The first thing you’ll want to do is choose a topic—broadly, what will you write about?  A good rule of thumb is to write about what interests you, because if you’re interested in the topic, you’ll write a better paper.  Don’t worry about what you think the professor wants to read.  If you’re stuck, try considering some of these questions to help get ideas flowing:

• What are the class’s central themes?
• What texts have you worked with?
• What themes do the readings have?
• Have you noticed any repeated images or ideas?
• What do you agree or disagree with?
• What do you find confusing or contradictory?
• Do all the readings say the same thing, or do they disagree with each other?
• Does one text allow you to interpret another text in a different way?
• What biases do the authors have?  What tones do they use?
• Does the author say one thing on the surface but seem to mean something else entirely?
• Do you want to write about a single text or multiple texts?
• Are there non-written elements (images/pictures, the medium a text is presented in, translated texts) that affect the meaning of a work?

A good paper topic offers a lot of avenues for interpretation or exploration.  Passages in a text that are difficult to understand, areas that subtly change meaning when viewed in different ways, and ideas with which you disagree all indicate that there’s something worth talking about in detail—that is, they’d make good paper topics.

You might even try writing your own prompt—create a question of your own to build your paper around.  Here are four sample “question-starters”:

• To what extent does ____ affect ____ ?
• What does [observation about the text] suggest about [broader theme of text or course]?
• What does [idea A] reveal about [idea B] that [idea B] does not suggest on its own?
• Is [text] correct, incorrect, or partially correct to suggest [claim]? Why?

Once you have an idea of what—broadly—you want to write about, you’ll need to narrow it down.  A narrow topic (often called, in technical jargon, a “research problem”) naturally leads into a strong thesis statement.  A good thesis does not need to come down wholly on one side of a topic or another; rather, it can point out a nuanced and possibly contradictory idea, and spend the paper exploring the implications of this idea.  A good thesis does more than make an observation about a text—it is argumentative.  If your reader can’t disagree with the claim in your thesis statement, you have a little more work to do.  Let’s use Huck Finn as an example:

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is not a decent paper topic without refining.  Perhaps one of the themes discussed in the class has been the status and authority of characters in literature.  This is still quite broad.  However, reading the novel, you noticed that characters who are educated tend to have more authority than those who do not—and now we’ve narrowed down a specific theme in a specific work to the single aspect of education.  But you’ve also noticed that this tendency does not always hold true—sometimes less-educated characters have more authority.  Acknowledging and then exploring this nuance further refines the paper.

So, the thesis of this Huck Finn paper could read, “The shifting positions of authority between Huckleberry Finn, Tom Sawyer, his father ‘Pap,’ and Jim suggest that although education can elevate authority, purposeful actions can subvert this elevation.”

This thesis also happens to demonstrate a useful formula for crafting a thesis statement, combining an observation about a text with an argument that extends beyond the text:

Of course, there are other effective ways to structure a thesis statement—don’t feel confined to this formula.

No matter your topic, ask yourself, “So what?”  What is its broader significance?  Why is it worth writing (or reading) about?  This question—so simple, yet often so difficult to answer—will help you articulate your thoughts and might help define your argument.  It can change a paper from interesting to significant.  In The Craft of Research, Booth, Colomb, and Williams provide a useful formula for articulating “So What?”: “I am studying _______ because I am trying to find out _______ in order to help my reader understand _______.”  The first blank is your topic, the second describes how you’ve narrowed it, and the third explains its significance.  To use our above example, such a sentence could read, “I am studying Adventures of Huckleberry Finn because I am trying to find out how power shifts among the characters in the novel in order to help my reader understand how education can affect status and authority.

So far, the ideas in this post have related most directly to papers that don’t require outside research; however, many of the above strategies can apply to research papers as well.  If you are writing a research paper, you’ll also want to consider questions like these:

• What is your research question?
• Is there controversy?
• What sources will you need?
• How much research is necessary to make your argument?
• Will you use primary sources, secondary sources, or both?
• What resources do you have access to?  What can be researched?  (Sometimes you’ll come up with a brilliant research question, only to discover that no information about the topic exists, effectively making it impossible to complete the paper.)
• How can you relate your findings back to the course?
• How can you ensure your paper maintains a narrow scope?

The first two questions above are the most important.  Keep in mind that a research question won’t have a clear-cut answer; “What year was the battle fought at Gettysburg” would not lead to a strong research paper.  Additionally, you shouldn’t be able to find the answer in a single source (if you can, either the question is too simple, or someone else has already written the paper you want to write).

Let’s take an example.  

A classics major might pose this research question: “To what extent did the origins of early Athenian comedy make it political?”  This is a good question because there is no single, clear-cut answer.  The answer is on a sliding scale (falling somewhere between “completely” and “not at all”), and because the question involves interpretation of sources, the reader will be able to disagree with the thesis’s argument (which, as you know, is the most important quality of a thesis).  A thesis for the above research question could be: “While the origins of Greek comedy from 486-455 BCE remain murky, ancient fragments from and about ancient comics suggest that early comedy was indeed political.”  This thesis acknowledges some of the difficulties of the research, but nevertheless makes an argument.  You’ll also notice that the thesis doesn’t exactly fit the thesis formula described above—remember that there are plenty of excellent ways to write a thesis statement.

After you’ve chosen your topic, narrowed down your idea, and written a thesis statement, you’ll want to flesh out your ideas and organize your paper.  There are plenty of resources on this site and around the web that go into more detail about these strategies, so use whatever brainstorming and prewriting methods you like best.  Make a list, talk out loud, free-write, write an outline, construct charts, draw arrows and bubbles, build a table.  Try to develop some ideas that will support your argument; what evidence can you use in your paper?

Think about what system of organization would work best for your paper.  Since you don’t have a prompt, it’s completely up to you.  Do you want to compare and contrast?  Do you want to explain things in chronological order?  Do you want to present counterarguments and overcome them?  Choose a style that will effectively convey your argument.

1. “What To Do When You Don’t Have A Prompt,” The Barker Underground. This article contains a list of many analytical questions to help guide choosing a topic and question around which you can build your paper.
2. “Choosing a Topic,” Purdue Online Writing Lab. This short article from the Purdue OWL gives tips on beginning assignments that will require significant outside research, with or without a prompt.
3. “Testing the Strength of Your Thesis,” Northwestern Writing Place. Unsure if you have a strong thesis statement?  Use this flowchart to find out!
4. “3 Steps to Successful Close Reading,” Northwestern Writing Place. If you want to analyze a passage of writing but you aren’t sure where to begin, this article has great advice. 
5. The Craft of Research, Chicago University Press. This accessible book has a plethora of advice on writing research papers. Part II, “Asking Questions, Finding Answers,” is especially useful for writing without prompts.
6. “Helping Writers throughout the Writing Process,” The Bedford Guide for Writing Tutors. This chapter includes a good review of strategies to get ideas flowing in the preliminary stages of the writing process.