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| Writing and learning | Arguments | The process of writing |
| Generating ideas | Mapping the argument | Composing a draft | Revising |
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How does one decide what to say in an essay? The usual advice is to write about what interests you. The notion of expressive writing, indeed, encourages students to present their personal reactions to whatever they're studying. In a lot of ways that's a good thing, but sometimes it can make writers think that any idea is as good as another, as long as it's "honest." But where you start is critical to determining where you end up, and how strong your essay will be. A foolish idea or tired angle, no matter how honest and heartfelt, means at best a mediocre essay. Thus writing about what interests or appeals to you isn't very helpful advice for students. There's no guarantee that what interests you will spark an interesting paper for others (especially for that Cerberus with a gradebook, your teacher). So here are six tried-and-true ways to help generate good ideas. None of them, except perhaps the last, is a quick fix. They're really lifetime mental habits you should inculcate, the sooner the better. 1. Read Would you rather build a house out of bricks or straw? Same with essays. If you want to build strong essays, you need good material. In the short term that comes from solid research, the hours spent studying the topic, reading and taking careful notes. But research, vital as it is, is a relatively narrow activity. Beyond
research, a good writer needs to develop a lifelong habit of reading. Real writers
read a lot—newspapers, magazines, journals, scholarly You'd like some reading suggestions? It depends on you, of course, but if you really want a starting-point, here's a bare-bones periodicals guide:
General
news, etc.: the New York Times (www.nytimes.com,
free). Great coverage of news, politics, culture, etc., plus a bonus of terrific
expository writing. Among the many highlights: well-written op-ed columns, Science
Times on Tuesdays, movie and art reviews, the Times Book Review on Sundays, and
the language column in the Sunday Magazine. Commerce:
the Wall Street Journal (www.wsj.com).
Besides the obvious, a surprising number of fascinating stories about the human
side of business.
One more recommendation: the inevitable Amazon.com. Check out the best-selling titles and Amazon's recommendations in whatever category you're interested in. If you have other suggestions, let me know. 2. Suspend judgment Another
good way to generate good ideas is to develop the habit of suspending judgment
as you read and study. Most people make poor arguers because they've already made
up their minds before they ever open their mouths or put pen to paper. So keep Aristotle's stricture in mind. Read to learn, not just to shore up what you already think you know. 3. Problematize One of the first things grad students learn as they undertake their advanced studies is to "problematize"—to look for problems in whatever it is they're studying as the basis for their own work. It's excellent advice for undergraduates faced with writing papers, as well. Don't just read texts or study data looking for answers: look for questions, for tensions, for unresolved issues. Those provide the critical openings for you to say something new, to take a fresh tack on an old issue. In the ideal case one not only comes up with a penetrating question, but a sharp answer as well, but often the question is all that really matters. To make the essay feel complete, as a general rule you should at least suggest the best reasonable answer, or several reasonable answers; you might also propose how one would go about answering the question in the future. If this advice seems a little weird and risky—"You want me to write essays that ask questions and don't answer them?" (not exactly, but close)—try a little exercise: ask your teachers whether they'd rather read an essay that asks an interesting question but provides no definite answer, or an essay that asks a familiar question and gives a familiar but well-supported answer. I guarantee they'll prefer the interesting question—and that their grades will reflect it. 4. Contextualize The third Nuts and Bolts rule of thumb for generating good ideas is to contextualize. That is, try to figure out how whatever you're writing about—an event, text, experiment, finding or whatever—fits into your larger subject or field. If you're looking at something your teacher has assigned or suggested, try to figure out why it got assigned in the first place. How does it fit into the course? What concepts, theories, or paradigms does it relate to? The refrain I try to drum into my students' heads until they can repeat it in their sleep: "What is this an example of?" If you can give a solid answer to that question when you're writing about something, you're in good shape. As practice, contextualize when you read textbooks: why this example, that story, that fact? And when you take notes, make sure not to get lost in a stream of facts; periodically step back to survey the big picture. 5. Record your notes and ideas
If you don't keep track of what you're thinking, you'll forget most of it. It
doesn't matter how you record your thoughts as long as you develop a routine that
works for you. Some people have complicated systems with color-coded notebooks
or pens, some use tape recorders, some spend a lot of money on fancy tech products.
At this point, though, a cheap composition book probably works better than a Palm
Pilot. In any case, however you do it, record your thoughts or kiss them goodbye.
6.
Ask And when
you ask your teacher about a topic, assignment or argument, you get an answer
straight from the horse's mouth—what an assignment is really about, what
the key ideas in a text are, whether you're on the right track. Once
you have an idea, you need to think about how you're going to present it. Whether
you do an outline before or after you start writing, or whether you even do a
traditional outline at all, doesn't matter much, especially with short essays.
What is important is that early on you step back and survey how you mean to articulate
your whole argument—that you ask yourself exactly what your argument is and
how it's going to unfold step by step. That
is the key function of an outline, to remind you of where you're going and why
you're taking each step. All but the briefest of essays require a written
plan or map, to help you know when you' re veering off track and to expose gaps,
weaknesses, and other problems in the argument you wish to make. Here's
an example of how a writer might use a map to sketch out and sharpen an argument
(the writer is presumed to be doing research on the topic as she proceeds, of
course). It's rather schematic, suggesting some major steps as the writer goes
from something she's interested in to a more articulated argument. First-cut
topic
(after reading, discussion, thinking):
the rapid growth of the Internet as a "new economy" (it turns
out lots of people have thought about this—there's a whole vocabulary I need
to learn and use properly, and a bunch of articles and books I'm going to want
to at least look at, depending on whether I want to make this short paper or my
final project.) Second
cut (more
reading, etc.):
there are major debates among economists and business scholars about whether
the Internet is a "new economy" with new rules of commerce, competition,
and success that distinguish it from the "old economy," or whether it's
simply the same old economic competition armed with new technology Early
thesis:
The "old economy"/"new economy" dichotomy is an exaggeration Second-cut
thesis:
Internet companies face the same constraints as other companies—they have
to locate investment capital, hire workers, work with suppliers, compete with
each other, cut costs, win customers, offer new products, etc. The Internet has
not changed these fundamentals. Near-final
thesis: Internet
dot-coms like Amazon face the same basic challenges as other companies in core
functions of organization, finance, R&D, logistics, marketing, and sales.
The "new economy" is really the familiar "old economy" decked
out in the latest technologies and buzzwords. Introduction Where
exactly should I start? I'm looking for a good quotation from a scholar or CEO
about the new economy: either something that makes my point elegantly, or something
I can set up to attack. . . . Or what about a historical comparison to another
era of technological innovation? Hmm, go read an article or two on the early days
of the car industry. . . . Body The
following numbered points aren't necessarily a list of paragraphs, but a list
of logical units. Each might be adequately dealt with in a single paragraph, or
extend over several pages (or a whole chapter, in a book). What you don't want
is more than one logical unit per paragraph. . . 1.
The short case for the "new economy" (I'll set it up so I can argue
against it). A couple of examples? A couple of scholars who advocate the "new
economy" model. . . . 2.
Limitations of the "new economy" model. A condensed version of the case
against the "new economy"/"old economy" distinction. 3.
Basic functions of businesses: (Here's where I add detail and texture to #2;
I got these categories from checking out my textbooks. For each of these I'm going
to show how the old economy/new economy distinction doesn't really hold.) A. Organization B.
Finance C.
R&D D.
Logistics (here's an area where the Internet really has had a major impact—but
not just for dot-coms, so this will actually help my argument) E.
Marketing (ditto) F.
Sales G.
Service Conclusion Hmm,
I want to come up with a juicy anecdote about how some dot-come went under, or
realized it was no different from an old-line competitor, or something else that
dramatizes my main point. Keep looking. . . . A
more important reason why many students fail to profit from outlines is that they're
used to thinking of outlines as glorified grocery lists rather than dynamic maps
of an argument. After all, a good map isn't simply a list of A and B, but a picture
of the logical or spatial relationship between them—an action plan for how
to get from A to B.
In terms of essays, what this means is that effective outlines or essay maps should
clarify the argument's flow and the connections between logical steps. Yet most
student outlines end up with lots of nouns and few verbs, because they've been
written as strings of topics rather than as an overview of the argument.
There's no trick in composition, as Thoreau says—unless
you consider thorough preparation a trick, so that when you start writing you've
already put quite a bit of work into developing and laying out a good argument. A
note on composing with a PC: Be fanatical about saving, backing up, and archiving
your work. Save every five or ten minutes. If you're working on a public terminal,
keep a copy of your paper on another medium, for instance online—you can
get 300 megs of free online storage at www.freediskspace.com,
among other free storage sites. Don't trust floppies to keep your files for long,
and absolutely never store all your work in just one place, even your own
PC. (Have you heard the urban legend about the grad student who lost his whole
doctoral dissertation—seven years in the making—when his laptop was
stolen from his backpack?) If you don't maintain an up-to-date archived copy,
I guarantee that your hard drive, floppy, or Zip disk will explode just as you
go to print out that precious paper. Revision
isn't just about rearranging words—it's about rethinking your whole argument,
and making sure you're really saying what you want to say. It's a meticulous process
of examining your work paragraph by paragraph, sentence by sentence, even word
by word. It starts with reading what you've written. If you're lucky enough to
have somebody else offer to read your draft, take them up on the offer—and
make sure your reader knows that you want serious, honest reaction to your argument
and how it unfolds. There's no single best way to revise.
Some people like to get a complete draft in place before they start revising,
and some like to work with smaller units of the essay. Lots of writers like to
wrestle the whole argument into shape and only then turn to fine-tune editing
and polishing of individual words and sentences. If that suits your style, great.
In my case, I find it difficult to separate out big-picture editing from detailed
reshaping of individual sentences. The only way I can really get into the guts
of my argument is to scrutinize it sentence by sentence, so I find myself doing
"big" and "little" editing at the same time. The rest of this guide, especially the upcoming sections on
Style and Structure, can
help you learn to revise. The bottom line is simple: If you want to write, learn
to revise. Francis Bacon's comment that writing makes "an exact man"
is true if we realize Bacon meant not only the first bloom of inspiration, but
also the hard, necessary labor of revision.
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Writing
can be intimidating, harrowing, mysterious. Thinking about the process
of writing—breaking the act down into simpler steps—can help demystify
it. Used sensibly, a process model of writing combines two seemingly contradictory
elements: on the one hand it simplifies writing by treating it as a series of
simpler steps; on the other it stresses how dynamic writing is, and the way that
thinking and writing are intertwined. Nuts
and Bolts suggests a four-step process model: (1) generating
ideas, (2) mapping the argument, (3) composing a draft, and (4) revising. The
steps overlap and interact. Revision, for instance, typically sharpens ideas and
improve an argument's organization.
books,
history, memoirs, novels, even poetry. I'm not talking about seeking out information
on a particular topic, but reading broadly about nature, science, history, culture,
politics, commerce. "That tempting range of relevancies," George Eliot
called the universe, and indeed to a person who has cultivated her curiosity everything
connects, and anything can spark a good idea or insight. Cultivate a lifelong
habit of reading and reflection.
Passionate
partisanship sometimes produces brilliant argument, but most of the time it diminishes
an argument's power by acting as a kind of mental blinder, leading the writer
to ignore anything that doesn't fit her preconceived argument. 
The
thinking person's secret weapon. Ask your friends, classmates, parents, librarians,
and professors—above all, ask your teacher. Most students don't like
to ask questions because they see them as a mark of ignorance, and ignorance as
something to hide. Here's a better way to look at it: questions are a sign one
is trying to learn. What true teacher wouldn't welcome that? Especially when it's
a chance to share some of that hard-won and meagerly-rewarded learning?
Few
students profit from outlines and other mapping tools as much as they might, for
a couple of reasons. First, many students aren't used to putting in the work to
craft an outline; they'd rather get right to writing the essay. If that works
for you, fine—and it is true that as word processing software becomes more
sophisticated, it gets easier (in principle, at least) to embed outlines within
essays. 
The
composition stage is when you can relax, oddly enough. You know what you want
to say: Now just get it down on paper (or screen). Don't worry about style, elegance,
mechanics or anything else having to do with the essay's final look. Just get
it recorded. There'll be plenty of time later on for revising and polishing this
rough draft. The point now is to give yourself raw material that you can shape
and sharpen.
All writing advice really boils down to three words: revise, revise, revise. Revision
is what separates good from mediocre writing, and what turns good writing into
great writing. Even the simplest, the clearest, the most natural seeming prose
conceals beneath its surface hours of hard and painstaking revision.
The
Nuts and Bolts of College Writing