Dear Echolove,
In this case it matters more what your teacher thinks about your essay than what I think about your essay. He knows what kind of a paper he wants, and that is what you must produce. :-)
Here are some ideas from my own experience about how to write a good essay. These will work for a small essay, or a long and detailed one. I will write this as though you intend to go ahead with your topic about Jane Austen and Virginia Woolf. If you change your topic because you find more information about something else you may still use the same process.
The website for The Jane Austin Society of North America's home page is <http://www.jasna.org/> There may also be a website for a study of Virginia Woolf's work, or of her husband Leonard Woolf's biography about her. You have already read some of their books, and possibly critiques by other writers, and you have checked biographies about them. These, including your own ideas from what you have read are the resource materials to mine for your essay.
I think your essay idea is interesting. It is called a compare/contrast approach. You need to do more comparing and contrasting in various ways than you have already done, and to cite good quotations that back up your points. Make sure that you keep track of the sources of all your quotations. You should mark each quotation in the body of your finished essay with a number, and match it with its source, given at the end of the essay on a separate sheet of paper. Write the sources in the proper way, exactly as you find them given in good books.
Give clear examples and good quotes. Pretend you are a lawyer as you make your points in your essay. Try to make your points so well that they can't be denied. Prove them. Here is how I would go about it:
first, review all the research material. Do it fairly quickly to get an overview, and to make sure you have enough to back up your argument. Think about the points you can make that will prove your compare/contrast of the two writers. Write them down as you go. Select good, strong quotations that prove these points and copy them out. If you have too many it is alright. Later you can just use the best of them. If you don't find enough material to make enough points and to back them up you may have to change your topic, or find more material.
Now, write a little paragraph for yourself that clearly explains what you intend to prove. This is what you use to check your work against at various times as you produce your essay, to make sure that you are still on the topic. Next, in point form, write each of the points you will raise to prove your thesis.
You are now ready to write everything you know about your subject using the little rough paragraph and the points as your guide. Put the points into logical order. Write the whole thing out in your own words using your little rough paragaraph and your points as reminders. Write it as though you were doing a very good job of explaining it to a friend who very interested and wanted to hear all about the whole thing. Just let it all pour out on paper. Don't worry about your opening paragraph and your closing paragraph yet, or your grammar. Just get it all down. Now go over it to make sure your language is well-chosen. Make any corrections and additions. You should now have a typed manuscript, printed out on paper.
Cut it up with your real scissors into your points, and make each one complete in itself. You may find several pieces of a point in different areas. Cut them out and glue them together into one piece. If each piece now doesn't make a complete point write more about it until it does. Now put all the points back into logical order again. Stick everything together with clear tape.
Read the whole thing over and find a good beginning piece that may become your first paragraph. It will be the part that explains what you are going to tell them. You might find it is something you wrote second, or even later, but it can still be your first paragraph. Cut it out and stick it at the beginning of your essay.
Now look for a concluding paragraph. Its job is to tell them in one neat, interesting piece what it is that you have told them. It is a summary. You may find your last piece exists somewhere in your glued together essay. If it doesn't you will need to write it.
To write or adjust especially the first and last paragraphs you need to draw yourself together, think about your essay and work your emotions up in conviction so that you have stronger feelings about it. Now make your first paragraph. Really push yourself. You need to start out with a good bang, and you need to end with a nice strong conclusion, too.
Stick them in place at the beginnina and the end. Read it all through. Make sure that the last sentence in each paragraph flows naturally to what is going to follow in the next paragraph, every time. This should happen all the way through from paragraph to paragraph, so that everything flows nicely from one point to the next. This is linkage. If you need to, just write the extra bits you need for it to happen and stick them into their places. Key it all into your computer and print it out.
Now, have a nap or go out for a walk. Take a good break. When you feel fresher go back and read it all over again. Do you have any new and better ways to say things? Have you thought of any new points? Make any changes you think will improve it and make sure everything is on topic. Check your opening and closing paragraphs to be sure that they get the reader from what you promised in the beginning to the nice wrap-up at the end. Try to add a little something extra to the last paragraph that draws it all together with some final good insight that you haven't quite said before.
That should do it. Let me know if it does, or if you have any questions about this.
Best wishes, Maryk
