Organize your paper as follows:
Write an intro paragraph organized as as follows (but without the bullet dots – just write a regular paragraph):
Write ONE topic sentence. This should name your topic VERY specifically. Suppose my topic is social isolation or marginalization:
That is, you should not write things like:
Mental health is important to. society
You should write something like:
Alexander Van Der Pool, in James E. Cherry’s Edge of the Wind,shows the difficulty a person faces when he feels alone and isolated in a world full of people.
Write ONE SENTENCE to introduce the required text, if you have not already done so (as I did in my topic sentence).
WRITE ONE SENTENCE to introduce your investigative journalism source:
First I will share two sources I found, then write a sentence to introduce one of them as I want you to do:
https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2023/01/loneliness-solitude-pandemic-habit/672631/
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/12/loneliness-social-isolation-and-health/418395/
Okay here is the sentence example:
“How Loneliness Wears on the Body,” by Jessica Lahey and Tim Lahey (The Atlantic, 2023) shows how isolation physically hurts people
WRITE ONE SENTENCE to introduce one of your academic sources. Use the same format if that makes it easier:
“Title,” by XY, (publication, date) shows ——
WRITE ONE SENTENCE to introduce your other academic source:
“Title,” by ZQ, (publication, date) shows ——
WRITE YOUR THESIS STATEMENT (one or more sentences).
Write your thesis statement about EXACTLY how the sources differ in the way they show your topic. I mean, do not be vague. If the novel is both character driven AND symbolic, say that. If the investigative journalism tries to move us emotionally with stories about real people and one academic article is mostly stats and the other is a series of anonymous case studies, THAT is what you must write. Then you can figure out how they interact with one another at the end.
The body of your paper will be analyses of each text, one at a time, in the order in which you introduced them.
Your conclusion (do not say In conclusion – it will be obvious) will be two or more paragraphs discussing how the differences in genre among the sources show the topic you chose. I think the differences will make the topic much clearer to you than just spouting stats off pages that you found. Focus on HOW each kind of source does what it does, not just on the bits of info it contains
