How to Write a Good Literary Criticism Paper

Literary criticism can be a scary concept if you’re unfamiliar with it, but it’s really just a broad term that basically means the analysis of a piece of literature (though it can also include comparisons between two pieces of literature, individual thoughts and theories about pieces of literature, or the examination of literature through the lens of a specific literary theory).

If you’ve been tasked with writing a literary criticism or analysis paper, your job is to analyze the given text. That may seem like a daunting task, but it can be broken down into several easy steps. With these steps under your belt, you’ll know exactly how to write a good literary criticism paper.

Step One: Read the Book/Play/Poem(s)

This should be obvious, but not everyone actually does it. While it may seem tempting to read a summary of the text online and try to come up with an essay based on what you know of the plot, professors can usually tell when you haven’t read the book, and you not having read it will make it much more difficult to find relevant quotations.

When you read the text, you’ll probably notice recurrent themes or images, unusual structural choices, or unique diction, or you might have questions about certain aspects of the text. It’s a good idea to note these (either in your head or on paper) so you can start thinking about a topic for your paper.

Step Two: Choose/Come up with a Question

If you’re lucky, your professor will provide you with an essay question or even a few questions to choose from. If you’ve only been given one essay prompt, you can skip this step and go on to the next one.

If you’ve been given multiple prompts, you have a choice to make. Carefully consider each prompt and think about whether it is something you are interested in examining. The most interesting prompts are usually the best choices, as people tend to do their best work on things that they are passionate about. If you don’t feel overly enthusiastic about any of the questions, go through each one and try to come up with an answer for it or several plot points/passages that would provide answers for it.

The prompt that you have the best, most detailed answer for is going to be the best choice.

For most upper-year students and some unlucky first-year students, professors will make you come up with your own essay question. This may seem overwhelming, but it’s less difficult than it seems. If you’ve completed Step One, you’ve already noted some interesting aspects of the text, and now is the time to really think about those. What questions do you have? What did you find particularly interesting and would like to examine in more detail? What are some topics that you find interesting in general that you could possibly explore in this text (e.g., feminism or morality)?

Once you’ve narrowed in on something, you’re ready to proceed to Step Three.

Step Three: Collect Evidence/Examples

This step is probably the most time-consuming step, aside from actually writing your essay. Once you have a question, you need to go through the text to find any information or examples that are relevant to that topic. For example, if you’re talking about the treatment of women in Hamlet, you’ll need to find and write down examples of how the women in the story are treated—note how the men interact with them, what they say about them when they’re not there, and how the author describes or presents them (Are they well-rounded characters with agency or are they just stereotypes and plot devices?).

I like to write down every relevant quotation or plot point I can find, but if you want to speed up the process, think about the angle you want to explore and look for evidence that fits into it.

Step Four: Create Your Thesis

Some people (myself included!) do this step before Step Three, but it’s probably more effective to follow this order instead. Now that you have a list of relevant quotations or examples, you have to decide what your argument is going to be. You’ll probably notice a pattern in your examples, and if you’ve narrowed down your angle then you should be able to come up with a thesis fairly easily.

The three things you need to remember about crafting a thesis is that it needs to be specific, arguable, and not extremely obvious. Let’s break these down.

Specific

One common mistake among student essays is that their theses are too vague or general. You should make your thesis as specific as possible—don’t say that the main character changes throughout the text, state exactly how they change (and why!).

Arguable

For a thesis to be arguable, it has to make a point about the text that could be disputed (and no, it should definitely not comment on the quality of the text). Don’t create a thesis that everyone will agree with—your readers should question whether your thesis is true, and if you’ve gathered good evidence for it, they will agree with it by the end of your paper.

Not Obvious

The last necessary aspect of a thesis is that it is not obvious to everyone who reads the text. If you’ve talked about it extensively in class, you can assume that it’s an obvious fact to your professor or anyone else who might read your essay. The key is to not get stuck on surface-level interpretations and to go deeper into the text than you do in class. If you can do that, your thesis will blow your professor away.

Step Five: Organize Your Paper

Now that you’ve got your thesis and the evidence to support it, you need to figure out how to structure your paper. Generally, arts papers follow the same format: an introduction, 3–4 body paragraphs, and a conclusion. The main part you’ll have to focus on here is the body paragraphs. Your thesis should be able to be broken up into several different points, with each corresponding to one body paragraph. These points, which will become your topic sentences, function as mini-theses in addition to summaries of the evidence of their corresponding paragraphs.

You may want to start thinking of these while you’re developing your thesis and/or finding your evidence.

The best way to come up with your different points is to go through your evidence and put similar examples into groups. After this, summarize what that group of evidence shows and you have your points. Next, you have to figure out how to order them. It’s best to start with your strongest point, or the one you have the best evidence for. Then work your way down to your weakest point, which will be at the end. Once you do this, your paper will be organized and you will be ready to write.

Step Six: Write Your Paper

If you’ve properly planned your essay out, the actual writing portion should be a lot less daunting. All you really have to do is transfer the points and evidence from your outline sheet to your Word Document, but if you want to make your essay stand out, there are a few things to keep in mind when you write it.

Introduction

I like to start my essays with a statement or fact that relates to my topic and/or the text. Write something short and general that piques the interest of your reader without going overboard. Then, situate the reader by relating that point back to the text you’re describing (introduce the text here for context) and make a general statement about it that relates to your thesis. Lastly, write out your thesis and indicate the structure of your essay by incorporating your different body paragraph points into your thesis.

Body Paragraphs

Your body paragraphs should start with the point they’re trying to make, in the form of a topic sentence. Then you follow the basic formula for presenting your evidence: Assert, Cite, and Explain. First you make a statement that provides context for the example you’re about to give. Then, you give the example (be sure to follow the recommended style guide). Finally, you explain how the example you provided proves your topic sentence, and thus how it proves your thesis as a whole. Repeat this for every example and every body paragraph and you’ll be almost done your essay.

Conclusion

I like to look at the conclusion as a more well-developed introduction. Start it off with a general statement about the topic you’ve focused on and restate the name and author of the text. Then, restate your thesis and the different points you made throughout the paper. After this, pull back from the narrow discussion of this particular aspect of the text and explain why it is important to the text as a whole. Discuss the larger implications it creates, such as how it shows the morality of the text or author.

I always end my essays with a point like this; it should synthesize your argument and make your reader think.

Step Seven: Edit Your Paper

If you really want your paper to stand out, you need to go over it multiple times to catch logical and grammatical errors. The more polished it looks, the better your grade will be. A good idea is to not look at your paper for a few days after you write it so you can come back to it with fresh eyes. It’s a good idea to start with a detailed edit where you examine the structure, content, syntax, and spelling/grammar, and after that you should read it over one more time to find any small errors that you may have missed in your first edit.

After you’ve done this, you’re ready to print your paper off and hand it in.

Writing a literary criticism essay can seem daunting, but a step-by-step process can make it manageable and even fun. Now that you know how to write a good literary criticism paper, you can impress your professors and classmates with your excellent literary analyses.