Question

Comparative essay?

So tomorrow I have a comparative essay on two different texts and a movie and I was wondering what some tips are to write one?

Answer 1

Write about what's interesting to you.

Explanation:

When comparing things as complicated and subjective as movies or written texts of significant length, there generally won't be any single right answer. A tip that helped me was to stop worrying about what other people might find important or interesting and just write about what I thought was interesting.

The tough part is learning to recognize those topics when they occur. I'm not easily offended, which often means I'm pretty insensitive to the sorts of things that would be interesting to write about. But I've learned when something about the movie bothers me a bit, or makes me laugh, or makes me feel something surprising, those are the spots.

When you pick something interesting to yourself to write about, there's almost never any problem about running out of things to say. Usually the problem is there are too many things to say. Sometimes it's hard to get started because it's hard to know what to say first. I just make a list of the things I want to say, and once I have the list usually the order suggests itself.

I hated writing for many years, because it was hard for me. I always dreaded it and I was terrible at it. When I go back and look at my master's thesis and Ph.D. thesis, almost every sentence is ridiculously complicated, with at least seven commas. It's harder to say things simply, but worth the extra effort if you want folks to actually understand what you're saying.

These days I view writing as an opportunity to figure out what I think. I mostly write math. I really like the math tradition of employing the first person plural, "we" and "let's." It connotes a friendly union of teacher and student, of author and reader. That idea makes me happy.

Good luck.