Chapter Five: Writing

College students loath writing for a combination of reasons, but most complaints revolve around the idea that writing takes far too much time, the process is frustrating, and the end result is muddied beyond comprehension. Once again, student failure is largely the result of a lack of organization. Students must see writing as a process; a series of easily understandable steps which, if taken in their logical order, will lead the student to a well-written paper. As the student becomes better practiced in this process, their personal writing style will largely eliminate the abundance of time and frustration spent on any single paper. The goal of this chapter is to teach exactly how the writing process should be followed. As most introductory classes only require a minor research paper of approximately five pages in length, these short papers will be the focus.

The Process

Before entering the process, introductory students must of course know what it is. The general process for writing begins with the student realizing that he or she is interested in a certain topic. Most professors permit their students to research a wide array of topics according to the student’s own individual interest. Students naturally take an interest in one of these topics while exposed to lecture, reading, or some other form of

class participation. As many lower division college courses are designed for a general audience, a short paper can literally be written on a topic that the professor discusses in lecture for as little as thirty seconds. As a history teacher, I often encourage students to not only understand an interest, but to explore it by writing short papers on topics that we may even have been forced to entirely skip in lecture. When the course is designed to include over five hundred years of history, it is not easy to discuss topics such as the Holocaust or the Cuban Missile Crisis in their entirety, despite their value as case studies of larger ideas. However, a student who feels interested in either of these topics will find no shortage of information to base a short, five-page paper upon. In fact, the biggest difficulty is often in convincing students to narrow their topics down to a single aspect of a large topic that could give them fits in researching. Students may want to write a general paper on the Holocaust without foreseeing the overwhelming amount of material published on the topic. Instead, students should be instructed to focus their efforts on a single facet of such large topics; instead of writing generally on the Holocaust, students should focus their efforts on some smaller aspect such as the Nazi decision to exterminate the Jews or uprisings within the ghettos. The first step in the writing process is for the student to realize an interest; the second is for the student and professor to work together in focusing that interest into something accomplishable within the desired length of the paper.

The third step in the writing process is for the student to research their chosen topic. This is where many students begin feeling trapped in tediousness and frustration. When students begin having problems finding sources for their research, they should immediately contact either the professor (who usually enjoys helping students understand their subject) or librarians (who are trained professionals in helping students find research materials and other resources). Successful students simply do not keep their anger and frustration to themselves; they seek help as soon as problems emerge. I do not merely relegate the need for help to introductory students; doctoral students researching qualifying exams or their dissertations work extremely closely with their academic advisors. In fact, professional researchers commonly cite the vast amount of people who gave them assistance while researching their books. A person needs only to read the “acknowledgements” section of any major historical work to understand the depth of cooperation required to publish the most intricate and original ideas.

But let us return to the first-year college student. Another problem that many have is that they do not do enough research before they begin writing. This may be a result of their frustration with finding sources or of their own inexperience in the field and their inability to know just how much research should be performed before moving on to the next step. Or, of course, it could be the student’s time restrictions (as many take more than one class and therefore have more than one paper to write each term) or personal laziness (as many new students have not yet fully understood the amount of time and energy required to be a successful student). Regardless of the cause, students often try to cut their research time in order to cut down on the overall time they plan to spend writing a certain paper. This can be absolutely disastrous, and such disaster will only be compounded when the student entirely skips the next step. A five-page paper should generally demand that the student research at least five different sources, and be prepared to quote or otherwise use each of these five sources in their paper. The student should ignore sources that seem irrelevant (which do not seem to help his or her understanding of the topic) or sources that seem unreliable (such as the many diverse complaints and arguments found on the Internet). After discarding unhelpful sources, students should have five solid sources to use in their paper before they begin writing.

Theorizing an argument or opinion is the next step in the writing process. Now that you have researched the topic, what do you think about it? Why are you writing on your chosen topic? Why is it important to you, to the class, or to the overall class theme? Not all lower division professors expect an intricate argument, and not all introductory students have enough information or enough interest to create an argument. Many professors permit lower division students to do a simple biography of an important person or event, so long as the student can effectively show why that person or event is important to study. I have enjoyed papers that give biographical evidence of the Cuban Missile Crisis; a step-by-step recount of events can be very useful to students just entering the far larger field of history so long as they include statements that argue for its importance to the larger Cold War. A mere regurgitation of names, places, and dates is relatively meaningless when compared to the far larger power of connecting evidence to their historical importance. More interested students have written papers that focus an argument on some facet of the Crisis, such as placing blame on either Premier Khrushchev, President Kennedy, or Fidel Castro for creating the Crisis and driving the world in the nightmarish direction of nuclear war.

The next step in the writing process is the actual writing, whose own phases will be explained in the next two sections. The student at this point merely needs to understand the importance of doing adequate research prior to sitting down to write the paper. Making this crucial effort will save the student much frustration which would end up causing the student to waste far more time in abortive writing attempts. Professors can clearly see the difference between a well-researched paper and one which was rushed with the aim of rapid completion. Professors often advise students to return to the research stage before revising their paper; meaning that the student has largely wasted all the time spent on the paper to that point. Students confronted with this are inescapably caught in the dilemma of returning to “square one” as the deadline looms. The best advice a professor can give to students is to take the time to perform adequate research in the first place because anything they do without research and planned writing will be effort wasted without progress. When the research is done and a draft completed, the final step in the writing processes is to proof-read and revise any noticeable faults. Students at this point will notice that the vast majority of their work is done and that the remainder of the writing process involves a perpetual cycle of revision and rewriting. Students should not despair at this, as their professors are constantly revising their own work for publication!

Organizing the Paper

The basic structure of a research paper should have been explained to students as early as their first year in high school, and they should have experience working within the basic structure by the time they enter college. Despite the fact that knowledge of writing structures is a requirement for high school graduation in many states, experience has revealed to me that many first year college students have at best a platonic, misunderstood knowledge of basic research paper organization. The basic structure breaks the research paper into three major sections: introduction, body, and conclusion.

This basic structure is outlined below.

A. Introduction

B. Body

1. First argument and proof

2. Second argument and proof

3. Third argument and proof

C. Conclusion

Obviously, the introduction’s purpose is to set up the rest of the paper. The most important part of the paper is the body, where the writer’s arguments and findings are presented with evidence to support their claims. The conclusion is designed to briefly restate those findings in order to crystallize them in the reader’s mind. This basic structure provides both power and clarity; it is quickly found when one glances at the table of contents for even the highest quality scholarly works.

Introductions should generally provide two things: some background on the larger topic and a thesis statement that clearly gives the writer’s opinion on the particular aspect under study in the paper. If writing on the Cuban Missile Crisis, the writer should use the introduction to give a brief few sentences that describe the overall confrontational stance that both sides took during the Cold War. Obviously, there will be some type of sentence describing the Crisis as a good case study of Cold War diplomacy. Now that the Cold War and the Cuban Missile Crisis have been identified as important, the student is free to give his or her thesis statement on the particular aspect of the Cuban Missile Crisis that will make up the rest of the paper. This is the student’s opportunity to give a clear and concise idea that will be proven later. The important factors of the introduction are included in the following outline.

A. Introduction

1. background of the larger topic

2. thesis statement

B. Body

1. First argument and proof

2. Second argument and proof

3. Third argument and proof

C. Conclusion

An introduction can often be complicated according to the type of paper that the student has written. For instance, if the paper is largely a comparison between two different philosophies, then the philosophies have to be outlined and explained in the introduction. However, higher level students who have already mastered the basic structure usually write these types of more complicated papers. First year college students need only worry about the most basic structure.

The next section is the body. The body will normally make up about 90% of the paper’s length because this is the section where the writer must give their arguments and explicitly link these arguments to observable evidence. In history, such evidence usually comes in the form of books, scholarly articles, and other reliable sources. Discerning reliable sources from unreliable ones will be discussed later in this chapter. The most important thing by far to remember about the body is that the arguments must be explicitly tied to supporting evidence. A good writer will never make unsubstantiated claims. Many introductory students may find the difference between explicit statements and implicit connections difficult to grasp. An explicit statement denotes clarity and a powerful connection between a claim and its evidence. There is no room for misunderstanding. Unfortunately, the best example of “explicit” in current American society relates to media censorship. When an agency declares certain movies to contain “explicit” violence, language, or nudity, the agency uses “explicit” to indicate the use of such things so clearly and powerfully that they are impossible to mistake, and the public should be warned for their own safety. When introductory students write their first research papers, they should try to be as uncompromisingly “explicit” in tying their arguments to their evidence as recent films “explicitly” use violence to attract audiences.

In contrast, “implicit” means vagueness or muddiness. There is an extreme lack of clarity in “implicit” statements; an implicit thinker can often talk for long periods of the time without ever getting to the point. Of course, the point or the thesis is “implied” by the direction of the conversation; the problem is that it is never stated clearly and concisely for others to grab and examine. Sadly, recent American politics is full of “implicit” statements in which a candidate will not explicitly attack an opponent for, say, being immoral. However, such accusations can be implied if one to discuss someone’s personal failings as a spouse or parent. “Implicit” arguments often allow politicians to attack one another while attempting to avoid responsibility for lowering the level of debate to lowly personal attacks that often generate emotional decisions in the audience. Perhaps a more “down to earth” example would be a common occurrence observable among teenage girls. If two girls are hostile toward one another, Girl A may constantly talk about the fact that Girl B has had many boyfriends in a short period of time. Though there is nothing actually wrong with this fact, Girl A can use it to imply that Girl B has certain moral failings. In the emotionally and irrationally charged atmosphere of high school students, such accusations can quickly grow to label Girl B as a slut, meeting Girl A’s goal of destroying her opponent. Because Girl A never explicitly accused Girl B of being a slut, Girl A can illogically attempt to claim innocence. She has made vagueness into a defensive weapon. College students must never rely on “implicit” statements in their positive theories or negative defenses. Any writer using “implicit” statements in their argument automatically opens themselves to harsh criticism by their peers. They will be accused, just as I have here accused politicians and teenagers, of using their implicit statements as a defense against having to bring some rational evidence to support a clear and concise idea. Any professor or advisor worth their position will heavily criticize implicit claims and attempt to steer their students toward the explicit connections between argument and evidence.