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Okay so I'm 16, and just got into college from the"gateway to college" program, and I have to take college classes and do college work for college credits. and one of my first assignments was to write a 3 page essay on a short story. I could only fill up a page and a half with what I thought was good work. So I ran out of questions to answer and was left with only 1 and a half pages out of the 3 I needed. and this was AFTER I increased the text size slightly and it was all double spaced. So I was wondering if I should go for the quality over quantity. or just do quantity and hope theirs enough quality in their.

They won't accept that, but Times New Roman, font size 12 and double spaced is the 'standard' for any college essays.

Did you answer the questions in 'an essay format'?
Namely: An introduction(briefly outline the questions you are responding to, talk a little bit about the piece, etc), the body of the work(a paragraph for each question being answered may sound right, but in many of these cases it's a paragraph for each point being raised. Analysis is key here), and then lastly a conclusion (wrap it up!).

Citations are also likely to be a part of the paper, and I'd say it doesn't hurt to reference page numbers in parentheses if you're really hurting for word counts.

Not sure why you have been set an essay based on number of pages rather than the number of words.

Any hoo quality and the set quantity are required.
Obviously a little under or over is not a problem .

At font size 12 how many words do you have and is that still 1.5 pages at that font size?

What have you discussed so far?

Their wasn't enough question or story for me to do the whole 5 paragraph essay format spiel. and the text size is 12, my MS word start it at like 8 or something. but I will try to re-do it, it's due tuesday so I have time tomorrow, as I don't want to do it while I'm sleepy.

Who says you have to do 5 paragraphs?

Introduction

discussion of:
Plot
characters
meaning/author's intention

Conclusion

Chibi Bodge-Battle wrote:Who says you have to do 5 paragraphs?

Every teacher I had sense 5th grade...... as I said, I never finished highschool, I'm 16 I don't know what the feth to do.

Chibi Bodge-Battle wrote:Not sure why you have been set an essay based on number of pages rather than the number of words.

I've been given more page requirements than word count requirements. Roughly speaking, the number of words per page is the same within a set. (Between 500-600 words per page TNR, size 12, single spaced. Halved for double).

Was trying to get an idea of how many words approximately you need. If you do a word count of a page and a half and double it will give an idea for what you need

Break it down into sections:
Introduction

discussion of:
Plot
characters
meaning/author's intention
Historical context of when the story was written

Conclusion

Am sure there are other aspects of a short story to be discussed
You don't have to do 5 paragraphs.

Intro and conclusion are two paragraphs which would take upto about half a page or more.
That leaves two and half pages for the main discussion.

As amatter of interest what is the short story you are discussing?

All you need in an essay is a conclusion, an intro, and a logical progression of topics in the body...not necessarily in that order.

Just write out in advance what topics you're going to analyze, and write a paragraph for each idea. You could have one paragrah or sixty nine paragraphs.

Just wait until you get the lovely 20+ page papers. Always a blast.

Chibi Bodge-Battle wrote:As amatter of interest what is the short story you are discussing?

"Inspired eccentricity" I believe, the books in my bag downstairs which has the story in it. I think that's the name anyway, I know it was about some black girl and her going on and on and on and on, about how men are sexist and all white people are racist even if their not acting racist. It made me very uncomfortable writing the essay.




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Blacksails wrote:Just wait until you get the lovely 20+ page papers. Always a blast.

....I'M DOOMED!!! ....

Sorry guys I don't know what happened but I missed a lot of posts The screen jumped and I seem to have posted part of it twice.

Apologies Bombboy. Forget all that 5 paragraphs stuff now. It is irrelevant for college imho

Thanks LoH, so roughly 1500 words

so say 500 each on plot, characters, meaning etc
But again it is not a hard and fast rule. I used to find it helpful to break it down like this so it seems less daunting.

Thanks Chibi, lord of hats, kanluwen, and blacksail.

Will get to re-doing my essay tomorrow

Yup that looks like the title by Bell Hooks.
I bet that is not the author's real name but it should be!

There is a ton of stuff but it's the interwebs so be careful of the dross

It looks like powerful medicine so you should be able to fill 20 pages no sweat

lol me doing 20 pages of anything is more than a sweat, it's me dying from how much sweat I lost..... lol

I will give you some hope though. I once thought that five pages (roughly 1000-1500 words at double spaced 250 per page-ish) was a lot of work. I never though I'd be capable of writing more than 10 pages.

But come fourth year when my assignments simply read: Write an essay of 5000 words in length on a topic of your choice, I actually found myself having a hard time writing within the limit. I had too much to say and not enough words to fit it all in.

Writing papers, like most skills in life, becomes easier with practice, and soon enough you'll laugh at 10 page papers. One day, you'll even be able to pull the 25 pager in a single night (research included!).

As a little side note, my name is Blacksails...with an s.

Anyways, good luck, you'll get the hang of it!

*EDIT* Oh, and get off Dakka if you have a paper to write!

I said I would do it when I'm not tired, I read through the dakka threads to tire out my eyes till I can sleep, the P and M section, videogame, and OT are what I usually read at night, and the 40k section during the day

and sorry I didn't know the "s" at the end of you're name was important lol

bombboy1252 wrote:

and sorry I didn't know the "s" at the end of you're name was important lol

Most important letter in my name! More sails are better than one sail.

Knew there was something else
Would write a short introduction outlining who the author is- a brief biographical outline

Plot outline: Brief outline of the story
Synopsis: description of what happens to who and when in the story

The 5 elements are worth looking at
Was this what you were taught?

The plot is the basic situation in which the characters of the story find themselves. Typically a plot includes these 5 elements:

Central problem or conflict, usually near the beginning of the story.

Rising Action which includes all the events or consequences created by the conflict;

Climax, in which the rising action results in a turning point. Often this section is very dramatic.

Denouement, in which various of the issues disclosed at the beginning and played out in the rising action and climax are settled or explained.

Resolution, the final result of everything that came before -it can be good or bad, happy or sad.

Chibi Bodge-Battle wrote:Knew there was something else
Would write a short introduction outlining who the author is- a brief biographical outline

Plot outline: Brief outline of the story
Synopsis: description of what happens to who and when in the story

The 5 elements are worth looking at
Was this what you were taught?

The plot is the basic situation in which the characters of the story find themselves. Typically a plot includes these 5 elements:

Central problem or conflict, usually near the beginning of the story.

Rising Action which includes all the events or consequences created by the conflict;

Climax, in which the rising action results in a turning point. Often this section is very dramatic.

Denouement, in which various of the issues disclosed at the beginning and played out in the rising action and climax are settled or explained.

Resolution, the final result of everything that came before -it can be good or bad, happy or sad.

Yes, that's what I was taught. and I swear the short story had none of these lol.


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Blacksails wrote:

bombboy1252 wrote:

and sorry I didn't know the "s" at the end of you're name was important lol

Most important letter in my name! More sails are better than one sail.

very....very true.

I apologize.

Is hard to say without having read the story but I can see where you may have had some difficulty
Those elements describe a typical story arc of most narratives whether books or film.

Some or all of the plot elements maybe present but if she is reminiscing about grandparents they will be harder to spot

Chibi Bodge-Battle wrote:Is hard to say without having read the story but I can see where you may have had some difficulty
Those elements describe a typical story arc of most narratives whether books or film.

Some or all of the plot elements maybe present but if she is reminiscing about grandparents they will be harder to spot

That's EXACTLY what she is doing lol, talking about her grandparents!

Okay so what is she saying about them?

Kanluwen wrote:They won't accept that, but Times New Roman, font size 12 and double spaced is the 'standard' for any college essays.

I would, and I teach (sort of) at the collegiate level.

Length requirements are for lazy, or incompetent, professors.

To the OP: If you think the paper is good, hand it in, if they dock you for length, appeal to the administration.

Not sure "Hand it in and complain if the grade ain't right" helps in the long term

Bombboy is trying to get back into education
If you teach at collegiate level, then a bit of guidance for the lad on how to structure an essay would be really useful.

You are in a much better position to offer advice than I am Dogma as you are working in a college, so am pretty sure Bombboy would appreciate some help here

I appreciate help everywhere, but help in this thread I would be extra appreciative.

and Dogma that's my general look on how writing is. Quality of quantity, that's why I started this thread, to see if that's what colleges would prefer instead of me handing in a bad essay because it was one page too long.

My experience at 'sixth form' level was that whatever the teacher may say about quality over quantity, quantity wins as long as it is good quality quantity.

I was penalised to degree level for writing too long an essay.

Don't forget as it is an English essay it should be the easy. If you run out of things to say just look for more meaning in it and start polishing the bs that comes to mind.

It has a metaphor, do a paragraph about the symbolism of the metaphor to the current events of the story and the overall theme of it. Basically look into the questions in more detail, break them up into separate smaller questions, then answer them as if they were the full one. Quality is excellent and all, by it needs to be expanded on rather than consolidated in order to go into greater detail and thus improve overall quality.

This might help you analyze the story better to write about it:

http://www.hss.iitb.ac.in/courses/HS%20204/Short_Story_Guide.htm

http://carol-rzadkiewicz.suite101.com/how-to-analyze-a-short-story-for-a-college-english-course-a286690

Kilkrazy wrote:I was penalised to degree level for writing too long an essay.

really??? I didn't know that could happen


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whitedragon wrote:This might help you analyze the story better to write about it:

http://www.hss.iitb.ac.in/courses/HS%20204/Short_Story_Guide.htm

http://carol-rzadkiewicz.suite101.com/how-to-analyze-a-short-story-for-a-college-english-course-a286690

Thanks for the link whitedragon.

Really dig into the story. Unless it is a total crap story, you should be able to find enough stuff to write well over three pages. Analyze word choice, sentence structure, character development, setting, plot. There's meaning in everything in a story. In my AP Lit class we had to write a 1500 word essay about a single sentence, so you can definitely write a three page essay about an entire story.