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sitcoms. Or a specific subject can reflect a particular attitude or judgment that
expresses the writer's personal view of the general subject: “Sitcoms insult the
intelligence of their viewers.” The more you can limit or specify your subject,
the more likely you are to concentrate your attention on concrete information
rather than vague impressions. Third, to ensure that you are willing to spend
time working on your subject, you need to ask yourself three questions about it.
Is it significant? Is it interesting? Is it manageable?
The editors of a national magazine such as Time try to answer these three
questions as they put together each week's issue. They followed the first two
guidelines, of course, when they established the policies of the magazine. They
have hired reporters who are either experts on particular subjects or who can
become experts by using established research procedures. They have organized
their magazine according to general subjects such as Science, Sport, and Show
Business, but each week they must search for specific subjects to fit into those
large categories. Their reporters have uncovered dozens of specific subjects that
would be suitable for each section, but they select only one. At this point, the
editors ask each other the key questions: which subject is more significant –
photographs from the newest earth-observing satellite or the research
breakthrough of an important geneticist? Which subject is more interesting – the
final standings in World Cup skiing or the probable pairings in the NCAA
basketball tournament? Which subject can be developed most completely within
the space allotted – a review of the splashy new musical from London now
opening on Broadway or profiles of the Academy Award nominees?
As these examples suggest, the three questions do not have definitive
answers. Each story must be considered on its own merits, in relation to the
other stories, and in the context of the writing situation.
As you select your subject, you will discover that significance, interest, and
manageability are difficult criteria to define in any absolute sense. If you looked up
these terms in a dictionary, you would find simply another set of abstract words.
significant: important, noteworthy
interesting: engrossing, intriguing
manageable: controllable
Although these synonyms may add subtle shades of meaning to the
primary terms, they do not really help you formulate three exact definitions.
A significant subject does not need to be ponderous and weighty. It does need to
be something that your readers are likely to have thought about or to find
applicable to their lives and interests (for example, maintaining personal
integrity, getting ahead, relations with one's family). Similarly, you should be
genuinely interested in your subject and should be able to discuss it in a way that
conveys your own distinct point of view, not merely the usual point of view
associated with it. A manageable subject is not one so limited that you can
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reasonably hope to have written the final word about it; on the other hand,
neither is it one so vast or complicated that lengthy articles and books, to say
nothing of your own essay, only begin to discuss it adequately.
Ultimately, like the editors of Time, you must develop your own
definitions as you examine the choices available and as you consider your
audience and purpose. When you compare subjects in the context of the
complete writing situation, you will naturally prefer some to others. To decide
whether one of your preferences will produce a suitable subject, you can
measure it against the criteria set forth in the following guidelines.
Guidelines for Selecting Your Subject
1. What do I know about my subject?
Do I know about my subject in some depth, or do I need to learn more
about it? What are the sources of my knowledge – direct experience,
observation, reading? How does my knowledge give me a special or unusual
perspective on my subject?
2. What is the focus of my subject?
Is my subject too general, too all-inclusive? How can I restrict it to a
smaller, more specific subject that I can develop in greater detail?
3. What is significant about my subject?
What issues of general importance does it raise? What fresh insight can I
contribute to my readers' thinking on this issue?
4. What is interesting about my subject?
Am I genuinely interested in this subject? What kinds of subjects do I
usually consider interesting? Can I attract my readers' interest with this subject?
5. Is my subject manageable?
Can I write about my subject in a particular form, within a certain number
of pages? Do I feel in control of my subject or confused by it? If my subject is
too complicated or too simplistic, how can I make it more manageable?
Exercise. Choose the subject you are going to write your essay about.
Make a specific subject. Evaluate it in terms of interest, significance,
manageability. Revise it if necessary.
2.2. Strategies for gathering information
Whether you have to generate your own idea for a topic or you already
have a clear sense of purpose and topic, you need strategies other than staring at
the ceiling or waiting for inspiration to fly in through the window. Professional
writers use a variety of techniques to generate ideas at various stages of the
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process. Diane Ackerman, in her article “Oh Muse! You Do Make Things
Difficult!” reports that the poet Dame Edith Sitwell used to lie in an open coffin;
French novelist Colette picked fleas from her cat; statesman Benjamin Franklin
soaked in the bathtub; and German dramatist Friedrich Schiller sniffed rotten
apples stored in his desk.
Perhaps you have developed your own original approach to generating
ideas. Perhaps you were taught a more formal way to begin a writing project,
such as constructing an outline. If what you do now doesn't seem to produce
good results, or if you are ready for a change, try some of the following methods
and see how they work. Not every method works equally well for every project
or for every writer. Experimenting is a good idea.
Keeping a journal. A journal can be far more than a personal diary. Many
writers carry a notebook and write in it every day. Journal entries can be
observations, references, quotations, questions for research, notes on events, and
ideas about assigned texts or topics, as well as specific pieces of writing in
progress. A journal can also serve as a review for final examinations or essay
tests, reminding you of areas of special interest or subjects you didn't
understand.
The double-entry or dialectical journal provides a formalized way for you
to think critically about readings and lectures. Two pages or two columns or
open windows in your word processor provide the space for interaction. On the
left-hand side, write summaries, quotations, and accounts of readings, lectures,
and class discussions – that is, record as exactly and concisely as you can what
you read or heard. The left-hand side, in short, is reserved for information about
the material. On the right-hand side, record your own comments, reactions, and
questions about the material. The right-hand side is the place to make your own
connections between the reading or lecture and your own experience and
knowledge.
Freewriting. The freewriting strategy snares thoughts as they race through
your mind, yielding a set of sentences that you then look over for writing ideas.
To begin, write for about five minutes on your general subject, put down
everything that comes to your head, without worrying about grammar, spelling,
or punctuation. What you produce is for your eyes alone. If the flow thought
becomes blocked, write “I’m stuck, I’m stuck…” until you break the mental
logjam. When your writing time is up, go through your sentences one by one
and extract potential topic material. If you draw a blank, write for another five
minutes and look again.
Brainstorming/Making a list. It a close cousin of freewriting, captures the
ideas in words, fragments, and sometimes sentences, rather than in a series of
sentences. To begin with, give yourself a time limit – five or ten minutes – and
write down in list form every word or phrase that comes into your mind about
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your topic. Just put down key words and phrases, not sentences. No one has to
understand that list but you. Don’t worry about whether something will be
useful or not. Just get it all down. If nothing much seems to occur to you, try
“thinking the opposite.” When the time is up, stop and read over your list,
looking for patterns, clusters of interesting ideas, or one central idea.
Brainstorming by yourself can work well, but it is particularly effective with a
group of three to five people.
Mapping. Mapping, also called clustering, is a visual way of generating
and connecting ideas and can be done individually or in a group. Write your
topic in a circle at the centre of the page, think of ideas related to the topic,
and write those ideas on the page around the central topic. Draw lines from
the topic to the related ideas. Then add details under each of the ideas you
noted.
Using journalists' questions. Journalists check the coverage of their
stories by making sure that they answer six questions – Who? What? When?
Where? Why? How? – though not in any set order. A report on a public transit
strike, for example, would include details about the union leaders (who they
were), the issue of working conditions and benefits (what the situation was), the
date and time of the confrontation (when the strike occurred), the place (where it
occurred), what caused the confrontation (why it happened), and how the people
involved behaved and resolved the strike (how it evolved and ended). If you are
telling the story of an event, either as a complete essay or as an example in an
essay, asking the journalists' six questions will help you think comprehensively
about your topic.
Using formal sets of prompts. Sometimes you might find it helpful to use
a formal set of directions (known as prompts) to suggest new avenues of inquiry.
Write down responses to any of the prompts that apply to your topic, and note
possibilities for further exploration.
Define your terms.
Look up key words in your topic (like success,
identity, ambition, and ethnicity) in the dictionary, and write down the definition
you want to use. Consider synonyms, too.
Include descriptions. Whatever your topic, make your writing more vivid
with details about color, light, location, movement, size, shape, sound, taste, and
smell. Help your reader ”see” your topic, such as a person, place, object, or
scientific experiment, as exactly as you see it.
Make comparisons. Help your reader understand a topic by describing
what it might be similar to and different from. For example, how is learning to
write like learning to drive?
Assess cause and effect. Convey information on what causes or produces
your topic and what effects or results emerge from it. For example, what are the
causes and effects of dyslexia? inflation? acid rain? hurricanes? asthma?
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Consider what others have said. Give your reader information, facts, and
statistics on what others say about your topic in interviews, surveys, reading,
and research.
Doing research. Sometimes, discussing your topic with others,
conducting an interview, administering a questionnaire or survey, or doing
research can produce good ideas for writing
Reading. When you have to grapple with an unfamiliar topic, look in the
library for material to develop it. Once you have a list of references, start
searching for the books or articles. Look through each one you find and jot
down any information that looks useful, either as direct quotations or in your
own words.
Whenever you use a direct quotation or rephrased material in your paper,
you must give proper credit to the source. If you don't, you are guilty of
plagiarism, a serious offense that can result in a failing grade for the course.
Talking with others. You can expand the pool of ideas gained through
brainstorming or reading by talking with some of the people around you.
Imagine you're writing a paper about a taxpayers' revolt in your state. After
checking the leading state newspapers at the library, you find that most of the
discontent centers on property taxes. You then decide to supplement what you've
read by asking questions about the tax situation in your town.
Your parents and neighbors tell you that property taxes have jumped 50
percent in the last two years. The local tax assessor tells you that assessed
valuations have risen sharply and that state law requires property taxes to keep
pace. She also notes that this situation is causing some people on fixed incomes
to lose their homes. A city council member explains that part of the added
revenue is being used to repair city streets, build a new library wing, and buy
more fire-fighting equipment. The rest is going to the schools. School officials
tell you they're using their extra funds to offer more vocational courses and to
expand the program for learning-disabled students. As you can see, asking
questions can broaden your perspective and provide information that will help
you to write a more worthwhile paper.
Preparing a scratch outline. A scratch outline often follows freewriting,
brainstorming, questioning, or mapping. In fact, trying to make a scratch outline
is a good way to see if you need to do more prewriting. If you cannot come up
with the solid outline, then you know you need to do more prewriting to clarify
your main point or its several kinds of support.
In a scratch outline, you think carefully about the point you are making,
the supporting items for that point, and the order in which you will arrange
those items.
When you are planning a traditional essay consisting of an introduction,
three supporting paragraphs, and conclusion, a scratch outline is especially
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important. It may be only a few words, but it will be the framework on which
your whole essay will be built.
Exercise. Choose a topic that interests you, and explore it by using two of
the strategies described above.
2.3. Organizing the information
If you have ever listened to a rambling speaker spill out ideas in no
particular order, you probably found it hard to pay attention to the speech, let
alone make sense of it. So, too, with disorganized writing. A garbled listing of
ideas serves no one; an orderly presentation highlights your ideas and helps
communication succeed.
Your topic determines the approach you take. In narrating a personal
experience, such as a mishap-riddled vacation, you'd probably trace the events in
the order they occurred. In describing a process, say caulking a bathtub, you'd
take the reader step by step through the procedure. To describe a hillside view
near your home, you might work from left to right. Or you could first paint a
word picture of some striking central feature and then fan out in either direction.
Other topics dictate other patterns, such as comparison and contrast, cause and
effect, and illustration.
The ways you group your information will ultimately depend on your
topic (subject), purpose, and audience. At the simplest level writers can group
information according to three different principles:
1. space – where bits of information occur;
2. time – when bits of information occur, usually chronologically;
3. logic – how bits of information are related.
If the information you have gathered is descriptive, you can choose to
organize it spatially. Using spatial organization allows the reader to “see” your
information, to fix it in the space. A report on a university library’s accessibility
to students in wheelchairs, for example, might well group information spatially.
In describing the spaces in the library that are most often used and evaluating
their accessibility to a student in a wheelchair, the writer would most certainly
present information spatially – one room or space or area at a time. In this case,
the description of the student’s progress through various library spaces can even
be accompanied by a map.
Chronological organization is especially useful in explaining a process,
step by step by step. It is the basic method used in stories, cookbooks, and
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instructions for assembling or using various products. All of these kinds of
writing group information according to when it occurs in some process or
sequence of events. Reports of laboratory studies and certain kinds of
experiments also use chronological ordering of information.
In much of the writing it is appropriate to organize information according
to some set of logical relationships. The most commonly used logical patterns
include illustration, definition, division/classification, comparison/contrast,
cause-effect, and problem-solution.
Often much of the information you gather will serve as examples to
illustrate a point. An essay describing how one novelist influenced another
might cite a number of examples from the second writer’s book that echo
themes, characters, or plots from the first writer’s works.
Many topics can be developed by definition: by saying what something
is – or is not – and perhaps by identifying the characteristics that distinguish it
from things that are similar or in the same general category.
Division means breaking a single item into its parts; classification means
grouping many separate items according to their similarities. Dividing a topic
involves beginning with one object or idea and discussing each of the
components separately. Classifying involves putting items or pieces of
information into categories.
Comparison focuses on the similarities between two things while contrast
highlights their differences.
Cause-effect analysis either examines why something happens or
happened by looking at its causes, or looks at a set of conditions and explains
what effects result or are likely to result from them.
Moving from a problem to a solution presents a natural and
straightforward way of organizing certain kinds of information in, for example,
engineering, business, and economics.
2.4. Developing a thesis statement
A thesis statement presents the main idea of a piece of writing, usually in
one sentence. The thesis statement points you in a specific direction, helping you
to stay on track and out of tempting byways. In addition, it tells your reader
what to expect.
Thesis statements can emerge at several points in the writing process.
If an instructor assigns a controversial topic on which you hold strong views, the
statement may pop into your head right away. At other times it may develop as
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you narrow a subject to a topic. Occasionally, you even have to write a
preliminary draft to determine your main idea. Usually, though, the thesis
statement emerges after you've gathered and examined your supporting
information.
As you examine your information, search for the central point and the key
points that back it up; then use these to develop your thesis statement.
Converting the topic to a question may help you to uncover backup ideas and
write a thesis statement. For example:
Topic: The uncertain future of robots in American industry.
Question: What are some of the drawbacks of using robots in American
industry?
Thesis statement: The expense of producing robots, the lack of qualified
personnel to service them, and the moral problems of replacing workers with
them – all cloud the future of robots in American industry.
The thesis statement stems from the specifics the student unearthed while
answering the question.
Requirements of a Good Thesis Statement
Unless intended for a lengthy paper, a thesis statement focuses on just one
central point or issue. Suppose you prepare the following thesis statement for a
two- or three-page paper:
Centerville College should re-examine its policies on open admissions,
vocational programs, and aid to students.
This sprawling statement would commit you to grapple with three
separate issues. At best, you could make only a few general remarks about
each one.
To correct matters, consider each issue carefully in light of how much it
interests you and how much you know about it. Then make your choice and
draft a narrower statement. The following thesis statement would do nicely for a
brief paper. It shows clearly that the writer will focus on just one issue:
Because of the rising demand among high school graduates for job-
related training, Centerville College should expand its vocational offerings.
A good thesis statement also tailors the scope of the issue, to the length of
the paper. No writer could deal adequately with “Many first-year college
students face crucial adjustment problems” in two or three pages. The idea is too
broad to yield more than a smattering of poorly supported general statements.
Paring it down to “Free time is a responsibility that challenges many first-year
college students,” however, results in an idea that could probably be developed
adequately.
A good thesis statement further provides an accurate forecast of what's
to come. If you plan to discuss the effects of overeating, don't say that
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“Overeating stems from deep-seated psychological factors and the easy
availability of convenience foods.” Such a statement, incorrectly suggesting
that the paper will focus on causes, would only mislead and confuse your
reader. On the other hand, “Overeating leads to obesity, which can cause
or complicate several serious health problems” accurately represents what's
to follow.
Finally, a good thesis statement is precise, often previewing the
organization of the paper. Assertions built on fuzzy, catchall words like
fascinating, bad, meaningful, or interesting, or statements like “My paper is
about ...” tell neither writer nor reader what's going on. To illustrate:
New York is a fascinating city.
My paper is about no-fault divorce.
These examples raise a host of questions. Why does the writer find New
York fascinating? Because of its skyscrapers? Its night life? Its theaters? Its
restaurants? Its museums? Its shops? Its inhabitants? And what about no-fault
divorce? Will the writer attack it, defend it, trace its history, suggest ways of
improving it? To find out, we must journey through the paper, hoping to find our
way without a road-map sentence.
Now look at the rewritten versions of those faulty thesis statements:
New York's art museums offer visitors an opportunity to view a wide
variety of great paintings.
Compared to traditional divorce, no-fault divorce is less expensive,
promotes fairer settlements, and reflects a more realistic view of the causes of
marital breakdown.
These statements tell the reader not only what points the writer will make
but also the order they will follow.
2.5. Writing the first draft
Now on to the first draft of your essay. The writing should go rather
quickly. After all, you have a topic you're qualified to write about, a thesis
statement that indicates your purpose, enough information to develop it, and a
written plan to follow.
But sometimes when you sit down to write, the words won't come; and all
you can do is doodle or stare at the blank page. Perhaps the introduction is the
problem. Many writers are terrified by the thought of the opening paragraph.
They want to get off to a good start but can't figure out how to begin. If this
happens to you, additional brainstorming or freewriting can make you more
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comfortable and may suggest an opening. Keep in mind that any lead-in you
write now can be changed later. If these suggestions don't solve your problem,
skip the introduction for the time being. Once you have drafted the body of the
paper, an effective opening should come more easily.
Here are some general suggestions for writing a first draft:
1. Stack your thesis statement, flexible notes, and written plan in front of
you. They will start you thinking.
2. Skip every other line (double-space) and leave wide margins. Then
you'll have room to revise later.
3. Write quickly; capture the drift of your thoughts. Concentrate on
content and organization. Get your main points and supporting details on paper
in the right sequence. Don't spend time correcting grammatical or punctuation
errors, improving your language, or making the writing flow smoothly. You
might lose your train of thought and end up doodling or staring again.
4. Take breaks at logical dividing points, for example, when you finish
discussing a key point. Before you start to write again, scan what you've
written.
Now for some specific suggestions that will help you with the actual
writing:
1. Rewrite your thesis statement at the top of your first page to break the
ice and build momentum.
2. Write your first paragraph, introducing your essay and stating your
thesis. If you get stuck here, move on to the rest of the paper.
3. Follow your plan as you write. Begin with your first main point and
work on each section in turn.
4. Look over the supporting details listed under the first heading in your
flexible notes. Write a topic sentence stating the central idea of the paragraph.
5. Turn the details into sentences; use one or more sentences to explain
each one. Add other related details, facts, or examples if they occur to you.
6. When you move from one paragraph to the next, try to provide a
transitional word or sentence that connects the two.
7. Write your last paragraph, ending your essay in an appropriate fashion.
If you get stuck, set your conclusion aside and return to it later.
Writing a draft isn't always so systematic. If you are inspired, you may
want to abandon your plans and simply use your first draft to explore ideas. You
can always revise, so don't be overly concerned if you get off track. You might
uncover some of your best material during this type of search.
Exercise. Write a draft of an essay you have planned.
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