What's the best way to write a focused comparative essay?

When writing about long texts like novels or plays it can be difficult to keep both texts in mind while structuring a focused answer. There are two things that you need to keep in mind: keep answering the question throughout your answer, and make sure both texts are getting a roughly equal showing in the essay that you're writing. In exams, a lot of this is about good preparation: have a few versatile quotations that you've learned at your fingertips so you can make sure you keep your answers focused on the actual text while not overwhelming yourself with huge amounts of quotations. Something like 'I love you more than words can wield the matter' in Act I of King Lear is perfect - nice and short, but would be a useful quotation for a question about gender, families, language, love, or valuation. Comparative English is supposed to make connections across texts so they illuminate each other. Make sure you're switching between the texts within paragraphs and not just dumping some ideas about one and then the other with no clear direction to the essay: keep comparing them to each other with linking words like 'similarly' or 'conversely'. Make a paragraph plan before you start with themes rather than texts: so if the question is something about gender in King Lear and Macbeth, make your first paragraph about a theme like 'the female body' with a couple of ideas from both texts about those themes. You can use that plan to create a driving direction to the essay: what do you want to conclude? Make sure you're gesturing towards your conclusion all through the essay so it feels like you've built a consistent argument.