http://vc.ws.edu/engl2110/writingsteps.htm

1. Choose your story.
a. Be sure that you select a piece of literature that interests you. As with any paper topic, a literary topic has to have some appeal to you for you to write a good paper about it. This doesn't necessarily mean that you have to "like" the story that you write about, but you do have to be interested in it in some way.

2. Read your selected story several times and take notes on it.
You will want to make a list of quotations and passages from the story that seem significant to you. Ask yourself:
a. Who is narrating the story and what role do they play?
b. Who are the characters and how are they related to each other? Do their names have a symbolic meaning? Are the characters a mirror image of each other? Is one the antithesis of the other?
c. Is the place where the story develops significant?
d. What are the main issues in the story? How are they presented: through a character, by the narrator?
e. Are the sentences short or long? Is this significant? Are there more verbs than adjectives or vice versa? What does this indicate?
f. Is the structure linear or circular?

3. Determine what you think the main point of the story is. This called the story's theme. Decide what you think the story means. This is your interpretation.

4. Use literary terms to help you articulate the story's meaning.
Review the terms in the introductory chapters of Aproximaciones al estudio de la literatura hispánica.

5. Brainstorm to come up with an idea for a thesis statement.

Your thesis statement should be an argument about the topic - that is, an argument about the story.
Make sure that you have a solid argument to make about the story. A good stand-by is to figure out something that works in the story, like a certain character or a certain setting, and then explain in your paper why it works so well. How do you know whether it works or not? The important thing is to show how it supports the story's main theme or central idea. What do you learn from the story? What parts of the story help to get that point across? Write about one or more of those parts (character, setting, etc.) that help to get the point across.

6. After you have decided what argument you want to make about the story, gather up your evidence to support that argument.

7. Do NOT write a plot summary as a paper.
You can rest assured that I will have read the story you write about! You do not have to retell everything that happens in it. Just pull out essential events from the story to make your point. If you find yourself saying "then ____ happens; then ____ happens," you'd better stop and look carefully at what you're doing. If your essay only tells what happens in the story in a chronological order, you have written a plot summary. Your paper probably won't get better than a "D" grade. Remember that we are writing argument papers in this class, not reports. You have to make an argument about the story, not simply tell what happens in it.