Before writing the literary essay, brainstorm your ideas on a piece of paper. It may take time for you to do the brainstorming but once you have all the ideas listed out evaluate which one of the ideas is suited best for your topic. Throw away the ideas that are not working and think about a sequence for your shortlisted ideas. Giving the ideas a number will help you to decide the order in which these ideas will be developed in your essay. Once your flow chart is ready you can start arranging the lines making it a paragraph. Arrange the paragraphs in such a way that there should be a flow for the essay.
The literary essay is exploring and constructing a piece of literature. It is different and complicated from reviewing but two are similarly evaluative. In a literary essay you are paying more attention to the specifics whereas in the review the overall effect and validity of the written work is discussed. There should be extra focus on elements like character, structure, tone, style, and subtext in the literary essay. You have to take a piece of literature and discover why and how was it written in the way it is. Your viewpoint has to be strong and you have to write why and how the details of the work support your viewpoint.
The essay should be your interpretation and it should be based on your reading of the article. It can be a mixture of your opinion and references to the criticism of others. Be cautious of plagiarism and of criticizing more experienced writers because it may hinder your response to the work. Literary essays are written to inform the reader and give a message. It should not be written to persuade anyone but what people think is not under your control. Literary essays can be long, as long as 8000 words, but if you have been given a specific length for the essay, stick to it.
The main point of the essay is the subject of the essay and not the writer. It can be an individual experience of the writer or personal reflections like in personal essays, but the writer should underplay him or her and project the subject better. The language used and the writing techniques should be commanding and this is what makes literary essays different from the personal essays or opinion essays. The writer should be able to grasp the attention of the readers’ right from the first line onwards.
The subject is most important in literary essays and you have the choice of picking the topic you desire as the center point of the essay. The subject can be open and clear but the essay your write should appeal to the wide audience and should also deliver a message to the readers, no matter how liberal or narrow the topic is. You can pick up any topic like a species of butterflies, or as general as describing a city. But there is no rule that you have limit yourself to one subject. You have choice of picking up and writing about to subjects. But you have to make sure that the two subjects come together by the end of the essay.