Composing A Good Essay About Any Short Story In 4 Steps

As part of essay writing, you may be required to analyze a short story. This is known as a literary analysis and it aim is to examine and evaluate a literature work. You will need to examine the different elements that make the literature work. For instance, you may need to look at the different images in the story or you might consider the content and form of the previous work. Here are the 4 steps of analyzing the short story.

Research on the story

You will need to start by reading the story as you cannot write an essay on something you do not understand. You can also research on other essays written on the same story so that you can have an idea of what other scholars had to say.

The introduction

The goal of the introduction should be to capture the interest of the reader. This part should bring focus on the subject. There may be a need to use a provocative question, quotation, startling statement, brief anecdote or even a combination of all these. It may also be necessary for you to have background information that is relevant to the thesis and key for the reader to understand the position you take. You should also include the work’s title as well as the author’s name.

The body

The body refers to a term that is used to develop the literary essay’s central idea. This is the part where you present your paragraph. Ensure that the work is made of at least 3 paragraphs of 500 words. However, this will depend on the length of your essay. Ensure that the essay offers an explanation of the evidence and ideas from the text. The textual evidence should contain a summary, specific details, paraphrase as well as direct quotations. Ensure that each of the paragraphs have a topic sentence. The topic sentence is usually the paragraph’s first sentence and it states a topic that is associated with the thesis.

Conclusion

The essay on a short story should also have a conclusion paragraph. This is a good choice for offering your essay completeness. It also enables the reader to understand that the essay has come to an end. The concluding paragraph should restate the thesis but in different words. It should summarize the key points made in the essay and also make the relevant comment about the work under analysis. However, you should do so from a different perspective. Avoid introducing a new subject in the conclusion.