. How To Write Your Documented Paper Your documented paper will be a literary analysis. When you write a literary analysis, you break the text down into smaller parts and then examine how those parts work, both individually and together. A literary analysis is not a book review. You are not being asked whether you like the book or not. Literary analysis involves examining all parts of a novel, play, short story, or poem -- such as character, setting. tone, and imagery -- and thinking how the author uses those elements to create certain effects. As you read each literary work, ask questions and collect evidence. READ THE LITERATURE AND ASK QUESTIONS • Did a particular image, line, or scene linger in your mind for a long time? If it fascinated you, chances are you can draw on it to write a fascinating essay. • Ask yourself why the author chose to write about that character or scene the way he or she did and you might tap into some important insights about the work as a whole. • Did you notice any patterns? Is there a phrase that the main character uses constantly or an image that repeats throughout the book? If you can figure out how that pattern weaves through the work and what the significance of that pattern is, you have almost got your entire essay mapped out. Did you notice any contradictions or ironies? Great works of literature are complex; great literary essays recognize and explain those complexities. You can direct your reading and writing by formulating your topic as a question, which you will then try to answer in your essay. The best questions invite critical debates and discussions, not just a rehashing of the summary. Remember, you are looking for something you can prove or argue based on evidence you find in the text. • Finally, remember to keep the scope of your question in mind. Is this a topic you can adequately address within the word or page limit? Conversely, is this a topic big enough to fill the required length? COLLECT EVIDENCE Once you know what question you want to answer, it is time to search the book for things that will answer the question. Don't worry if you don't know what you want to say yet. Right now, you are just collecting ideas and material. Keep track of passages, symbols, images, or scenes that deal with your topic. Eventually, you will start making connections between these examples and your thesis will emerge. Don't forget the elements of style, i.e., how the characters speak, how the story is constructed, and how language is used throughout the work. A literary work's structure and organization can tell you a lot about the kind of message it wants to convey. How is the work assembled? Does the action skip around in time? From what point of view is the story told? In first-person point of view, the narrator involves him or herself in the story. ("I was walking in the woods when I stumbled upon the "thing.") in the third-person point of view, the narrator does not participate in the story. A third-person narrator may closely follow a specific character, recounting that individual character's thoughts or experiences, or it may be what we call an omniscient narrator. Omniscient narrators see and know all. They can witness any event in any time or place and are privy to the inner thoughts and feelings of all characters. Remember that the narrator and the author are not the same thing . • Look closely at the character's word choice or diction. Whether a character uses dry, everyday dialect or flowery prose with lots of exclamation points can tell you a lot about his or her attitude and personality. • An author's word order and sentence construction (or syntax) is a crucial part of establishing an author's narrative voice. An author may write in very short, straightforward sentences or in long, incredibly complicated lines. • Note the mood or feeling of the text for the author's tone). The tone is set by diction and syntax. • Pay attention to the language that appeals to the senses, representing things that can be seen, smelled, heard, tasted, or touched. Many literary works contain figurative language, language that is not meant to be interpreted literally. The most common types of figurative language are metaphors and similes, which compare two unlike things in order to suggest a similarity between them. Metaphors say one thing is another. ("All the world's a stage.") Similes claim that one thing is like another thing ("The moon is like a ball of green cheese.") CONSTRUCT A THESIS When you have examined all the evidence you have collected and know how you want to answer the question, it's time to write your thesis statement. A thesis is a claim about a work of literature that needs to be supported by evidence and arguments. The thesis statement is the heart of the literary essay, and most of your paper will be spent trying to prove this claim.