It’s especially important to make sure your thesis statement accurately represents what you do in the essay. If your argument has gone in a different direction than planned, tweak your thesis statement to match what you actually say.
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is often read as a crude cautionary tale. Arguably the first science fiction novel, its plot can be read as a warning about the dangers of scientific advancement unrestrained by ethical considerations. In this reading, and in popular culture representations of the character as a “mad scientist”, Victor Frankenstein represents the callous, arrogant ambition of modern science. However, far from providing a stable image of the character, Shelley uses shifting narrative perspectives to gradually transform our impression of Frankenstein, portraying him in an increasingly negative light as the novel goes on. While he initially appears to be a naive but sympathetic idealist, after the creature’s narrative Frankenstein begins to resemble—even in his own telling—the thoughtlessly cruel figure the creature represents him as.
You have a strong introduction - now make sure the rest of your essay is just as good.
Particularly in longer essays, it’s helpful to end the introduction by signposting what will be covered in each part. Keep it concise and give your reader a clear sense of the direction your argument will take.
Step 5: Check and revise
This introduction to a literary analysis essay, about Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, starts by describing a simplistic popular view of the story, and then states how the author will give a more complex analysis of the text’s literary devices.
When you’ve finished writing the essay body and conclusion, you should return to the introduction and check that it matches the content of the essay.
As you research and write, your argument might change focus or direction as you learn more.
Keep practicing and you will find that it’s much easier to get your thoughts on paper and present a coherent piece for your readers.
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- What is something I’m passionate about?
- What is one thought or idea I want to share?
- Is there any misconception I want to correct?
- What is the best way to present this topic of information (with regard to the types of essays)?
- Elaborate on each of your main ideas with at least one paragraph each. If your main ideas will require more than one paragraph each, feel free to write more.
- For anything point that takes up two paragraphs or more, it helps to have a brief introductory paragraph.
- Stay as concise as possible.
- Include anecdotal examples if it will help you make your point more clear.
- If you are writing a formal academic essay, avoid using first-person pronouns.
Tips for Writing Essays
After you have brainstormed and researched, write down your thesis statement. A thesis statement consists of one or two sentences that sum up the primary subject or argument of your essay.
You can use the Mind Map method to brainstorm connecting ideas, or you can also just jot down bullet points as you encounter them in your research.
Even if you don’t consider yourself a wordsmith, you don’t have to be intimidated by essays and writing assignments. When you learn the basic steps and the most common structures, you will find that it becomes easier to write down your thoughts on any given subject.
Generally, the thesis statement will present your main topic while also expressing what position you hold regarding the subject.
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Effective writing is a vital life-skill that is important in almost every subject in school as well in the work world. Additionally, standardized tests increasingly contain a writing component – – in some cases this includes a requirement to write an essay on a timed test!
It's amazing how quickly my kids are learning difficult concepts. The animation really helps them apply the lessons to something tangible!
Teaching Writing Skills in Preschool to Second Grade
But after a little thought, we find that while grammar is an important part of writing, effective writing requires much more. When a writing process is used to teach writing, students begin to understand writing as a form of communication. Furthermore, writing helps students recognize that they have opinions, ideas, and thoughts that are worth sharing with the world, and writing is an effective way of getting them out there!
At first, many parents think that “learning to write” is primarily a question of grammar. They first think of teaching proper sentence construction, appropriate use of tenses, and punctuation. It is true that grammar is an important component of teaching writing. The Time4Learning system includes a superb set of lessons for teaching punctuation, vocabulary, word choice, spelling, paragraph structure and other components of “correct writing”. Try these demos.
Teaching Writing is an ongoing process, which Time4Learning facilitates in a number of ways.
The four steps of the writing process are: prewriting, writing, revising, and proofreading.
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I swallowed. All of it, I thought. I controlled every word. I had heard, of course, professors talk about the joys of a freer mode of storytelling, writing as exploration, loosey goosey. But I always resisted it. To me, writing that way seemed to be no way to write at all.
I was taking gen-eds at a community college that year, a non-traditional student back home after a tour in the United States Air Force. Not long after that first season on the river, I transferred to nearby Lawrence University in Appleton, Wisconsin, and started trying to be a writer. What I learned about not staying loose on the river quickly translated to my studies. When Jack finally yanked me out of the whitewater that day—he was laughing and told me I had the fear in my eyes—I quietly decided I would never stay loose in a boat again. I’d wrestle that river, resist its surprise spins, ignore its boils and eddies and angles. I’d plow the water, with my feet tucked beneath thwarts I made sure to inflate extra tight. It was one way of doing it.
Years later, I’m a busy dad and a writing professor at Wittenberg University in Ohio. In summer, I drive four hours into the heart of West Virginia to get my rafting fix. The rivers are big there. I guide rafts part time on the Lower New, and once a year if life permits I reconnect with a handful of guides from Wisconsin who make the trip down to raft the Upper Gauley River. During the months of September and October, the dam above the Gauley releases high water, turning a classic summertime run into a world class stretch of Class V rapids. I once heard a West Virginia guide describe the Upper Gauley to guests while handing out beers after a day spent on the Lower New. He was inviting them back to try the Gauley in fall, making the pitch.
“Hey Jay,” I said, turning back for a moment. He raised his eyebrows in the back of the raft. “Thanks for taking us out on the river. Awesome whitewater,” I said, and others nodded in agreement.
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Jack bellowed an “all forward,” and the customers hooted with glee and dug in with their paddles. The horizon opened, the boat dropped, and in the space of one paddle stroke I fell out of the raft. Darkness. Breathless tumbling. Gone.
At Lawrence, I’d sometimes spend eight hours writing on the fourth floor of the Seeley G. Mudd Library, and then as a senior even got to use my own small office. I was writing a novel about my time in Afghanistan. I’d lock the office door, click on my small green lamp, and stay in there until I came out winded and blinking. I had a few other English major friends who were similarly driven, and all have become novelists. Plowing was productive. But forcing a page count and plot line into a predetermined path also felt unhealthy in some way, the way wrestling a river felt unhealthy. It’s like fighting the weather, an adamancy in the act that just leaves a person tired.
I still can’t enter a blank page without some sort of outline. I still need a point of aim in a rapid. But I don’t only plow anymore. I try to dance, to accept and integrate a surprise spin—an unforeseen decision made by a character, for instance—and allow it to change my aim. I’ve felt it on rivers too, been pushed off my plan to go right of a boulder instead of left of it, revised the run in real time, nosed the boat into an eddy and let the stern sweep around. It’s definitely easier on the shoulders, and ultimately a more fruitful expenditure of energy than trying to adamantly muscle everything back the way it was.