Recommendations on How to Write a Comparative Essay on Three Novels
Writing a good comparative essay is anything but easy, especially when you have more than two items to compare. If you are assigned a paper like this on three novels, you need to start working on this project right away. It will take you a while to polish this essay to perfection, so you need to use all the time you can get.
Here are some tips that should help you write a good comparative essay on three novels:
- Understand your topic.
- Study the novels one at a time.
- Develop a comparison list.
- Choose the way to present your findings.
- Point-by-point.
- Object-by-object.
You should be assigned a prompt of some sort that will show you what you need to focus your comparison on. The main purpose of your assignment is usually signified by the words like “similarities”, “differences”, “contrast”, etc. Once you understand what exactly you need to do, you will be able to come up with an interesting topic.
It’s important to note that you should read the novels at least once before you even start thinking about writing this paper. Otherwise, you won’t be able to come up with a suitable topic. After you have a topic, you will need to read them again, one at a time. Take careful notes with your topic in mind.
You need to come up with a detailed list of points you will compare and contrast against each other. You should have this list on hand when you are reading the novels for the second time. This will allow you to mark relevant quotes immediately, which will make the process of actual writing much easier. If you take notes based on this list, you will be able to see what the main similarities and differences are right away.
There are two main formats of presenting information in a comparison essay. You should choose the one that works best for you personally and makes your arguments appear in a more favorable light.
If you choose this format, the points of comparison will determine the structure of your paper. Each paragraph will be dedicated to one of them and contain information about how this point is reflected in all three novels.
In this case, you will need to provide a detailed analysis of every novel in a separate paragraph. This may not be the best structure for this specific type of comparison essay, because it will be difficult for your readers to keep all the relevant information in their mind by the time they reach conclusion.