1. I can't stress this enough:
Symbolism is YOUR friend. The harder you look for it, the more you'll see. Symbolism can never be disproven, either, and
English teachers will love that you "saw" the symbolism in a text.
2. Get a decent
word processor. Why?
THESAURUS feature. You can expand you
lexicon at the same time you impress your instructor.
3. Identify your instructor. There's two kinds of
English instructors: Those who are overly
politically correct, and those who seek to offend. Figure out which one your instructor is, and write your paper accordingly. For
P.C. instructors, write about how a given character oppressed the
minority of the day. For offensive instructors, prove that a given character was right to oppress the minority of the day.
4. Use
active voice. Say "The
Greeks
bitch-slapped the
Trojans", instead of "The Trojans were bitch-slapped by the Greeks". Instructors HATE passive voice.
5. Write about a topic you already know something about. For example, I'm taking a class called Technical Presentations, and I'm doing my next presentation on
IP subnetting.
6.Relate your topic to seemingly unrelated things. As your instructor is awed by your astounding leaps of logic and intuition, he/she will have to give you an A. After all, anyone who can link
Zen to
Quake Deathmatch must be deeper than he/she is.
Sockpuppet, I certainly hope no one took that seriously.