The final draft of our villain/monster research paper is right around the corner and this week we really got to focus in on important aspects of our paper.
At the very beginning of the week we got to meet one-on-one to finalize our plans for our paper. When planning my paper, I wasn’t sure if I was going to write with the literary overview or the historical overview. I originally wrote out a bulleted plan for both overviews but after analyzing both I decided that the literary overview best suited the Wicked Witch of the West. When I met one-on-one I feel the role of metacognition was an important part of the planning process. Being able to reflect on your own think to structure your knowledge is important in every aspect of learning but especially when it comes to writing.
At the very beginning of the research paper writing process we started with just an idea, not even an idea but rather just a villain or monster we know and found interesting. Then week after week, we were able to reflect on our thinking process and our findings and build upon the idea that is now being used for our final draft. I like to think of this writing process in the form of a list of questions.
1. Who is your monster/villain?
When we were first presented with this question a whole bunch of characters popped into my mind such as Dexter, Davy Jones, Captain Barbossa, and of course, the Wicked Witch of the West. Although all of these characters can be classified as either a monster or a villain, not all of them fit the bill for this project, leading me to my next question.
2. Why are you choosing this monster/villain?
I think that when you chose your character for the assignment you had to pick it not just because you liked it but you felt that you were going to be able to do something with it. There are many monsters and villains out there that we all know and love, but would they be useful?
3. Are you going to be able to find useful research on your character?
Considering that this is a research paper, I figure that this is a pretty important part in structuring your paper. When I first tried reaching her I was a bit discouraged, there wasn’t much on her that wasn’t a wiki page or similar-type sources. Luckily enough I found that I just wasn’t digging deep enough. With persistence and some help from a few search engines, I was able to find quite a bit of credible sources on her.
4. How will you use this monster/villain?
Once decided upon, it was time to look at how you were going to use this character. When I decided to use the Wicked Witch of the West I knew that her backstory was told in Wicked and that I could prove that she in fact is a very complex villain. I didn’t know the words for it at the time, but I knew I wanted to argue that she was a victim of circumstance.
5. What approach will you use to write your paper?
As stated I finally decided to use the literary overview. I thought that this format would best suit my character because it gives me a chance to show how she keeps reappearing in multiple forms of literature and that she is an ever-changing character.
Each one of these questions has a very important part in structuring this paper. Along with their importance, you must be able to reflect back on each question on order to proceed to the next one.
Along with the one-on-one meetings we also focused on the correct citing methods and the importance of making sure you are not plagiarizing. It is important to know that you’re responsible for whatever information you put in your work and that it’s possible to accidentally plagiarize.
Since our paper is a research paper, we’re going to be using a lot of sources and along with those sources is going to be their citations. We found out that Purdue Owl is a good source if you have any questions. If you still have questions after checking out some helpful sources, never be afraid of asking because no matter what you will always be responsible.
Credits:
Created with images by Hermann - "books education school" • Blacren - "Villain" • Art Poskanzer - "why?" • Pexels - "book book stack bookcase" • Infrogmation - "How" • The Western Sky - "Wicked San Francisco Row A"