On writing essays. 


 


Introduction.


 


Many of you who are here today have a quickness of mind, an alacrity in answering exam questions, an ability to get the facts right, and to get them back across to your teachers and those who examine your university entrance papers.


 


These are inestimable skills and you are to be congratulated on them.


 


But the same skills need to adapted and developed if you are to survive university assessment.


The central part of a university examination procedure in arts and humanities is the essay. An essay is a sustained argument answering a specific question, drawing on other written material, but composed in your own words.


Unlike the exam it is based on your considered reflection of a body of reading addressing a set topic.


The essential component of writing an essay is time: it takes time to read; it takes time to assimilate what has been read; it also takes time to read the material that has to be discarded – and to reflect on it long enough to realise that it needs to be discarded – (though not for ever – it may fit into another essay).


 


So the absolutely central part of writing an essay is time management.


 


Practically speaking you need a wall calendar that lays out the due dates of each piece of work due each semester. You need to shade in preparation time – along with reading time, note taking time; drafting time; and re-drafting time. As will become clear in this lecture, essays, while self-evidently about writing, are also less self-evidently about the time it takes to write.


 


And as also will become clear in this lecture: essays are about writing. This point needs to be made so strongly I should scream it out: writing is about writing. It is not about the time you think that you should be writing; it is not about all the bright thoughts that you have when driving, showering, eating etc: it is about what you actually write down. That’s all that counts. You do not just sit down and it all falls into place. You need to work at your ideas on the word processor, on the note pad, in you diary, to shape them, integrate them with what has gone before, acknowledge how other writers have approached your topic, to refine your way of getting across what it is that you want to communicate.


 


The key to writing good essays is to start writing now, and to learn the craft, polish it and hone it. Plan your time to allow drafts to take shape, recognise that it is a process and not an outcome, and that it takes time.


 


Why Write at All?


 


The social functions of literacy


 


- increases scepticism: the hallmark of academic thinking is to question what is taken for granted. Hence the invitation into university is the invitation to discard commonsense knowledge – as offered by the Canberra Times, the TV stations, the gossip of the club and read authors who have reflected on their topics.


 


- the written word is the starting point for further discussion – it can be held accountable. When you write about what is going on there is a sense in which the appeal is not to the person, but to what they wrote: what they on reflection put down with their name after it. They may say that they didn’t mean that, but the point is that if they have written it, then we presume they meant it.


Goody, J and I. Watt (1963) ‘The Consequences of Literacy’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 5, 304-45.


 


 


This is why academics are so careful to tell each other where they are starting from, whose ideas they have used, and how they have interpreted them. This is also why plagiarismthe unacknowledged use of some one else’s words or ideas - is such an issue in academia.


 


We seek to communicate in ways which improve on what went before: to copy it is to completely destroy our reason for being: don’t do it. If in doubt of whether to acknowledge an idea the best bet is: do it. More humorously, the higher up the academic scale you are the less you have to acknowledge – because we know that you know where you got the idea from. But at first year level we can safely assume that the idea did not occur to you first – and we need to know where you got it from


 


Why read for an essay?


 


Reading the literature orients us to what has already gone on, to established knowledge, and prevents us from making the same mistakes.


 


- when we ask for your opinion we take it for granted that you know what other people have written about the subject. As beginners we don’t expect you to have read all that there is on the topic – and we direct you to what is useful: so you need to read it and understand it.


 


- but we do expect you not repeat common sense perspectives;


- and we do expect you to have understood what it is that you have read.


 


In short, read and report so that you do not rediscover the wheel. Recognise that the invitation to academic discussion is not an invitation to freedom – it is an invitation to participate in a disciplined discussion of arguments, based on what has gone before, and not just what comes off the cuff.


 


Academia is also an oral tradition – because it improves writing: we give tutorial papers, seminars, conference papers because to hear the written word enables us to hear what we are doing. It elicits responses from people quickly so that we can evaluate the impact of our ideas on them. It allows them to tell us what we should have already known about.


 


So tutorials and talking about ideas is also crucial. Writing essays after discussing them in tutorials gives you the benefit of the last word. On reflection you can come up with that response which you couldn’t verbally find at the time:


 


‘Most good thoughts are after thoughts. . . . Conversation gives you thoughts you did not know you could think; writing enriches that gift, till you are positively amazed you could think so much’. Watson G (1987) Writing a Thesis, London, Longman, p10.


 


On drafts


 


Most people who are unfamiliar with the work of writing assume that those who do it, do so easily, and that they ‘just sit down’ and the words flow. Many beginning writers are put off – and think that there is something wrong with them – when they sit down and this doesn’t happen. But professional writers don’t just sit down and write. They put in hours and hours, and they see it as a process. They always start with a draft – with a preliminary sketch of their ideas.


 


‘Another of my oddities (and this one I believe absolutely) is that you never quite know where your story is until you have written the first draft of it. So I always regard the first draft as raw material. . . . A good story cannot be devised; it has to be distilled’. Chandler, R. (1981) Selected Letters of Raymond Chandler (ed F. McShane) London, Macmillan, pp87-88 (letter to Mrs Robert Hogan, 8th March 1947).


 


E. M. Forster ‘How the devil do I know what I think until I see what I’ve written’.


 


Getting a first draft.


 


‘I feel lucky if I write two pages of double-spaced typed shit each day’. Ernest Hemingway.


 


Get, like Hemingway something down on paper – it is easier to fix work up than to write from scratch.


 


Remember the key idea – if you do not get it down it does not exist.


 


 


Do not see writing an essay as an act – a once only discrete activity, that you start and finish between set times, or squeeze in between activities. Rather it is a process, and one which is by definition a slow process. As George Watson puts it:


 


‘It is not remotely spontaneous. . . . It is only when words begin to appear on the page that the mental activity of authorship begins at all. . . . Writing is largely rewriting’.


 


Get it down so that you know the fabric of what you think, see how it needs to be strengthened, and give yourself time to rework it.


 


Writing is hard for every one – not least because it exposes us to criticism. But we should recognise that criticism, is not of us as individuals, but of the ideas we have tried to advance. It is for this reason that we must advance our ideas with as much care  as we can, so that they receive their best possible reception.


 


We must also take care in this context that we are not our own worst critics, and become immobilised by all the real and imagined faults in our writing. As a young academic I wrote a paper which I could not bring myself to send to a journal. My professor at the time took the paper from me and sent it to a journal. He said


 


‘you are not your own judge, jury and executioner – leave that job to those who are paid to do it’.


 


His point is good – do your best, but recognise that ultimately your writing has to have a public airing for it to be evaluated – and it is not your job to do that evaluating. The moral of the story:


 


Never ever fail to hand in an essay because you don’t think its good enough.


 


 


The Processes 


 


As your university career proceeds you will have increasing demands made on how much you write, and how much responsibility you take for producing the finished product. In first year a lot of the necessary material is given to you but writing an essay is still a daunting task.


 


Start with a plan. Writing is like building a building – and an architect works out every detail before starting the process. Writing in this sense is a craft.


 


Break writing up into small projects – if you sit down to write 20 pages the task seems impossible. If you sit down to write more manageable paragraphs then it is much easier.


 


- break into manageable bits


 


This will also help you to focus your interest, and to limit your writing. Many grant proposals and journal articles have a length of 15 – 20 pages. Many people who work with busy bureaucrats are even more restricted. Many ministers of the crown say that if it cant be written on the back of a postcard, it isn’t worth saying.


 


- salad sandwich approach


 


Don’t mistake the finished product for the process. As Becker points out when we see the published word we assume that was the way it was written – we don’t see the successive drafts, and reworking. We also overlook the fact that writers have access to editors and referees who provide them with comment on their work.


 


 


On procrastination


When you set aside time to write it is for writing. If you don’t write don’t do anything else – and then the writing will start. I personally call this the superglue theory of writing: you sit at the computer and you don’t move. Here is Raymond Chandler’s version:


 


‘The important thing is that there should be a space of time, say four hours a day at least, when the professional writer doesn’t do any thing else but write. He doesn’t have to write, and if he doesn’t feel like it, he shouldn’t try. He can look out the window stand on his head or writhe on the floor. But he is not to do any other positive thing, not read, write letters, glance at magazines, or write cheques. Either write or nothing. Its the same principle as keeping order in a school. If you make the pupils behave, they will learn something just to keep from being bored. I find it works. Two very simple rules. a. you don’t have to write. b. you can’t do anything else. The rest comes of itself.’ Chandler, R. (1981) Selected Letters of Raymond Chandler (ed F. McShane) London, Macmillan, p153-4 Letter to Alex Barris, 18 March 1949.


 


What makes a good essay:


- focus on topic


- develop a logical clear argument


- wide and critical use of resources


- presentation (grammar)


- adhere to conventions (bibliography)


 


Style


 


- description and narration


 


- explanation and argument


 


Most good writers read enormously. Look for a good style and mimic it.


 


Find a style of writing that you like and look at it to see how it works. Again Raymond Chandler:


 


‘I spent five months on my first novelette, but I did something that I have never been able to persuade any other writer to do . . . I made a detailed synopsis of some story . . . and then tried to write the story. Then I compared it with the professional work and saw where I failed to make an effect, or had the pace wrong or some other mistake. Then I did it over and over again. But the boys who want you to show them how to write won’t do that. . . .They think all they need is one little twist; they never get it into their heads that writing is like an iceberg, for every foot that shows above water there are eight below’ Chandler, R. (1981) Selected Letters of Raymond Chandler (ed F. McShane) London, Macmillan, pp 432-433 (letter to James Howard, 26 March 1957).


 


 


Polishing your Ideas.


 


Audiences.


Selvin and Wilson (1984,207) suggest practising the art of writing from the perspective of George Herbert Mead: ‘Meanings, then, are shaped by others responses, and others respond not only to the content, but also to the form of transmission’.


- love letters


- letters home


- essays


 


Learning to write to convention:


There is a very funny scene in the film, Educating Rita, in which Rita’s tutor asks her to write an essay on the staging of one of Bertol Brecht’s plays. Her ‘essay’ has two sentences:


“I wouldn’t stage it. It was written for radio’.


Michael Caine explodes:


‘It doesn’t matter if that’s the right answer – you are supposed to take two thousand words to say it’.


The point is that academic writing puts a lot of demands on you


- the book review


- the review the literature paper


- the essay


- the tutorial paper


- and further along the track, the seminar paper


 


Generalities.


Avoid at all costs: as a discipline sociology is about the specific ways in which different societies understand and practice such things as masculinity or femininity; the specific ways in which the economy is organised; the specific way in which human nature is conceptualised; the specific ways in which politics are organised. It is a discipline, which unlike philosophy, does not seek the eternal nature of things but precisely their opposite: their specific form in specific societies and within specific societies.


If you find your essay starting off with a phrase such as “Since the dawn of time . . . “; or ‘As all sensible people know . . . ‘; or even (as Karl Marx, quite a famous sociologist was want to say ‘As every school boy knows . . . ‘ then you are in trouble. Sociology is about specific societies, groups and processes, not unbounded generalities.


- specify dates, names, places, people, use images, cases, illustrations.


 


Readability


Some problems with readability are intrinsic to the social scientists vocabulary. But many others are a consequence of lack of revision and bad habits.


 


Active versus the passive voice.


Passive: It was stated by him that


Active: Jones stated that


Passive: The deviants were labelled


Active: The politicians labelled the group deviants.


Passive: He was hit by Joe


Active: Joe hit him.


The passive voice hides accountability, does not indicate the subject who is doing something, and can usually be taken as a sign of a fear of commitment.


 


Sentence Length and Complexity.


A standard piece of advice given on the first day to every trainee journalist is that the average reading age of the educated population is eleven: about the standard of vocabulary and comprehension of a ‘Goosebump’ book – or in my generation a ‘Dr Who’ book – and in the generation before that a ‘Biggles’ book. But even amongst the most literate a sentence should not run over 20 to 24 words.


 


Flaubert:


‘Whenever you can shorten a sentence, do.


And one always can.


The best sentence?


The shortest’.


 


Complex sentences can be broken down into several distinct thoughts. Complexity of sentence does not equal complexity of thought.


 


As Raymond Chandler put it, there is:


 


‘… the sad error of thinking that the involution of the language necessarily conceals a subtlety of thought. It doesn’t; it conceals a vacuum’. Chandler, R. (1981) Selected Letters of Raymond Chandler (ed F. McShane) London, Macmillan, p151, letter to Hamish Hamilton, March 12th 1949.


 


Within sociology there is a famous critique of one of the most influential American sociologists of the twentieth century, Talcott Parsons. C. Wright Mills, another American sociologist ‘translated Parsons into understandable prose’.  Here is Parsons:


 


‘Attachment to common values means, motivationally considered, that the actors have common sentiments in support of the value patterns, which may be defined as meaning that conformity with the relevant expectations is treated as a ‘good thing’ relatively independently of any specific instrumental ‘advantage’ to be gained from such conformity, e.g. in the avoidance of negative sanctions’


[one sentence of 56 words]


 


In Mills’ translation


 


‘When people share the same values, they tend to behave in accordance with the way they expect one another to behave. Moreover, they often treat such conformity as a very good thing – even when it seems to go against their immediate interests’. [two sentences, each of 21 words] Mills, C. W. (1959) The Sociological Imagination, Harmondsworth, Penguin, 38-39


 


Mills estimated that Parsons’ 555 pages could be reduced to 150.


 


It is not just Parsons who is at fault. Many commentators have argued that modern writing is verbose and perhaps meaningless:.


 


‘Modern writing consists in gumming together long strips of words . . . It is easier, even quicker once you have the habit – to say In my opinion it is a not unjustifiable assumption that  than to say I think’,  George Orwell (1957) ‘Politics and the English Language’, in Inside the Whale, Harmondsworth, Penguin, p150


 


Use illustration of Honeywell word sentences –


- the social function of opacity: some people don’t want to be understood. Modern politics is the ability to phrase answers in meaningless terms.


 


What happens when your essay is marked?


 


Allan Kellehear (1990) Every Student’s Guide to Sociology, Longmans Melbourne distinguishes between three types of markers in academia:


 


1. The Idiot


‘This person wants to know what the key words in your paper mean because they couldn’t be bothered finding out themselves’ (Kellehear, 1990, 67).


- so define your terms


- provide a clear introduction so that the idiot knows what you are up to. Its a good idea to write the introduction last so that you know what you are up to.


- provide a conclusion that tells the reader what points you have made, how they supported your argument


 


2. The nit picker


More interested in form than content


- make sure your title page is correctly laid out


- it helps to spell your tutors name correctly


-bibliography organised alphabetically


- give sources do not copy


 


3. The scholar


wants an answer – not just a long rant


- don’t just describe or outline – make a point


- outline competing points of view, evaluate them and come to a conclusion


 


End with definitions of a pupil and of a student – and exhort them to become students: people who are addicted to learning


 


Academic traditions in writing/style/audience


 


The quantitative tradition


This is particularly important for students writing across fields of study – the psychology students and the sociology students. Each discipline has its own style. Now there are good reasons for these differences based on fundamental assumptions about the nature of human beings, and the nature of science.


The psychologists argue that human beings are as easy to study objectively as are rocks minerals and flowers. So their style of research and writing is based on laboratory studies, an often reported in terms of statistical significance. Hence a large part of a psychology degree is stats.


Reality is stable and the researcher imposes order on it;


 


The qualitative tradition


Researchers in this tradition emphasise more that humans are unpredictable and that to study them means that we need to know what they think, and how they feel. In sociology reality is in flux as people change, and they already have their own understandings of it which is what the sociologist wishes to investigate.


Therefore their written work tends to be more descriptive and narrative based.


This does not mean it is any less reliable or less valid. It is a different style, based on different assumptions, but equally valid.


 


Sociology is the bridge between the natural science type of understanding of social life as objectively existing and the humanities based understanding of society being made by conscious thinking agents. Getting your tone right is hard work – we wish to emphasise both the ways in which we do and don’t have choices.


We want to emphasise the ways in which we shape and make our own world and in turn are the product of political and economic forces of which we may have no knowledge.


As Karl Marx put this paradox: ‘We make our own history, but not of our own choosing’.


So there is always a tension within sociological wring about which to emphasise


 


Values, politics and ethics are central then to sociological writing


 


At  a broader level: (From Herman Smith).


The Shape of Ideas.


 


1. Keep a research file.


2. Play with synonyms and antonyms of your key terms.


3. Develop habits of searching for new classifications of your ideas.


4. Think in terms of opposites and extremes.


5. Invert your sense of proportion – make that which seems small huge.


6. Do comparative work.


 


Problems with word processors


- take care with spell-checker:


casual/causal


peer/pier


workforce/workhorse


Keating/cheating


Howard/coward


many academic words not handled by standard dictionaries customise


structuration


 


 



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