Some Rules for Writing AP Essays

GENERAL RULES FOR AP ESSAY WRITING

1.         Answer the prompt

2.         Underline the names of novels and plays. Use quotation marks for poems.

3.         Introduce quotations so it is clear why they are being used.

Write an introduction to these quotations:

His actions proved quite differently after the murder when he forgot that the door was locked and killed Alyona’s sister and barely made it past the two men outside the door, “Oughtn’t I to get rid of the axe? What about taking a cab?...a fatal blunder!” and thinking there was still blood on him after he washed it off.

As the news of the murders was spreading Raskolnikov felt more guilty as if he lived in a pool of lies. One example of his frustration was when he was shouting after the crimes, mentioning, “I can’t stand it. I can’t stand it!”

Choose strong, colorful yet appropriate words to describe. Choose action verbs that are descriptive and fit into the mood of the piece.

Use appropriate academic language, and  if possible, write in a style similar to the style of the piece you are analyzing.  If you are analyzing a piece by Hemingway, you may want to use a more terse style of writing.

Be careful of conjunctions: The word “and” connects two things which have some sort of commonality. The word “yet” shows an exception; it is similar in meaning to the word “but”.  Do not use “and” when you mean “yet”.

Every sentence must have a subject and a verb and must express a complete thought.  A clause which starts with a subordinating conjunction (examples: although, as if, as long as, as soon as, because) should have a comma after it, and an independent clause after the comma. If you write, “Although he knew it.” – you have written a sentence fragment and you are too old for that! (Nobody’s got time for that….)

Everything that you write in your own words (not quotations) is commentary! If  you describe a character in an excerpt as “scrappy” or if you use highly descriptive adjectives and verbs (preferably similar in vein to the style of the writer of the excerpt) then you are doing commentary. 

Take for an example the following commentary on an except from a Raymond Chandler novel: “The jaded cop, with the mile-long stare borne from too many late nights trying to crack too many stabbings, shootings, drownings, garretings, and too many other ways of creative killings to mention,   stumbled upon the body of yet another bum iced in the back alley of a low rent neighborhood”  - that is commentary. You have noted that the cop is jaded, and his job history; you have described how the body was discovered (stumbled upon), the condition (iced – which means stabbed) and described the setting (back alley of a low rent neighborhood).

YOU MUST USE QUOTATIONS OR PARAPHRASE (PUT INTO YOUR OWN WORDS) TO SUPPORT WHAT YOU ARE ASSERTING!!!!!!

If you are not “feeling the writing” then you may fall on the old reliable format:

Start the paragraph with a quotation from the excerpt. (Make sure it’s accurate!) You may tie the excerpt to a larger social issue or its similarity to a current news story, but the important thing is that it is relevant.  Then you must get to the point – answer the prompt, and all of the prompt.  If the prompt asks for dialogue, point of view and social commentary and you answer only dialogue and point of view but not social commentary, then you will score lower on the exam.

A safe format to follow for the body paragraphs – and you can use as many paragraphs as it takes to answer the prompt – is:

Mini topic sentence (relate it back to the prompt)

Develop the mini topic (which might be “how does George Eliot use selection of detail?”) by providing a context (What is the setting? When was the piece written? Who are the characters? What is the situation?) When providing the context, you may also provide commentary through the use of very evocative, descriptive verbs and adjectives.

Then you must use quotations and paraphrasing to defend your position.

After you use the quotations and paraphrases you must then SHOW how the writer used these devices (such as Eliot’s use of dialogue) to show social commentary. You do commentary by using your own words!!!!!

The following is an example of a paragraph. It starts with a current event which is relevant to the excerpt and the prompt, and it also shows how to embed quotations, which are examples of Eliot's selection of details.

Example: The author of a new book, which analyzes Jane Austen’s PRIDE and PREJUDICE according to game theory, proclaims Ms. Austen as a master at the practice of gamesmanship 200 years before John Nash theorized its existence and slapped a name on it.  A prime example of the use of an opponent’s cluelessness to affect a decisive victory is shown in a scene from PRIDE and PREJUDICE when Elizabeth Bennet artfully refuses to pledge to Lady Catherine, her social superior (this is, after all, set in 19^th Century England) that she would not accept Mr. Darcy’s marriage proposal were he to ask again, knowing that her social superior’s angry reporting to Mr. Darcy of her refusal (and her impudence as a social upstart) would signal to Mr. Darcy that Elizabeth Bennet was indeed still interested in marrying him, thus outwitting the social superior.  This shows brilliant and profound understanding of game theory in a social situation that John Nash would appreciate. No less adroit than Austen’s Elizabeth Bennett, is George Eliot’s Rosamund Lydgate whose skillful physical maneuverings “…she released her hands from his (Lydgate’s) and moved three feet away”…”she looked up at him….” are equal to the tactical maneuverings of a brilliant military strategist.  The marital sparring found in Eliot’s MIDDLEMARCH is an example of another 19^th Century Englishwoman’s understanding of game theory – using the cluelessness of one’s opponent to one’s advantage, which is a ploy used by both husband and wife with varying success.