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

The most important advice this book can offer you us 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 it supports and develops your controlling idea, you can present your views to your readers with interest, clarity, and persuasion.

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 offer 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.

Example: (subject / treatment )

Glendora High School offers a well- balanced academic program.


Writing the Controlling Idea as a Topic Sentence or Thesis

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

Example: (subject / treatment )

Vague: Public schools are great.

Better: Publish schools do as well academically as private schools, according to statistics. (Made more specific)

Too Broad: Publish schools are too crowded.

Better: Bidwell Elementary School is too crowed. (Limiting the subject to a particular school)

Too Narrow: American public schools were first established in Philadelphia in 1799. (Only a fact)


Better: The first publish schools in America were founded to meet certain practical needs. (Made more specific by indicating aspects)

Organizing Support

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 form 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 purposes.

The two main outline forms are the sentence outline (each entry is a 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.

The Outline should look like:

Main idea (will usually be the topic sentence for a pargraph or the thesis for an essay)
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, L. & Brandon, K. (2008). Paragraphs & Essays with Integrated Readings. Houghton Mifflin Company.