Chapter 3 The Writing Process: Stage Two Writing the Controlling Idea/Organizing and Developing Support - Final

Chapter 3 The Writing Process: Stage Two Writing the Controlling Idea/Organizing and Developing Support

The most important advice can offer you is state your controlling idea and support it. If you have no controlling idea-no topic sentence for a paragraph or thesis for an essay-your writing will be unfocused, and your readers may be confused or bored. But if you organize your material well, so that is supports and develops your controlling idea, you can present your views to your reader with interest, clarity, and persuasis.

Stating the controlling idea and organizing support can be accomplished effectively and systematically. How? This chapter presents several uncomplicated techniques you can use in Stage Two of the writing process.

Defining the Controlling Idea

If you tell a friend you are about to write paragraph or an essay, be prepared to hear the question "What are you writing about?" If you answer, "Public schools," your friends will probably be satisfied with the answer but not very interested. The problem is that the phrases public schools offers no sense of limitation or direction. It just indicates your subject, not what you are going to do with it. An effective controlling statement, called the topic sentence for a paragraph and the thesis for an essay, has both a subject and a treatment. The subject is what you intend to write about. The treatment is what you intend to do with your subject.

Writing the Controlling Idea as a Toic Sentence or Thesis

The effective controlling idea presents a treatment that can ne developed with supporting information. The ineffective one is vague, too broad, or too narrow.

In writing a sound controlling idea, be sure that you have included both the subject and the treatment and that the whole statement is not vague, too broad, or too narrow. Instead, it should be phrased so that it invites development. Such phrasing can usually be achieved by limiting time, place, or aspect. The limitation may apply to the subject (instead of schools in general, focus on a particular school0, or it may apply to the treatment (you might compare the subject to something else, as in "do as well academically"). You might limit both the subject and the treatment.

Organizing Support

You have now studied the first part of the even-word sentence "State your controlling idea and support it." In the first stage of the writing process (described in Chaper 2), you explored many ideas, experimented with them, and even developed some approaches to writing about them. You may also have gathered information through reading and note taking. The trchniques of that ifrst stage have already given you some initial support. The next step is to organzie your ideas and information into a paragraph or an essay that is interesting, understandable, and compelling.

Three tools can help you organize your supporting material: listing (a form of brainstorming), clustering, and outlining. You will probably use only one of these organizing tools, depending on course requirements, the assignment, or individual preference.

Listing

Lists are the simplest and most flexible of the organizing tools. Listing need be nothing more than a column of items presenting support material in a useful sequence (time, space, or importance). As you work with your supporting material, you can cross out words or move them around on the list. By leaving vertical space between items, you can easily insert new examples and details.

Clustering

Chains of circles radiating from a central double-bubbled circle from a cluster that shows the relationship of ideas.

Outlining

Outlining is the tool that most people think of in connection with organizing. Because it is flexible and widely used, it will receive the most emphasis in this stage of the writing process. Outlining does basically the same thing that listing and clustering do. Outlining divides the controlling idea into section of support material, divides those sections further, and establishes sequence.

An outline is a framework that can be used in two ways: (1) It can indicate the plan for a paragraph or an essay you intend to write, and (2) it can show the organization of a passage you are reading. The outline of a reading passage and the outline as a plan for writing are identical in form. If you intend to write a summary of a reading selection, then a single outline might be used for both purpose.

The two main outline forms are the sentence outline (each entry is complete sentence) and the topic outline (each entry is a key word or phrase). The topic outline is more common in writing paragraphs and essays.

In the following topic utline, notice first how the parts are arranged on the page: the indentations, the number and letter sequences, the punctuation, and the placement of words.

Main Idea (will usually be the topic sentence for a paragraph or the thesis for an esasy)

I. Major support

A. Minor support
1. Explanation, detail, example
2. Explanation, detail, example

B. Minor support
1. Explanation, detail, example
2. Explanation, detail, example

II. Major support

A. Minor support
1. Explanation, detail, example
2. Explanation, detail, example

B. Minor support
1. Explanation, detail, example
2. Explanation, detail, example

source:Brandon, Lee. Brandon, Kelly. Paragraphs and Essays with Integrated Readings, eleventh Edition. Boston, NY: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2011