I read Seabiscuit, but if you asked me to write anything on it, I’d give you crap, and I like to think I’m an alright writer.
I’ve never read, say, The Great Gatsby, but I could probably give you a better analysis of that than Seabiscuit.

The only thing I would add to the post is that if it’s an older “classic” book and there’s a modern version of a movie for it, watch it. You might get a feel for how modern society views the theme of the book, and it’ll be (at least) a supplement for your knowledge of the events, characters, and so on.

beside that, i wanted to congratulate you on a well written article. I’ve been doing this for years and it WORKS. I’m old, graduated highschool 10 years ago and used this type of writing in order to master any essay, paper or thesis with excellent results.

I usually read the book anyway, since I enjoy reading, however, this method works and is a great alternative.

That said, I am now majoring in English, and there are some situations where you do NEED to read the book. Especially when the assignment has the phrase “New Criticism” in it. You may not need to read the WHOLE book, but at least enough to get a feel for the style and format.

Really, writing a good paper, as the author has said, has more to do with authentic thought, knowing the professor, and having a THOROUGH understanding of the assignment than reading 1400 pages of Tolstoy’s War and Peace. I tutor students struggling in Freshman English classes, and I find the biggest problem they have when writing their paper is not understanding the assignment, and being too afraid to ask their professor questions.

This is a fairly comprehensive guide to getting decent grades in any assigned paper, as well as being a good overview of standard journalistic practice, but to get a good final mark, you also need to pass your final exams, and so i would add one further piece of advice: learn to rephrase the question.

This is vital for getting through finals, where in the course of two weeks, you may be required to write essays on a selection of around 100 primary texts and back them up with a broad knowledge of secondary sources. This is obviously dumb, particularly when youve already written enough good essays in class. Pick the question thematically closest to a piece you’ve already written, spend the first paragraph dispensing with the question as stated, the second explaining why that approach to the text is frankly usless as an analytical tool, and then fire of an essay whose structure is already embedded in your hindbrain, and for which you have harvested quotes and formulated elegant little segues, bon mots and turns of phrase. Don’t worry about plagerising yourself - for one, it’s perfectly legal, and secondly finals are generally marked by external examiners, who don’t know you from Adam.

And, finally, read some Cicero. They don’t all know it, but i’ve yet to meet an academic who isn’t a little bit charmed by some good, forceful, flowing Ciceronian prose…

I especially like taking the side of the harder argument. In a history class in high school, I wrote a paper arguing the American Colonists were not justified in breaking away from England, it wasn’t my best paper, yet I got the highest grade in the class.