Choosing a Topic

Lesson 3:Choosing a Topic for the Illustration Essay

Introduction

In Lessons 1 and 2 of this unit, we discussed some basic concepts of the illustration essay. Now that you have an idea about the type of essay you will be writing, we will spend the remaining lessons to develop the writing of the essay itself. In this lesson in particular, we will discuss the process of choosing a topic for your essay and a couple of strategies for developing that topic into three or four points. In the following lessons in Unit V, we will discuss ways to organize and develop your illustration essay.

Choosing a Topic

Choosing a topic that is good for you is extremely important and will aid in the success of your essay writing. You want to choose a topic in which you feel confident because it will be up to you to explicate the topic into illustrations. It is best to choose a topic that you have some familiarity with so that you can decipher at least three points that you want to make and support with illustrations.

Before choosing a topic, consider the areas in your life where you have some knowledge already: education, sports, technology, community, and business. Certainly, these are not all of the topic areas, but this is a good place to begin. Apart from considering categories, what are some other ways that you can choose a topic?

• Watch the news for current events: Sometimes just looking at the day’s headlines can launch you into a topic. For example, a local charity might be hosting an event in support of cancer survivors. You could write a paper about the need to support such survivors and include three illustrations of the ways that they can be supported through outreach events.
• Consider a historical view:Look to historical events for inspiration. Would you like to describe a certain time period or event? Perhaps you could even provide examples of three little-known facts about a famous person.
• Think about your day-to-day experiences:You could describe what you do for a living, what you love about action movies, or how to best decorate a cake. The possibilities are endless. Mainly, you want to make sure that you have a clear focus and that you are not relying on your personal experiences as evidence. In other words, you must be sure that you are including material from sources to help support your assertions.

Let’s look at some example topics as divided by category:

• Education
  • What are the most helpful study habits?
  • What are your recommendations for staying motivated when doing course work?
  • Why did you choose online education?
  • What are the benefits of online education?
  • How can students avoid procrastination?
• Sports
  • How is a curveball thrown correctly?
  • What makes a great football player? (This can be any kind of athlete.)
  • What do you like about your favorite team?
  • Describe how a coach might (or did) turn a season around.
  • What makes a basketball team successful? (This can be any team sport.)
• Technology
  • Describe the negative (or positive) aspects of social networking.
  • How are people dependent upon technology?
  • In what ways has technology made people better (or worse) communicators?
  • Describe the best uses for a particular technology (e.g., a tablet, smartphone, computer).
• Community
  • Describe a tradition that only exists in a particular area (such as your own city or town). Some examples include parades, festivals, or holidays.What makes your hometown unique?
  • Describe attributes of a favorite building, area, or city.
• Business
  • What makes a great manager/leader?
  • What makes fast food so successful?
  • What makes a product successful?
  • Describe the relationship between a customer or fan base anda product.

Discovering Your Three Points…

You know that you have the right topic for you when it is easy to come up with at least three points of illustration that help you to describe, explain, or illustrate your main idea, which will be expressed in your thesis statement. While it may be easy to brainstorm more than three points for your main idea, you will want to limit the number of examples to no more than four as more than this number changes the nature of the paper, and, in this course, we are focused on learning the form of this particular kind of essay rather than explicating all the possible illustrations.

Inventing Your Points…

There are a few ways that you can go about inventing your points. For this part of the process, you may want to review Unit II, Lesson 3: Beginning Your Writing Process. In Unit II, Lesson 3, we learned about prewriting strategies like brainstorming, mapping/clustering, and free writing.

Beginning with an Essay Model in Mind

In the previous lesson, we discussed the two models of illustration essays: single-example and multiple-example. Each of these essay models prescribes a different way to see the same main idea. Therefore, to produce points for your essay that you will then develop into paragraphs, you could begin by choosing a model that makes the most sense to you. In doing so, you could develop three aspects of a single example, or you could develop multiple illustrations for the same main idea. Allowing the model to be your guide can be helpful. Further, you can try on both models of essays. If the single-example is not working for your chosen topic, then you might try the multiple-example instead. This flexibility in models can be a means of imagining each essay. You may also create an outline for yourself using both models to see which one seems to be the most populated.

Brainstorming Your Way to Three Points

Another way to come up with three points is to sit down and think about all of the ways that you may want to illustrate the main idea. As we learned in Unit II, Lesson 3, brainstorming is all about generating material. You will write down all of the illustrations that come to mind about the topic you have selected. Do not discriminate against any idea as you are brainstorming as anything you write might have value. Further, attempting to filter your ideas by self-editing can inhibit your process. Once you have generated a number of ideas, look at your ideas and try to determine which model, single-example or multiple-example, would be appropriate for your ideas. Then, when you have established an outline using one model or the other, you can continue the brainstorming process as a way to fill in an additional point, to combine two ideas into one strong idea, or to “go back to the drawing board” for a stronger idea.

Review

1. It is best to choose a topic that you have some familiarity with so that you can decipher at least three points that you want to make and support with illustrations.
2. Before choosing a topic, consider the areas in your life where you have some knowledge already: education, sports, technology, community, or business.
3. Some ways to develop a topic includethe following: Watch the news for current events, consider a historical view, and think about your day-to-day experiences.
4. To help in the development of three or four points for your essay, you may want to begin with the essay model in mind or brainstorm your way to three points.