Below are some guidelines for close reading, for both the process of interpretation, and the composition of the product (a paper) that is based on that process:
Read a text: And then read it again.
Identify a problem, ask a question: After reading your text, more than once, begin the close reading process by identifying some quirks, quandaries, contradictions, gray areas, moments that run counter to expectation, etc. in your text. In other words, identify a problem that demands interpretation, and then pose some questions about that problem. It's OK if you can't answer your questions right now. In fact, you should be asking questions that are thorny enough that you can't answer them right now. A good close reading begins not with a point about the text that you want to make but with a question about the text that you want to investigate.
Identify your topic: Articulate specifically what it is that you are going to interpret.
Identify, collect, and organize your evidence: Once you settle on a topic and a question about that topic, identify the places in the text that you will need to look in order to answer that question. Again, you don't need to be able to answer your question now. At this point, you only need to know where you're going to have to look in order to find the answer. You don’t need an interpretation; you just need a clear understanding of the information that you will need to interpret: Just the facts, ma’am. Make a list of all of the relevant places in your text. Maybe make a timeline or chart of information related to your topic. But also try to identify the one passage that is the single most important place to look for answering your question. We’ll call this one passage your key evidence, and it will be the focus of your close reading (both the interpretative process and the paper that will be the product of that process).
Analyze your evidence: Start with your key evidence, and work with it until you wrest the meaning of that passage from the text. In order to do so, do an explication of that passage in which you try to make as many observations about that key evidence as possible. Say everything about that key passage that you can. In my experience, if I ask a student to tell me 20 things about a passage, it’s usually around point 13 – after all the obvious or surface points have been made – that some really probing and provocative reading starts to take place. Ask yourself which of those observations seem the most prickly, provocative, and insightful, and then pursue that line of thought until the end of the earth. Use your close reading of that key evidence to reread all the other evidence you’ve collected. How might an observation or set of observations about your key evidence unlock and elucidate the rest of the text? Consider making a conceptual map of your ideas about your evidence in which you clearly visualize the structure of your idea about the material.
Write out an argument: If you make a conceptual map of your analysis, then writing it out as an argument should be fairly easy. Simply narrate the parts and progression of your analysis in, say, 300-600 words. We'll call this an “argument statement,” which is different from a “thesis statement.”
Write a thesis: The sequence of ideas that led you to an important insight about the text is your argument. The specific content of that ultimate insight is your thesis. Your thesis is the claim or proposition that you want your reader to accept about the text because it is true. It is true, but it isn’t obvious. If a thesis is obvious, then we don’t need you to write a paper arguing it. A thesis that is obvious is just as bad as a thesis that isn’t true. In one or two sentences, write a thesis statement.
Make an outline: You now know the thesis that your entire paper should be devoted to supporting. Draft an outline with (1) an introduction that describes a problem and responds to it with a thesis; (2) a body that supports your thesis by walking your reader through the evidence and analysis that led you to it, especially your key evidence; and (3) a conclusion that includes a full argument statement, considers any counter-evidence or -arguments, and discusses the implications of your argument.
Write a draft: Turn your outline into prose. Writing is the easy part of writing. That is, putting words together in sentences to produce compelling claims is easy if you have done the work of interpretation that generates an argument worth presenting. It is only when you don't have a quality argument that the actual writing is difficult. Your draft isn’t quite done, though, after you’ve written your paper out in words: there are two very important steps to take before you have a viable draft.
Revise your argument: In the course of writing your draft, your argument may have changed. You may, while articulating your evidence and analyses, have alighted upon some new insights that improve your argument or lead to a completely different argument. Write a new "argument statement" that represents your most current understanding of your topic. Make sure that is the argument statement that is in your draft.
Revise your thesis: If you found yourself revising your argument statement, then you also need to revise your thesis statement that is meant to serve as a snapshot of that argument. Once you've updated your thesis to reflect your most current thinking on your topic, you've got a finished draft.
Solicit feedback: Having a finished draft, though, is only the beginning of the revision process. The first part of the revision process is to ask for comments from peers, professors, random people on the street, anyone who will give it.
Revise your paper: The process of revision is largely the cycle between updating your evidence and analysis, and then updating you argument and thesis to reflect your updated analyses. The paper that succeeds will be the one that is constantly updated – often even rewritten from scratch – to reflect your must current understanding of your topic.