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The First and Second Steps in Writing

Step 1: Begin with a Point-You first step in writing is to decide what point you want to make and to write that point in a single sentence. The point is commonly known as a topic sentence. As a guide to yourself and to the reader, put that point in the first sentence of your paragraph. Everything else in the paragraph should then develop and support in specific ways the single point given in the first sentence.

Step 2: Support the Point with Specific Evidence-The first essential step in writing effectively is to start with a clearly stated point. The second basic step is to support that point with specific evidence.

1.Identifying Common Errors in Topic Sentences

    Announcement
  My Ford Escort is the concern of this paragraph.

The statement above is a simple announcement of a subject, rather than a topic sentence expressing an idea about the subject.

    Statement That Is Too Broad
  Many people have problems with their cars.

The statement is too broad to be supported adequately with specific details in a single paragraph.

    Statement That Is Too Narrow
  My car is a Ford Escort.

The statement above is too narrow to be expanded into a paragraph. Such a narrow statement is sometimes called a dead-end statement because there is no place to go with it. It is a simple fact that does not need or call for any support.

    Effective Topic Sentence
   I ate my Ford Escort.

The statement above expresses an opinion that could be supported in a paragraph. The writer could offer a series of specific supporting reasons, examples, and details to make it clear why he or she hates the car.

Here are additional example:

    Announcement
  The subject of this paper will be my apartment.
   I want to talk about increases in the divorce rate.

    Statement That Are Too Broad
  The place where people live have definite effects on their lives.
    Many people have trouble getting along with others.

   Statement That is Too Narrow
  I have no hot water in my apartment at night.
   Almost one of every two marriages ends in divorce.

    Effective Topic Sentences
  My apartment is a terrible place to live.
   The divorce rate is increasing for several reasons.

2. Recognizing Specific Details:

Specific details are examples, reasons, particulars, and facts. Such details are needed to support and explain a topic sentence effectively. They provide the evidence needed for readers to understand, as well as to feel and experience, a writer's point.

  Which set provides sharp, specific details?

  Topic Sentence:  Some poor people must struggle to make meals for themselves.

 Set A:      They gather up whatever free food they can find in fast-food restaurants and take it home to use however they can. Instead of planning well-balanced meals, they base their diet on anything they can buy that is cheap and filling.

Set B:       Some make tomato soup by adding hot water to the free packets of ketchup they get at McDonald's. Others buy cans of cheap dog food and fry it like hamburger.

     Set B provides specific details: instead of a general statement about "free food they find in fast-food restaurants and take...home to use however they can," we get a vivid detail we can see and picture clearly: "make tomato soup [from] free packets of ketchup." Instead of a general statement about how the poor will "base their diet on anything they can buy that is cheap and filling," we get exact and vivid details: "Others buy cans of cheap dog food and fry it like hamburger."

    Specific details are often like the information we might find in a movie script. They provide us with such clear pictures that we could make a film of them if we wanted to. You would know just how to film the information given in set B. You would show a poor person breaking open a packet of ketchup from McDonald's and mixing it with water to make a kind of tomato soup. You would show someone opening a can of dog food and frying its contents like hamburger.

    In contrast, the writer of set A  fails to provide the specific information needed. If you were asked to make a film based on set A, you would have to figure out for yourself just what particulars you were going to show.

   When you are working to provide specific supporting information in a paper, it might help to ask yourself, "Could  someone easily film this information?" If the answer is "yes," you probably have good derails.

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