Four ways to generate ideas and plan essays. (Part 2)

This is the second of a pair of blog posts where I give you four ways to look at an essay topic or question, quickly generate and organise ideas, and Get on With Writing as quickly as possible!  If you haven’t read Part 1, please do so first.

Again, it’s important to note that regardless of which method you use, I’m assuming that you’ve already had a good think about the question keywords and understood what the question is asking of you! Without analysing the question, none of these methods will be as useful, because there’s no point planning an answer to a question no one really asked!

Method Three: Widening Circles of Influence

This one could be particularly useful for:

• Those who received feedback that their essay content could do with more complexity or depth.

• Those who tend to think either macro, or micro—i.e., you do have relevant ideas, but these ideas all tend to cluster in one area of life, e.g. you’re forever talking about government, or you only ever consider things from the point of view of the individual.

• Questions which focus on a problem which have multiple stakeholders, e.g. education, or globalisation, or environmental matters.

What is the method:

1.      The widening circles of influence are:

• Individual

• Small group (family, school, a business or company, a group with one common factor such as religion)

• Large group (industry, education system, multiple groups sharing a common factor e.g. when looking at all religious groups in Singapore as a whole)

• Global/historical (all industries, all cultures, all religious groups, etc.—with the added dimension of TIME)

2.      After analysing the question and understanding what you’re being asked to discuss, start considering the question through each of the circles of influence (I give an in-depth example below of how this might work using an actual question). That is, consider how you’d respond to the question at the level of the individual first, then the small group, and so on. Unlike Method 2, ESCAPEE (see my previous blog post!), for this method I strongly suggest you cover all 4 circles of influence. Jot down your responses. (The more you use this method, the more you’ll find that the middle 2 circles tend to collapse into one another anyway.)

3.      Add complexity to each of your initial ideas by questioning them:

a.      Why? Why do you feel this way/think this?

b.      What do you mean by this phrase?

c.      How do I know that what you’re saying is true?

d.      Are there any exceptions to what you’re saying?

e.      How does this process play out?

f.       What are the implications of this idea?

4.      When you’ve added on a couple of details to each of your main responses to the question, it’s time to organise! Select two to four (depending on question requirements) ideas to turn into your paragraphs. At this point, you can also look through these ideas and note:

a.      Ideas which repeat no matter the circle of influence—this repetition indicates an important point to be made, because this idea is true at all levels.

b.      Areas where one idea leads naturally or logically to another—this simply means one goes after the other in the essay!

c.      Ideas which are only true at one circle of influence, but not at others—this is a good sign, as it means there is a potential counterargument lurking somewhere. Here’s a good chance to add balance to your argument!

5.      Put your selected ideas into words, making sure you have complete sentences. And finally, double check that each sentence, when spoken out loud, sounds like a direct answer to the question, and tweak the idea and/or phrasing till it does. There you have it, your topic sentences!

An example:

‘The book has no place in modern society.’ Discuss.*

* I’m still using this example from the 2010 A Level GP paper, because there are multiple ways to answer the same question, and it’s good to see the range of answers you could end up, depending on how you went about planning your essay.

Analysing the question:

• The book ——-> the physical object? The ideas contained therein?

• Modern society ——-> a digital age, swamped with video as opposed to the written word; that said, physical books are still used in schools, etc.; VUCA world; an age of environmental crisis as well!

• So really, do people still buy and read books? Should people still buy and read books? Do people still value the physical book? Are physical books relevant in an increasingly digital, image-driven world? Aren’t the production of physical books harming the environment?

Step 1: draw an arrow going downwards on the side of the page where I’m doing my planning. So the top of the page will represent the level of the individual, small groups further down the page, and so on till I hit the bottom of the page, which represents the global/historical level. I’m just going to put my ideas down where appropriate! This also means that if ideas repeat, I can just draw arrows extending from where the idea goes originally, to the other circles of influence they address.

Step 2: At the level of the individual, is the book still relevant to modern society? Yes!

Step 3: Why? Because I love books—but I can’t say that. It’s not relevant to all individuals. So, extend the idea—why would individuals find books important in this day and age? Books are both important moments of respite from the information overload that is social media, as well as valuable tools for learning because of their curated nature.

Step 2: At the level of the small group, is the book still relevant to modern society?

Step 3: Yes. For companies, books are still economically viable products. For schools, print books, especially, are still the norm. And there’s something to be said about a source of information which, while it cannot be updated immediately, is not reliant on the vagaries of electronics.

Step 2: What about at the level of the large group? Is the book still important then?

Step 3: Still yes. In fact, given the economic disparities between various education systems, one could say print books are a democratising tool. It’s still far easier to ship print books then to set up the technology and environments needed for online learning! And Covid-19 taught us that technology really is a dividing line between the haves and have nots in education.

Step 2: And finally, what about at the most zoomed out level? Are books still relevant today? And remember to consider both time and space…

Step 3: Books might even be a more valuable bridge between different cultures and communities than, say, modern forms of communication like social media. Books encourage deeper, slower thought and consideration, and books, as mentioned above, are curated. Perhaps if people learned about one another’s faiths and ideologies through books, less conflict and more understanding might be generated. However, it must be acknowledged that the print publishing industry does take a toll on the physical environment!

Step 4: Time to look for patterns in the ideas I’ve generated and to organise them. I’m looking for 3 main points. Looking through my ideas above, it would appear that the idea that a book goes through editing and rewriting appears twice. In contrast to that, one idea which reappears nowhere else is the one about books negatively affecting the environment.

Step 5: Based on that quick glance in step 4, and after checking each idea against the question, I get…

• Because books, be they print or digital, encourage deep thinking and a slower and therefore more informed response, and because books go through a fact-checking and editing process which makes the information therein more likely to be accurate, they are all the more important in today’s fake news-ridden world.

• That being said, we must acknowledge that the print publishing industry is especially bad for the environment.

• Nonetheless, books also serve an important purpose as an equaliser when it comes to access to information and education.

Done! Essay, planned.

Method Four: YES, NO, BUT…

This one could be particularly useful for:

• Those who don’t want to be bothered with memorising acronyms and all that.

• Those who find their ideas dry up when there’s a lot of steps to go through and structures to fit into.

• Questions which ask if you agree, or to what extent you agree.

What is the method:

1.      Divide the page into three. The leftmost column is labelled YES, the middle BUT, and the rightmost NO. The question is, is there really a need for the middle column? Isn’t any idea that is NOT a “yes” straightaway a “no”? Well, no. The “but” column is precisely for capturing those counterarguments which are not “big” enough to take up a full paragraph of their own. The “but” column is also useful for weighing the value of ideas in the other columns. We’ll see how this works out in the example below.

2.      Start filling in the columns with ideas responding to the question. As you do so, keep adding complexity to each of your initial ideas by questioning them:

a.      Why? Why do you feel this way/think this?

b.      What do you mean by this phrase?

c.      How do I know that what you’re saying is true?

d.      Are there any exceptions to what you’re saying?

e.      How does this process play out?

f.       What are the implications of this idea?

3.      Take a moment to group ideas which may repeat, or to select the ones which you feel contain the most compelling logic. Then, put your selected ideas into sentences.

4.      Time to do a final check. Say the question to yourself, then immediately answer with your full sentence. If the sentence doesn’t sound like a direct answer, rephrase till it does! Don’t skip this step—you’re basically ensuring that your topic sentences address the question!

An example:

‘The book has no place in modern society.’ Discuss.

Analysing the question:

• The book ——-> the physical object? The ideas contained therein?

• Modern society ——-> a digital age, swamped with video as opposed to the written word; that said, physical books are still used in schools, etc.; VUCA world; an age of environmental crisis as well!

• So really, do people still buy and read books? Should people still buy and read books? Do people still value the physical book? Are physical books relevant in an increasingly digital, image-driven world? Aren’t the production of physical books harming the environment?

Step 1: set up the columns.

Step 2: Generate ideas to fill in the columns.

Step 3: Glancing over the table, I’m going to go with the first three arguments. The last feels less substantial compared to the rest!

Step 4: Now, I form my sentences and double check that they sound like direct answers to the question when spoken out loud. Since these will sound somewhat similar to the ones I generated for Method 3 above, I won’t belabour the issue by repeating them.

And there we have it—two more methods to quickly generate ideas, and organise them into a viable plan, making a total of four for you to play with. Experiment with them and figure out what works for you. They even work in combination!

Feel free to ask questions in the Comments section below. Or, if you’ve tried this method, share — how did it go?

Of course, if you’re in a situation where you think having someone work with you (discussing the thought process, finetuning your arguments) might be helpful, why not get in touch? I offer tuition services! Find out the details here.

Image:

Photo by Mika Baumeister on Unsplash