essay writing prompts

How To Write A Strong Argumentative Essay In Literature: Basic Hints

Argumentative essay is the paper where you support a particular idea and try to convince your readers in it. When it comes to argumentative papers about literature, students usually pick particular books and raise their arguments to support some unobvious messages hidden in these books. However, not all the students manage to do this successfully. If you want to learn how to write a good argumentative paper in literature, you should read the tips below.

  1. Read the book.
  2. If you’re assigned to write an essay on a particular piece of literature, make sure to read it before writing your paper. You should know all details of the story to raise your arguments. Otherwise, you may miss some very significant facts that will ruin your whole work.

  3. Narrow your topic.
  4. You shouldn’t write about a book in general. To come up with decent arguments that you will support in your paper, you should choose a particular part of a book to write about. You may focus on dialogues and their hidden meanings, for example. Some pieces of literature give a broad specter for your speculation.

  5. Use strong arguments.
  6. When it comes to raising arguments in support of your ideas, you should use very good evidence. Find phrases in the text of a book and use these quotes to confirm your arguments. Explain the meaning of a particular quotation to your readers if it’s difficult to understand it right away.

  7. Do plenty of analysis.
  8. Giving your readers particular quotes from the text, you should analyze them in details. The tone of dialogues might show the relations of the characters. It’s advisable to divide quotations into small parts and review them separately to reveal as much details as possible.

  9. Connect your arguments.
  10. All your arguments should serve the main goal of your essay. After raising and supporting particular arguments you should explain to your readers how they are connected to your thesis statement and other arguments. This will help your readers to see the full picture and understand your ideas better.

  11. Use present tense.
  12. It’s advisable to use present tense instead of past tense when describing actions of the characters or the events of the book. This will help you convey the atmosphere of the story and make your readers to plunge into the world created by the author of the book.

    These are the basic rules you should use when writing an argumentative essay in literature to get a high score for your work.