History Students - Are You Trying to Get Past Writer's Block?
A question I often ask my students, especially those I am teaching for the first time: have you ever sat down to write an essay and simply opened up a new document and started hammering away at it? Following up…did you quickly draw a blank? Usually, most students will raise their hands and admit it – they have done exactly that and not gotten very far. They are suffering from the dreaded writer’s block. The reason this method tends to fail (unless you are some sort of writing savant) is that you haven’t done the prep work.
Here’s what you need to do. Step number one: figure out your topic and decide what specific historical question you want to answer in your essay. If you’re not really sure what you might want to ask, try brainstorming everything that comes to mind until something viable crystallizes into a historical question. The answer to that question will be your thesis statement. It’s not enough to just write about the Great Depression – the topic is fine, but you need to ask a specific question about the Depression that you can answer with a claim supported by evidence. Something like this might be an interesting question: how did urban ethnic groups react to increased unemployment during the Depression? You could even get more specific by asking: how did the Irish community in Depression era New York City respond to intensified labor competition in the industrial sector of the economy? Then you turn to the historical record to find out – and remember…come up with the question first, then look for the answer, not the other way around. Anyone can make a statement and then cherry pick the evidence that supports it. But that is not being intellectually honest. Your answer must follow the evidence no matter where it takes you. You might find that the Irish in New York responded to labor competition in all sorts of ways you had not anticipated.
Once you have thoroughly consulted the historical record and you have all of your research material in place (pace yourself and make sure to have plenty of time to dig deep) then you have to organize what you find. In the olden times, history students and professional historians alike used index cards to organize research material (I still do for bigger projects). But you can also use digital documents or other organizational strategies. Whatever works for you is fine – just be sure to execute some sort of organizational plan. Categories are of course important (the press, political speeches, whatever) and will most likely inform your main points of argumentation. But you’ll want to organize things in a way that will ultimately make sense to your reader, so your points flow logically from one to the next.
This is a tried and true method to get started…If you want to learn more about effective essay-writing strategies, then check out my book, Mastering the Past: Unlocking Excellence in High School History.
With compliments,
Keith