2. What's the thesis? Does the essay really defend its thesis? If so, am I convinced by that defense? Why or why not?
3. Does the essay tell me anything at all about this subject, or any related subject, that I didn't already know?
4. Does the essay stick to the subject? In other words, is everything the writer says relevant to the issue at hand?
5. Does the writer waste time telling us things everyone already knows? If so, how far off the subject does this take him, and how often does he get lost?
6. Was reading this essay a valuable use of my time? Did I learn something worth learning that I didn't already know? What?

1. This essay leaves me totally in the dark on the question of why people love violent entertainment. In fact, the writer sometimes suggests that they don't, or that if they do, he surely can't understand why. ("It really depends on the individual's reaction"; "the adult situation is hard to comprehend"; "not many veterans go to see war movies"; "violent movies have a psychological effect on teenagers"; "the infatuation starts early.")
2. It looks as if the writer intended the opening sentence to be the thesis. But this can't be the case. Why? Because the rest of the essay doesn't support this thesis. The rest of the essay suggests that teenagers are the only age group in America that's actually attracted to violence for some reason this writer can explain. Young kids may or may not like it; this writer demonstrates only that they are exposed to it because producers think they like it, although no one says why. Adults baffle this writer completely.
3. It's hard to see what I learned from reading this essay. For example, did I learn that kids watch cartoons? No, I knew that. Did I learn that some kids' cartoons are violent? No, I knew that. Did I learn that "Fatal Attraction," "Friday the Thirteenth," and "Nightmare on Elm Street" are violent movies? No, I knew that. Did I learn that you shouldn't go out on the street and act out violence you see on the screen; if you do that's foolish and bad? No, I knew that too.
4. No, the writer doesn't stick to the subject. The most glaring drift has already occurred by the beginning of paragraph five. The essay sets out to talk about the causes of a love of violent entertainment. In other words, the writer claims he's going to talk about this question: Why in the world do people like this stuff? But he winds up talking about the possible bad effects of watching violent entertainment instead. That is, he winds up talking about this question: Can watching violent entertainment be bad for you or for society at large? These two questions are completely different in substance.

5. This essay gets off the subject in other ways, too, and mostly by telling us stuff we already know. For example, did we not know that cartoons are a form of visual entertainment? Did we not know that most arguments have at least two sides? Did we not know that violent entertainment probably has some sort of psychological effect on people?
6. What I learned from reading this essay is that teenagers are the segment of society most likely to be attracted to violent entertainment. I might not have known that. However, had the writer used that statement as a thesis in the first place, he could have given me more insight into why he thinks that's the case. He does say a few things on this subject, but what he says is mostly vague and confusing. For example, what's "a voyeuristic view of risk, challenge, and ultimate failure"? And why is that something teenagers would be more interested in than anyone else?

How do many of these show that this writer just isn't paying attention to what he's saying?

Wait a minute! Loves don't go through stages as they grow up. In fact, loves don't grow up. It's people who do that.

"The way these three groups deal with violent entertainment is controversial because there are always two sides to a argument."

The fact that there are always two sides to a controversy doesn't prove that this particular statement is controversial. Think of it this way: Blue suede shoes are shoes. But does that prove I'm wearing blue suede shoes?

"Children learn through these cartoons that if you shoot someone, fall off a cliff, drink poison, or blow up, that they come back…"

What's the subject (the actor) and what's the object (the receiver of the action) in the dependent clause in this sentence? To put it another way, if I fall off a cliff or drink poison, why shouldn't my enemy come back?

"A person would rather watch somebody else die or be hurt than have the same thing happen to him."

Well, sure. But so what? And what does this have to do with the subject? I would rather watch Arnold Schwarzenegger blow Sharon Stone's head off with a shotgun than I would have my own head blown off. But that doesn't mean I love to see Sharon Stone's head blown off, or even like it enough to pay seven bucks to view it while eating popcorn. Suppose we were talking about a root canal at the dentist office. Again, I'd rather see Sharon Stone get a root canal than get one myself. But that doesn't mean I'd pay seven bucks to see Sharon Stone get a root canal.

We've already mentioned that the essay lacks unity--what we might call "focus." In other words, the writer tells you he's going to talk about babies, teenagers, and grown-ups. Later he realizes that he has nothing whatsoever to say about babies or grown-ups. But he doesn't go back and narrow his topic, restricting himself to the subject he can really talk about. Instead, he keeps a clever thesis that looks good, even though he has nothing to say to support it.

But this writer also has problems with coherence. "Coherence" is a writer's train of thought. This becomes most obvious in paragraph seven--the one about the Vietnam veterans. He presents his ideas here in the random order in which they occurred to him rather than in the order that would probably be most logical to his readers. That's why he doesn't tell you that he saw a special on Vietnam veterans on TV until after he has already spent several sentences telling you what he learned from the show.

He needs to be willing to acknowledge that this draft of his essay has only a handful of valuable sentences. In fact this writer does have some fascinating observations to make. But they're embedded in a vast wall of unrelated and uninteresting nonsense. Finding them is like hunting for dinosaur bones in the Grand Canyon. But what happens when we remove the valuable things he's said and dust them off and look at them more closely? He said or suggested that

1. Violent entertainment releases mysterious unnamed tensions, tensions that are more prevalent among teens than among any other segment of the population.
2. Violent entertainment empowers the viewer, and it empowers some viewers more than others.
3. Americans are a society of voyeurs who are afraid to risk adventure in our own lives; perhaps we're addicted to security.
4. Young Americans are filled with more rage than young people of some or most other nations.

One of these four ideas could become the thesis of a new essay. It's hard to believe that new essay wouldn't be a lot more interesting than the first one he wrote.

In the 1980s, Omni magazine published the results of a survey of professors at colleges around America. The instructors were asked, "What's the single most important characteristic of an 'A' essay?" The most frequent response was this one: "An 'A' essay poses and answers interesting questions."

The clear implication of this statement is that an 'A' essay takes risks. A student shows that he's willing to explore new territory; to entertain questions he's not sure he can answer. What's more, he should try to come up with answers that might provoke, disturb, or anger his reader, even though his reader is giving him a grade. In fact, if he does provoke his reader, he'll usually get a higher grade than he will if he doesn't. Most students assume the reverse is true. The average student's motto is "Don't rock the boat." But most teachers say, "If you want an 'A', you'd better do some rocking." The presidential candidacy of John McCain offers a parallel lesson in modern politics, even though he didn't get the Republican nomination.

What kinds of questions are "interesting" questions? Omni also polled the professors on that one. The two most important kinds of questions to ask, according to the Omni poll, are (1) Why? And (2) So what?

How would this work in practice? Let's take this statement: "Young Americans are filled with more rage than young people of other nations." Following the advice of Omni, we'd develop this idea by asking one or both of these questions:

1. Why are young Americans so filled with rage?
2. So what? Why do we care if young Americans are uniquely angry compared to their peers in other countries or to American youth of times past? What problems might this anger cause in the future for us as a nation?

This student didn't even recognize his most interesting statements, much less explore them with an interesting question. What he would have said we don't know. But I can tell you what other students have said in past 111 classes when asked why we love violent entertainment.