Feminist Thought

Beginnings, Middles, and Ends: Some Writing Tips for Feminist Thought

Beginnings

• Before you do anything, take some deep breaths and let your mind relax.
• How do you imagine your paper? Does it have a title yet? What is the tune a reader might walk away whistling?  Does it have sections or parts that are clearly defined?
• Is there a story you can use to illustrate your main point(s) that you can begin your essay with?
• What are the main points you want your reader to remember?
• You can start writing with your introductory paragraph, but if it isn’t coming out the way you want, feel free to just keep going.  In all cases, I strongly advise you to come back to the first paragraph after you have written the whole paper.
  • Your first paragraph(s) should contain:
    • Your argument and at least some indication of what your sources will be
    • Some ideas about why this idea(s) is/are interesting, important, perhaps even counterintuitive.   Try to avoid saying that your findings are “interesting.” Instead, show it!

Middles

• Feel free to use headings and even subheadings. They can help you keep your structure clear and make transitions easier.   
  • You might, for example, have a (short!) background section and label it that. (Or not—many topics do not need background.)  
  • Think about the points you want to make and whether they might belong in their own sections.
• You may want to write the body of the paper before you write the introductory paragraph(s).
• If your story is a bit complicated, you may want to give a road map to the paper, showing what you are going to cover.
• As you write, be sure to document your sources. You can do this in footnotes, endnotes, or parentheses in the text (e.g., “Smith 1996”) with a set of references at the end.
• Also, think about how to tie your topic and findings to the readings we have done this semester. This is not a requirement, but if you go back in your mind to what we have done, I am betting you will find there may be readings you want to make reference to. If they don’t fit easily into the flow of your text, feel free to put them in a footnote. For example, “This finding of x is reminiscent of author y’s comments about z.”  
• Feel free to borrow stylistically from our authors as well. Remember how Kendi defined his words at the beginning of his chapters? Eli Clare wrote whole paragraphs about the words he was using. Iris Young gave us five faces of oppression, spelling out each one.  

Ends

• Be sure to proofread, proofread, proofread.
• One good trick is to read your work out loud. Often you can hear when something isn’t working well when you read it out loud. Over the years I have often heard students say “I knew that wasn’t the right word; but I couldn’t quite think of a better one.” If something isn’t quite the right word, take an extra moment to see if you can find the word you really want.

Writing Tips

• Words to avoid:  interesting, people (which people?), thing, awesome, really.
• Try to specify exactly what you mean. I would also throw out “natural,” “inevitable,” “simple.” It is your work to explain and analyze, not make assumptions.
• Avoid “very” and exclamation points unless they are completely unavoidable. A sentence is actually stronger without “very”—try it and you will see.
• See if you can avoid simplistic constructions that begin with “there are.” Instead of, say, “There are many interesting aspects of this problem,” try “Problem x exemplifies y,” or “Although researchers disagree about the exact causes of x, three main factors appear to be at work: a, b, and c.”
• Avoid passive voice:  ask yourself who was acting, what was happening?

*Advice to each other—*Do you have a question that we can all help with? Or have you got a tip on something that has helped you in the past? Or have you maybe made an important discovery in writing this paper? Feel free to share!