Shaped Writing Paper

This page presents the shape of an academic paper, using color-coded images to highlight how the different components of a well-crafted composition might interact.

It also includes a mystical and melancholy theme that we hear in scenes featuring Luke and the Force, and another theme with lyrical strings that we associate with the grace and strength of Princess Leia.

Composer John Williams has carefully planned the music to invoke emotions that help us follow the story.

We’d probably expect the movie to follow the journey of a humble person living a simple life in harmony with nature, who then joins a more complex society, which is threatened by some ancient outside force.

But what if, a70s synthesizer “bow-chick-a-bow-bow,” and the final third is all harmonicas.

Don’t think of the introduction as where you introduce your reader to everything you’ve learned about the topic you chose to write about. Your job is to introduce your reader to your paper.

While you might use your introduction to introduce a complex concept your reader will need to be familiar with in order to understand your thesis, an introduction should not natter on about what “some people might say” and what “other people might say,” or confess your ignorance about your chosen topic (“I don’t understand why everybody on the planet doesn’t feel exactly the same way I feel about X”).

Your instructor may not circle all your spelling mistakes, or tell you what your thesis should be, or what arguments you should make.

But your instructor does want you to learn, and you will benefit from any feedback you get.

When we write a 5-page MLA-style research paper, we want to produce the right amount of text, with page numbers, a title block, indented paragraphs, maybe a few indented block quotations, and a final Works Cited list (starting at the top of a sixth page). Every paragraph in the paper references that main idea.

We keep returning it as we transition from the intro to the body, from one body paragraph to the next, and from the last body paragraph to the conclusion.