Research Project 06: Beginning to Draft

At this point, you have created 3-5 categories or big ideas that give some basic structure to your research. Then you subdivided each category into multiple direct connections between the author’s life and novel, based on links in your evidence between the note cards and triple entry journal. Each category should have 3-8+ associated connections, which will guide your paragraph development. Essentially, you will be drafting one paragraph per connection, although this is not a hard and fast rule.

Using the resource that you were given on Building a Full Body Paragraph and combining those ideas with your preliminary outline rendered a basic, conceptual framework for composing fully developed body paragraphs for your research paper. You are now ready to start drafting and adding commentary and analysis to the mix. The framework provides a flexible way to guide your drafting. Thus, each paragraph begins to take on a structure that looks very similar to this:

Category

1. Identify and establish the connection to be examined (topic sentence)
2. Explain the connection generally (why is connection important?)
3. Introduce and provide evidence that supports the connection (note card/journal match)
4. Explain the evidence (significance of the evidence)
5. Identify and explain relationship between evidence and connection (inter-textual connection)
6. Explain the connection more concretely or specifically (add detail)
7. Relate connection to the overall thesis of the piece (relate to focus)

Keep in mind the points above do not equal the number of sentences in the paragraph. You may have one sentence for an individual point or four; it all depends on the material you are addressing.

Also this is intended to be a guide or framework designed to help you. It has all of the essential elements that, if addressed thoroughly, will assist you in developing much deeper and richly developed body paragraphs for your research paper. It is meant to be flexible, not a set of sequential rules. The samples should help illustrate this.

Below are three samples of class generated paragraphs to use as models. The first is the simplest and most direct, following the guideline most closely in a nearly one-to-one fashion. This particular paragraph deals with the connections between author Sandra Cisneros and her novel House on Mango Street.

Category: Pre-life & Childhood

Connection: Class Setting

Both Cisneros and the main character, Esperanza, were born in similar situations¹. Their roots are in urban America; however they are of Mexican descent². Correspondingly, each were born and raised in a poor Hispanic neighborhood in Chicago (B5/6)³. The urban setting of where each lives influences who they are culturally⁴. Both families choose to live in an area where Spanish mainly spoken⁵. The neighborhoods resemble and represent the homeland⁵. Yet, growing up in a poor, working class area motivates each to pursue a better life with broader ethnicity and opportunity⁶. * Add a sentence that links to thesis⁷.

The second sample is more elaborate and deals with each piece of evidence individually, explaining it a little, circling back to the next piece of evidence, repeating the process, before consolidating additional explanation of both pieces of evidence. This particular paragraph deals with the connections between author Julia Alvarez and her novel How the Garcia Girls Lost their Accents.

Category: Immigration and American Childhood

Connection: Differences between real and imagined America

Alvarez and the narrators, each of the Garcia Girls, both come from families that fled the Dominican Republic for political reasons¹. Each had unrealistic expectations of what they believed the United States to be². In her article about the author Sonia Benson states, “Instead of feeling like home, the Bronx alienated Alvarez” (B4)³. The culture shock of moving to a new country, with a new language, and different customs made life difficult⁴. Moreover, Alvarez left her upper-class Dominican life for a lower, working class American one⁴. In the novel, the family experiences the same conditions⁴. The Garcia girls do not like America⁴. It is not at all what they expected⁴. Yet, one narrator-sister, explains that after a few years, the family eventually adjusted to the new environment (6)³. Still, the girls thought life in the States would be superior in nearly every way compared to their underdeveloped island experience⁴. Both experiences, between author and narrator, are identical⁵. They struggle significantly with the disappointments and acceptance of a reality that leaves them living poor in a lower-class section of America’s largest city⁶. * Add a sentence that links to thesis⁷.

The third sample is contains greater depth and detail of analysis and deals with both pieces of evidence at once, then explaining and exploring the connection. This particular paragraph deals with the connections between author Alice Walker and her novel Meridian.

Category: Personal Life Experiences

Connection: Alice Walker’s abortion linked to character suicide

Both Walker and the character Wild Child experience unwanted pregnancies in their late teens that have tragic consequences¹. Although the consequences are different, both women consider the same options and both circumstances end with death². While in college Alice walker traveled to Africa, when she returned she discovered that she was pregnant and slowly began to contemplate suicide³. Ultimately, she decided to get an abortion instead (A12)³. Similarly in the novel, Wild Child shares her experience of an unwanted pregnancy with the main character, Meridian³. Shortly thereafter, Wild Child, in an effort to avoid the burden, jumps in front of a car, killing herself and her unborn child (80-89)³. Wild Child commits suicide because she does not want to have the baby⁴. She is young and feels as though she cannot handle the responsibility⁴. By killing both herself and the baby, in her mind, she avoids creating two miserable lives⁴. She does not want experience the guilt associated with abortion⁴. Although the character opts for suicide in the story, Walker aborted the pregnancy⁵. Having suffered from guilt and depression, she was inspired to express her grief through killing Wild Child⁶. By killing the character, Walker appears to be eliminating the wild child part of her own life⁶. * Add a sentence that links to thesis⁷.

One small but significant item to note in each of the sample paragraphs is the changing verb tense. Notice that when addressing the author’s life, experiences that happened in their past, essentially history, past tense is used. Conversely, when addressing the novel, which is literature, present tense is used. So, the tense you need to use switches between past and present. However, when addressing both the author and the novel, at the same time, you will maintain the present tense. My suggestion is that you just write and not worry as much about this until you get to the editing process. Then you can comb through the document, sentence by sentence, and make sure that these mechanics are in order. This will keep your writing momentum moving forward, without finer mechanical issues slowing down your progress.

Research Project 05: Organizing the Evidence

Once you have a significant collection of evidence you must set about sorting through your note cards. This will give you an early sense of what kind of material you have gathered, exposing the quality of your sources.

As you sort through your note cards and create piles of similar cards, you are beginning to establish clear categories for your information. Essentially, the pile of similar cards is a category, which you then label with a keyword or two. Create 3-5 piles or categories of cards. There is any number of ways to organize your categories. Here are some viable types of organization.

• Phases of Life (childhood, adolescence, adulthood)
• Influences (family, education, work)
• Life Themes and/or Text Topics (relocations, feminism, identity)
• Significant Life Events (deaths, divorce, war)
• Chronological (first, second, third)

Once you have sorted the cards, you may discover that it you have a lot of data and cards that are suddenly looking not looking terribly useful. You may discover that you have a whole lot more data in one area than another. You may even discover that you need to go back to the library and find some more information in one area, because you do not have enough for what you need to begin writing.

Next, number each entry in your triple entry journal, for tracking purposes.

Now you are ready to begin finding the links between the note cards of your biographical research and the relationships that you began to identify in your triple entry journal, matching your evidence. These new combinations between the note cards and the triple entry journals may alter your earlier categorizations, this is to be expected as your data and ideas begin to take shape. Tag each entry in the triple entry journal with the corresponding note card(s). For every match you have made a direct connection between the author’s life and or experience and their work, the novel that you selected and read. There may be a lot of cards left without journal matches, just place them to the side but do not lose them. Those are cards that may be very helpful in crafting part of your introduction or conclusion, later. Here is an illustration of the process:

At this point, you are basically solving a large data accounting problem.

Once you have matched all the evidence between the cards and the journal you are ready to begin writing a preliminary outline for the body of what will become your paper. Your focus in developing the outline is compiling the matched evidence, labeling the connection with keyword(s), and then organizing everything by category into a cohesive whole. On a generic level, your outline structure will look something like this:

II. Body
     A. Category
          1. Connection
               a. Corresponding Note Card
               b. Corresponding Triple Entry Journal Entry
          2. Connection
               a. Corresponding Note Card
               b. Corresponding Triple Entry Journal Entry

A practical example would look more like this:

II. Body
     A. Family and Background
          1. Brian (character in novel) based on James (brother in life)
               a. Brother James (note card A5)
               b. Character Brian’s first appearance (entry 5)
          2. Absent father
               a. Father William (life) always traveling for work (A7)
               b. Father Samuel (novel) dies while narrator in teens (12)

Completing the preliminary outline gives you a pretty good map of the shape that your paper is starting to take. It will expose the strengths and weaknesses of your work, highlight areas where you may need supplementary research, and reveal the material that is the most important in helping you address the research question:

How are the author’s life experiences and elements in their fiction connected?

Research Project 04: Reading the Novel

As you begin to read your selected novel for the research project, you will need to track evidence that connects your author’s life to their fiction. To do this, we will employ a new twist on an old familiar tool. Instead of the double entry journal, capturing quotes and comments, like you used while reading A Separate Peace, you will use a triple entry journal. The three entries will capture significant quotes and passages from the novel, comments that provide your explanation, and then connections to your ongoing author research.

Mini-Objective 7: Begin a triple entry journal while reading your selected novel, documenting at least 15 entries

You need to assemble no less than fifteen entries from your novel. However, more will be better. Remember, the focus of your project is exploring the connections between the author’s life experiences and elements in the author’s fiction. Ultimately, you will be writing a paper that will exceed five pages. This means that if you only have fifteen entries, you leave yourself very little room for error, something like three entries per page. This will work if all fifteen are strong and usable entries, which is not likely to be the case. Similar to the note cards process, you want to generate more material than you may actually need, because you will not be able to fully assess what you need until you begin the composing of the paper, which is a later step. So make sure that you are prepared well.

If you maintain the reading journal as you read, it will be far more helpful and less burdensome. The journals will be checked at least two times for test grades.

For those of you that want to use the Word template I developed for the triple entry journal, simply download it to your computer or network drive. Since this format is slightly more complicated you need to use this form, whether it completed via a computer or handwriting is up to you. Just make sure that you use the form.