by Cal Newport
In general, proper source annotations should act as concise pointers, containing just enough information to show you where the relevant arguments are hiding. In the next step, where you organize all of your gathered information into a coherent structure, these simple annotations turn out to be exactly what you need to quickly assess the importance of each source. Therefore, you will end up needing to carefully read only the passages that help your paper. You should not think of this step as adding work. As you will soon discover, these concise annotations are actually going to save you a significant amount of time.
4. Decide If You’re Done
There is no simple answer to this question. While it would be nice to offer a perfect formula for how much research is enough, it is impossible—there are just too many variations to contend with. Some short papers might require dozens of sources, while some long tracts may focus entirely on a handful of original documents.
What follows is a rough procedure that should aid your decision about whether or not you have gathered enough research. Remember, this is just an approximation. Always keep in mind the context of your specific assignment. However, this approach should help reduce the guesswork involved in completing this step.
The Research Termination Determination Procedure:
1. List the topics (specific questions, facts, or accounts from your research) that are crucial to support your thesis.
2. List the topics that might help you support your thesis.
3. If you have at least two good sources for each of the topics from #1, and have at least one good source for a majority of the topics from #2, then you’re done. Otherwise, you need to keep researching.
The reason these criteria are just an approximation is because at this early stage you probably don’t know exactly how your thesis argument will proceed, so you don’t know exactly what information you need. This procedure simply helps you estimate as best you can. By separating out the crucial from the potentially helpful, you are less likely to get stuck hunting down an obscure piece of information that you could do without. This approach is advised by David from Dartmouth, who describes the following similar procedure for sorting his research sources: “I make three piles of my sources: very useful, potentially useful, and not useful.” To draw from our previous example, if your thesis deals with the Eiger and Swiss cultural identity, you might construct your list of “crucial” and “might help” topics as follows:
1. Topics that are crucial to support the thesis:
• Basic historical information concerning the Eiger (when it was discovered, when it was first climbed, and so forth)
• Arguments concerning Swiss cultural identity at the turn of the century
2. Topics that might be helpful in supporting the thesis:
• Memoirs of people who were involved in the first ascents of the mountain
• Press accounts from the time (both Swiss and non-Swiss)
• General discussions of the role of sports and national pride
If you have a hard time tracking down one of the topics from the second list, you would still be okay. If, on the other hand, you have a hard time tracking down either of the topics from the first list, then you need to keep looking.
In the next step, where you actually begin to outline your paper, it’s expected that you might need to return briefly to the research phase and find additional sources to fill in any holes. If you follow the procedure above, however, you will minimize the amount of secondary research that you are forced to conduct—thus saving yourself from more hours in the library.
Step 5
Craft a Powerful Story
This step is where the magic happens. It’s the fun part of paper writing—the moment of intellectual eureka. You have already defined (and verified) a compelling thesis, and you have at your disposal a collection of well-organized and annotated research material. Now it’s time to stretch your mental muscles and pull these pieces together into a powerful story. As Anna from Dartmouth says: “In order to write a great paper, you really need to make connections that other people haven’t made, and the only way to do that is to think.” This is the step where such thinking occurs.
Formulate Your Argument
“You must have a vision of what the overall structure of your paper will be,” explains Frank, a straight-A student from Brown. “Organization of thought can make a decently researched essay into a fine piece of academic work.” Formulating a solid argument, however, cannot be reduced to a system; it is a mental exercise that requires critical thinking and creativity. At the college level, there is no set structure that allows you to fill in the blanks and automatically produce a smart paper. As mentioned in the opening to Part Three, the intro/body/conclusion nonsense introduced in high school won’t do you any good here. It’s too simplistic, and your professors will be expecting more.
In general, a good college-level argument should accomplish the following:
1. Draw from previous work on the same topic to define the context for the discussion.
2. Introduce a thesis and carefully spell out how it relates to existing work on similar issues.
3. Support the thesis with careful reasoning and references to existing arguments, evidence, and primary sources.
4. Introduce some final prognostications about extending the argument and its potential impact on the field as a whole.
There is, however, no set order or format for presenting these general points. One paper might start by defining the context and then move on to the thesis. Another paper might start with the thesis, argue it, and then introduce the broader context at the end. Many papers might interweave all four points. There is no right answer here. And the hard truth is that the only way to get better at organizing and presenting your thoughts is through practice. So write a lot and read good arguments a lot. This is the best recipe for developing your skills for this step.
That being said, there are some general pointers about how to go about formulating your argument. These aren’t rules for what to say; rather, they are tips for how to get your brain fired up and your creative juices flowing.
Tip #1: When it comes time to craft the storyline of your paper, put yourself in the right mind-set. Grab a copy of Atlantic Monthly, The New Yorker, Harper’s, or any other publication that features well-crafted discussions. Peruse some articles, and then go for a walk along a quiet path. Alternatively, as David from Dartmouth recommends: “Talk to friends—if they are good friends they will allow you to bounce ideas off of them and talk through your work.” You can also cloister yourself in a dusty, wooden-shelved, overstuffed-armchair-filled corner of the library, or argue with your professor during office hours. Reread related articles and chapters from your course syllabus. Watch a PBS documentary. Do whatever it takes to get the reasoning portions of your mind inspired and curious.
Tip #2: At this point, grab your source material from the previous step. If your assignment is a critical analysis essay, this will consist of only a couple of books and your reading notes. If it’s a research paper, you might have a large stack of photocopied chapters and articles. In either case, dive into this information, and start letting the relevant facts and arguments settle into your mind. This is where your annotations will point you toward what’s interesting, and help you avoid the irrelevant.
Tip #3: Take a break. Do something else. Let the pieces float around in the background noise of your mind. “The first thing I do when I have a paper to write is take a nap,” explains Laura, a straight-A student from Dartmouth. “I crawl into bed and just think…as long as I’m thinking about the subject when I fall asleep, I will dream about the material and usually come up with some sort of interesting idea.” Similarly, start looking for any opportunity to do a little thinking about your argument. “I think about my paper when I go around completing my daily chores, when I walk to class or when I wait on line in the dining hall,” expla
ins Anna from Dartmouth. Use this downtime to slide the pieces of your argument around in your head and play with the structure a bit. Keep returning to your research material as needed to find more details and to increase your understanding. You need to expose yourself to the source material again and again to fully internalize it. Only then can you really pull together the best possible argument.
Constructing an Outline
You need an outline to capture the argument you just spent so much time devising. Keep in mind, however, that all outlines are not created equal. In fact, there are two major outline-related mistakes made by students. First: under-outlining. If your outline lacks enough detail, it’s not going to serve its purpose as a structure to guide your writing, and you will end up writing from scratch. You want to avoid this at all costs; it leads to argumentative dead ends and weak structure overall. “In high school, I wrote all my papers in one go, starting with the intro, constructing and polishing each sentence in order,” explains Christine from Harvard. “In college I’ve become a huge fan of outline-based writing, which has made my essays much more tightly argued and given them better, clearer trajectories…since I can now shuffle topics around until they flow with some natural order and logic—rather than straining rhetorically to bridge from one idea to another.”
The second mistake: over-outlining. Some students construct beautifully intricate outlines, replete with three or four levels of information, roman numerals, digits, letters, and tabs flying everywhere—the type of outline they taught you to make for your fifth-grade research project. Don’t do this either. It constrains you. As Doris from Harvard explains: “One pitfall to avoid is getting stuck in the outline stage—I’ve seen students who spend far too much time embellishing their outlines when they should really have begun writing the paper itself long ago.” When it comes time to write, you will be hampered if you constructed an outline that practically spells out what each sentence of each paragraph should say. These sorts of low-level decisions should be made when you write, not before. It’s not until you’re actually putting words on paper that you will understand the best way to make each small piece of your argument flow. Don’t let an outline make these decisions for you.
The happy medium between these two extremes is to construct a topic-level outline. Before we can cover the specifics of this process, I must first define what I mean by “topic.” Here, I use the term to describe any self-contained point that you might discuss in your paper. Typically, this is something more general than a piece of evidence but also more specific than a multipart argument. For example, here are some sample topics for our hypothetical paper about the Eiger:
• Our thesis about the Eiger and Swiss cultural identity
• Early written accounts of the Eiger
• The first ascent of the Eiger
• Contemporary press accounts of Eiger summit attempts
• Mentions of the Eiger in early-twentieth-century popular culture
• Mentions of the Eiger in early-twentieth-century Swiss tourist brochures
• MacMillan’s thesis about the Alps and European identity
• The relationship between our thesis and MacMillan’s argument
• Concluding thoughts about our thesis—implications and future work
We start the outlining process by constructing a topic skeleton. This is a list of all the topics you will discuss in your paper, presented in the order that you plan to include them. Type this list directly into your computer because you will later need the ability to insert text in between items.
Your topic skeleton succinctly describes the structure of your argument. For example, we might take the previously mentioned topics and order them as follows to form a topic skeleton for our hypothetical Eiger paper:
1. Mentions of the Eiger in early-twentieth-century Swiss tourist brochures
2. MacMillan’s thesis about the Alps and European identity
3. Our thesis about the Eiger and Swiss cultural identity
4. Early written accounts of the Eiger
5. The first ascent of the Eiger
6. Contemporary press accounts of Eiger summit attempts
7. Mentions of the Eiger in early-twentieth-century popular culture
8. The relationship between our thesis and MacMillan’s argument
9. Concluding thoughts about our thesis—implications and future work
At this point, no specific pieces of evidence are described by our outline, but it does capture how the paper will flow. In a perfect world, you would have at least one or two good sources to support each topic. However, it will often occur that as you formulate your topic skeleton, you come across a topic that you really need to include but for which you don’t yet have any sources. That’s okay. We mentioned at the end of the last step that once you start formulating your argument, you might come across some holes that need to be filled. This is exactly where these holes will become noticeable. Once you have completed your topic skeleton, you need to return to the previous step and find sources to support any of the currently unsupported topics. If you followed the research termination determination procedure from before, there shouldn’t be too many of these holes.
Filling in the Details of Your Topic Outline
Once you finish your topic skeleton, and find sources for all of the unsupported topics, it’s time to fill in the supporting details. This next step is crucial. As Christine from Harvard explains: “Below each bold header [in my topic skeleton], I compile in regular typeface the evidence pertaining to that header.” You should actually type quotes from your research material right into the word processor document containing the outline, and label each quote with the source and page that it came from. For example, under the “first ascent of the Eiger” topic from above, you might insert quotes from a few different books on the mountain as well as excerpts from several contemporary articles. Some of these latter excerpts may also be included under the “contemporary press accounts of Eiger summit attempts” topic. It’s okay to share information between topics at this point, since you will sort out which quote to use where once the writing process begins. This is not a time for caution—if it seems relevant, stick it in.
At first, this step may sound excessive. By the time you finish, your outline will be large and filled with quotes, perhaps even longer than the projected length of your completed paper. Fortunately, this process is greatly simplified by the format of your gathered research materials. Because you made a personal copy of and annotated every source, finding the appropriate pieces of evidence to include in your outline will be much easier than if you had to page through each book and article from scratch. Furthermore, the benefits of this outline far outweigh the annoyance of constructing it. As Robert, a straight-A student from Brown, explains; “I find that using this process helps me avoid digging through a pile of books and articles for each piece of information I need as I need it during writing.”
Remember, the goal of the straight-A approach is to separate the different components of paper construction. When it comes time to write, you don’t want to be flipping through your sources, hunting down the right support. This drains your energy, increases your pain, takes time, and reduces the quality of your writing. This is why it is crucial that you extract the information from your sources in advance. Later, the writing process will be reduced to the much simpler task of simply building a framework around this already identified and organized information structure.
Step 6
Consult Your Expert Panel
“I discuss ideas with friends,” says Suzanne, a straight-A student from Brown, “and am therefore usually pretty confident with my argument by the time I sit down to write.” Suzanne reinforces a key observation: The more input you receive, the better your paper will turn out. And because soliciting advice is easy, you might as well get your outline reviewed by a group of people you trust. In the straight-A lexi
con, this strategy is called “consulting your expert panel.” The technique is popular because it requires little effort on your part, but the impact on your paper quality is significant. This is the final push that transforms your thinking from interesting into compelling and your paper from competent into a standout.
Choosing Your Expert Panel
The size of your expert panel should be directly proportional to the importance of the assignment. If it’s a one-page essay worth 5 percent of your grade, then your expert panel should consist of only yourself. If it’s a medium-size critical analysis essay, you might aim for two opinions. If it’s a major term paper worth a significant portion of your grade, than you may want to solicit feedback from as many as half-a-dozen well-chosen people.
Who should sit on your panel? Your number one pick should be your professor. Unless he specifically states that he won’t discuss drafts in progress (which professors sometimes do to avoid an overload of conferencing in a large class), definitely plan to bring your outline to office hours. Lay out the general shape of your argument, and the types of sources you are drawing from and where. More often than not, the professor will have some targeted advice on how to better present your points. He might suggest a new order or an added topic that should be addressed. As David from Dartmouth notes, this meeting also “will help you to create a rapport with the prof, and give you an idea of what he or she is looking for.”
Yes, you’ve already talked with your professor in Step #3 (Seek a Second Opinion). Don’t worry. There is nothing wrong with talking to a professor on two separate occasions for one paper. The first conference was quick and dealt with making sure you were starting off in the right direction. This second conference is more detailed, making sure that you managed to stay on course. Keep in mind that some students talk to their professors many times during the paper-writing process, perhaps once or twice a week. This is overkill and shouldn’t be necessary if you’ve followed the efficient strategy laid out in this book. But rest assured that two visits are hardly monopolizing your professor’s time.