: Re: How to write an English paper about a short story? I have never written an English paper in my life am in Middle School. My mom (I am homeschooled) is requiring that I "write a paper".

@Alves689

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It does sound like the assignment isn't specific enough, but that might just mean your mom wants you to write about it in whatever way seems to work best for you.

That said, it's sort of important to have a specific focus when you're writing any kind of educational paper, so with the parameters you've been given, I'd say you just have to select one.

It's pretty easy to recap the plot of a story, especially if you're good at writing. I can tell you all about the three little pigs and which houses blew down and which one stood up. So typically, when you write about a story, you write about it as a way to examine a particular part or aspect of the story as it is written, meaning you're really writing about the way the story is written, more than about the story itself. Rather than writing about what happened with the pigs and the houses, I begin to think about why things happened the way they did.

For simplicity, I'd say you'd probably want to write about the story as it relates to the author and the way he or she wrote it, or about about a particular element of the story itself.

This is a pretty good, if a bit bland, overview of a literary analysis, which is probably a type of paper that would impress/satisfy your mom/teacher.

But basically, I'd say just think about what's interesting about the story, and write about it. The big thing to remember is that in really any educational paper, you're trying to make some kind of point that you hope your reader will find interesting, and then you're backing it up with examples from the story.

Is the moral/lesson your story is teaching really interesting? Examine that and prove that it's the best analysis of what the lesson is by using examples from the text.

You could examine a character's motivations - why did they behave in a certain way? What kind of theme does your story have? Is it teaching a particular lesson? How?

As for structure, a fairly simple but effective structure goes as follows:

Introduction: Catch interest with a hook, explain what you're
talking about (title of story and author), make your overall argument
in a thesis statement, (Contrary to popular belief, the children's
story, The Three Little Pigs doesn't teach just delicious bacon is;
it teaches the importance of hard work.) And then stick in a sentence
to transition to...
Body Paragraph 1: Topic sentence that says specifically your first
reason for believing your thesis statement (The value of hard work is
clear because the story shows the terrible results of shoddy
craftsmanship and a sow-like work ethic.) Sentences that provide an
example and explain how that example proves the point. And a
closing sentence that sort of wraps it together.
Repeat for at least another body paragraph, if not two, with
differing reasons (Hard work especially pays off when the three
wolves are saved by their savvy older brother who built a freaking
house of stones instead of completely useless trash.)
And a conclusion that sort of recaps your main ideas.

If your mom is picky about formatting and whatnot (and if you're planning on going to college, she should be!), this is a handout I used when I was teaching Literacy a couple of years ago that (I hope) does a pretty good job explaining how to use quotes/evidence from text in your writing.

Hopefully that provides you some focus and some resources to help get you on the right track! Good luck!

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