AP Lit | Writing About Literature

(Not in order of importance.)
	Assume your readers have read and understood the work being discussed; assume they have taken part in and understood any classroom discussion of the work; assume they are intelligent and insightful (although perhaps not quite as intelligent or insightful as you -- otherwise, why write the paper?); assume, finally, that your readers are not very trusting -- they believe nothing that's not obvious without support.
	Before you begin talking specifically about the work of literature, sneak in the title and author: "Holden Caulfield is the catcher in J. D. Salinger's Catcher in the Rye." There's usually no need to sneak in the genre ("...Salinger's book Catcher in the Rye"), because you can assume that your reader knows the work (see number 1, above).
	Generally, stay in the present tense. The work is happening at the moment you are discussing it: "Macbeth is exhilarated by the witches' prophecy."
	Give pages or line numbers for every quotation (for pages, do not use use p./pp./pg./pgs., e.g., just use the number: 5, 39; for lines, use l/ll: e.g., l. 6, ll. 34-35).
	Make your title specific. "Hamlet's Mother" tells the reader very little about the paper, and creates no interest besides. A good rule of thumb is that, since your paper is undoubtedly different from everyone else's, your title should be specific enough that no one else would be using it. And do not steal: Walden is Thoreau's title, not yours.
	Take care using first person and second person pronouns. In academic papers, you generally do not address your reader ("you"), nor do you need to refer to yourself ("I"). Academic papers are not letters from you to a reader, but are discussions of ideas. "We" is accepted, however, when it refers to readers in what is sometimes called "reader-response" criticism.
	Summarize plot only when you need to point out a pattern of action or reaction that you think the average intelligent reader would not find obvious, or to remind a reader of a scene or fact that you need to establish an idea.
	To deepen a paper, ask "So what?" about its thesis, and build the answer into your ideas. Then, do it again. Again. Again.