The first task is to get the material together. The material comes in two kinds: primary and secondary sources. Primary sources in this case are literary texts: the actual material that you work on. Secondary sources are works of criticism. Here is your Second Important Message: (ii) It is always better to read an original text and refer to it than to read and refer to a critic. The more literary texts you read and …showed first 75 words of 2186 total…

…showed last 75 words of 2186 total…paragraph, if you like, or you can just end: it's up to you. But the main thing is to make each paragraph a solid unit that develops a clearly announced sub-theme of the essay. This way the indented outline that's behind it will be obvious (not too obvious: don't write subheadings before every paragraph) and the marker will not have that terrible lost feeling that immediately precedes giving the essay a low mark in disgust.