Some people can sit down and write a brilliantly crafted essay on the first draft. Hm, actually I've never met one of those people but I have heard rumors about them. I am certainly not one of these people so I have a series of steps I go through whenever I write. Everyone has different ways of going about writing a term paper. The following is a list of advice on how I would go about it, starting with common sense "must do's" and ending in Marco silliness. In the end you will have to decide what you can and can't use. Anyway, here it goes:
I remember when I first entered university I tried writing papers like I did in high school. This was basically a regurgitation of the plot of a book, perhaps with a bit of parroting of what the teacher had said in class added in for good measure. Now, admittedly I went to what must have been one of the worse high schools in our great nation, but I have found over the years that this is an extremely common problem. A good paper should teach the reader to look at something she or he is already familiar with in a different way, not just repeat what the teacher has already said.
For example, if the assignment was on the movie Star Wars, the average high school paper would pretty much just summarize the plot and if the summary was in good order and well phrased the student would get a high grade. As you know, this doesn't work so well at the college level.
A good example of insightful analysis was provided in a comic scene in the movie Chasing Amy when one of the characters, Hooper, states that there has never been a positive role model for African Americans in science-fiction. When Holden, another character in the movie, suggests that the Lando Calrisian in Star Wars is a positive black role model in science-fiction fantasy, Hooper says something to the effect of (I forget the exact argument) how the Evil Empire is led by Darth Vader who is a shiny black color. Luke Skywalker, a white farm boy rallies up a "clan" of white troops to drive the black Darth Vader and his evil empire out of the solar system. Hooper concludes by saying:
Now what the [expletive deleted] do you call that? […] Gentrification! They gonna drive out the black element to make galaxy quote unquote "safe" for white folks. And Jedi is the most insulting installment because Vader's beautiful black visage is sullied when he pulls off his mask to reveal a feeble, crusty old white man. They trying to tell us that deep inside we all wants to be white!
Another example is a Freudian analysis of the same movie. I forget who first came up with this, I think it was the anthropologist Alan Dundes, and I'm afraid I've forgotten the exact argument (this isn't a term paper after all so I can be as vague and careless about the facts as I want to be - yippee, whahoo, hooray!). The argument goes something to the effect of how the Jedi warriors in the movie are constantly fighting with their light sabers (phallic symbols), and express their male aggression by fighting for dominance by hitting their long stiff rods (the light sabers) against the other guys' long stiff rods. The argument then goes that the Death Star is like a giant egg and that the good guys' space ships look a good deal like sperm. As if this wasn't enough, the sperm-like ships must travel down a narrow passageway (the ovarian tube) to penetrate the Death Star (the egg) which ends in a huge explosion (sexual climax) which was achieved by Luke Skywalker (the young hormone-oozing teenager who's been dying to get his light saber into some heavy action throughout the whole movie).
Now clearly you wouldn't want to use the same language that Hooper uses in Chasing Amy and, let's face it, both arguments are a little silly. But the point is, whether you agree with these arguments or not, they assemble a series of facts from the movies and integrate them into an analysis which shows the movies in a new light. A good paper should do just this.
I am the worst speller in the world and probably would have been kicked out of school long ago if it were not for spell checkers. Still, you have to be careful because sometimes a word is spelled correctly but it is the wrong word for your sentence. For instance, I was recently editing something I had written the night before. What I meant to say was "rising abortion rates" but I had left out the "e" in "rates" so what I ended up with was "rising abortion rats." Now, I quite like the idea of rowdy abortion mice, whatever they might be, but it wasn't quite what I meant to say. Always double check your papers after you have done your spell check!
Go through each sentence in each paragraph. Each paragraph should have a connecting theme that links to the opening sentence of that paragraph. If a sentence doesn't fit well, you might consider moving it to another paragraph or starting a new paragraph. Once you have done this, you might ask yourself if the paragraphs follow a logical progression. You might find on looking at it that your logic runs something like this: a, b, e, a (part 2 or the exact same idea) c, d, m. The flow of a paper is very important, both so that the reader can understand what you are saying and so that she or he can marvel at your true eloquence and genius.
Along the same lines, be sure that you are saying what you mean to say. Often careless wording can lead to confusion and seriously effect one's grade.
One example of this was given to me by my dissertation adviser, David Jordan. His student wrote, "He was a social leopard." Of course, the student meant to say "social leper" as in people steered away from him as if his nose and ears were falling off. But as the student wrote it he was saying something to the effect of "that guy is a giant feline, and a party animal to boot!"
Another example is from a student's test from my T.A. days. This student wrote "Islam is a religion of all or nothing while Christianity is a religion of all or something." Hm, I think I'll let that one speak for itself.
Yet another example from my T.A. days, this time a term paper, was a student's statement, "In China the area was small and advanced while in England the area was vast and hard to control." I have never taken the time to figure out just how many hundreds of times larger China is than England, but regardless of whether the student was talking about the geographical radius of the countries or their populations this statement is silly. Now I suspect that the student was referring to each country's international influence, in which case he was probably referring to England's colonial policy and its influence in Africa, India, the Americas, and other regions. The fact is, however, this is not what he said. The reader should not have to guess if the student has phrased an astute idea incorrectly, or if she/he is simply wrong.
I am always tempted to get every idea about life, the universe, and everything in every paper I write. Sometimes, however, you will have earth shatteringly brilliant ideas that just don't fit with the theme of your paper. If an idea doesn't fit your topic well you should cut it, even if it is good (I have a whole file in my computer on "ideas" in which I put ideas that I cut out from certain papers just in case I have a chance to use them in later papers).
A good number of people, myself included, tend to put things off until the last minute. Now some people can get away with doing all nighters and still get good grades. I have never been one of these people. What I used to do in my undergraduate days was to set myself a fake deadline about a week before the term paper was actually due. For instance, if I had a paper due on September 30 I would write it down on my calendar that the paper was due on September 21. So if you usually take two weeks to write a paper, you would start on September 7. If you usually do all nighters the night before the paper is due (I do not recommend this), then you would do an all nighter on September 20 instead of September 29. Then, if you have the paper a week early you do not have to worry about your computer crashing at the last minute, getting sick, being kidnapped by space aliens, or any of the many other unexpected disasters that inevitably occur exactly when a paper is due.
After I finished a paper, if I was really unhappy with it I still had time to start a new one. If I thought it was ok, then I could take a half an hour a day to read over it and make small corrections. I might even leave it alone for three or four days. Usually, when I picked the paper up again I would see something, or a few things, that could be vastly improved and I would work on that for a while. In the end this method doesn't really take much more time and will make your papers much better (really).
When I was an undergraduate I never went to writing tutors because I thought that stuff was for dummies. Boy do I regret that. In past years I have been constantly pushing my students to see writing tutors and found that the best students improved as much as anyone else. One of the students in particular went from writing solid "A" papers to producing one of the best undergraduate essays I have ever read. I ended up giving her one of the three or four A+'s that I've ever given in my teaching career (sorry, we don't do that at this school). If the writing tutors are booked, make a friend read it. I always inflict my papers on my friends, and even the worse advice has produced at least a couple of good ideas for changes that needed to be made.
Some folks have very stable temperaments. If you are one of these people, the method I am about to outline won't work for you. If, however, you are like me you can use your moods to help you write your papers. For example, I'll often go to a coffee shop and write a paper in a state of caffeine induced semi-hysteria (like now for instance). When the caffeine has worn off I might reread what I wrote and decide that it was not worth keeping (like now for instance). More often than not I would keep most of what I had written but would be less enamored of certain phrases or points, saying something to the effect of "Marco, you meshugena, how could you say it in that way when this way is clearer?" Or I might move an idea that didn't belong in the paper to my ideas file (see number 2). In other words, if you are in a really good mood and your mind is going a mile a minute, this is the time to write your paper. If you are feeling sluggish or in a bad mood, it is a good time to edit your paper because your love for your writing (everyone's paper is like an overly-loved child after all) will be tempered by the bad mood. I am, of course, too studious and too pure a soul to ever drink alcohol (ahem), but I'm told that when you have a hangover you are in the perfect state to edit, in that one has no patience for the sillier things produced in the coffee-hysteria state. I've found this combination of moods and tasks works pretty well.
Anyway, I've rambled on too long. Again, everyone has their own
style
of doing things and my suggestions might not work for you. But you
might
as well give some of them a try, you never know.