Student Writing Handbook Fifth+Edition

236 / Types of Writing

if you want to write about an important image in a poem, will you discuss how the
author develops it, the effect it has on the poem’s meaning, what it means?

Narrowing the topic to a single focus comes most easily by looking for repeated
ideas in your notes from Step 1. The focus must lend itself to thorough development
within the limits of your paper and deal with some important aspect of the work.

Determine the direction your topic will take. Write a sentence or two stating the
focus. For example:

Emily Dickinson’s biographer said she domesticated the universe. Her images

make the spiritual world as familiar as household items.

STEP 3: Prewriting—Planning the Paper

Next, list examples from the work that support your topic. Use the notes you devel-
oped in Step 1. Your list may look something like this:

Dickinson’s domestic images

“housewife” items

broom

dusting

sewing items—thread, ravelings, and so on

apron

scattered duds

sweeping

Then organize the items in some logical manner. The organization may show rela-
tionships, cause and effect, comparisons or contrasts, or opinion. [See chapters 6, 8,
or 12 (Cause and Effect, Comparison and Contrast, or Opinion), respectively.] Or you
may arrange the items by some order of importance or perhaps by the chronological
order of the appearance in the literary work. [See chronological order and order of
importance in the Glossary.]

Completed, the organized list may look like this:

Dickinson’s Domestic Images

1. “Housewife” chores
   a. Sweeping
   b. Dusting


2. Seamstress items
   a. Thread
   b. Ravelings
   c. Duds