70 / Methods of Development
STEP 7: Prewriting—Organizing and Thinking about
the Whole
A classification paper must have a logical organization that the reader can follow.
For instance, if advertising is classified according to medium (print, television, or
radio), which will you discuss first? Why? The answer determines your choice of
organization. [See chronological, spatial, and order of importance in the Glossary.]
First, you may organize the kinds of advertising by some order of importance.
-^ from most to least expensive
-^ from smallest to largest audience
-^ from most to least effective
-^ from most to least creative
An equally appropriate option is the reverse of any of these orders of importance.
Likewise, you may choose to organize advertising media from the oldest to the new-
est, thus relying on chronological order.
So, which do you use? That depends on the purpose of your paper. If you want to
present a historical perspective, chronological order is best. If you want to convince
a client to spend the money for a multimedia advertising campaign that your adver-
tising firm will develop, then you will probably use one of the orders of importance.
No matter how you organize the overall classification paper, however, keep these two
suggestions in mind for each of the subtopics:
-^ Show your organization in the topic or thesis sentence by listing the topics in
the order in which you will discuss them. For example:
Advertising uses different techniques in each of the three media: radio,
print, and television.
The thesis sentence implies that the writer will discuss radio advertising first,
then print advertising, and finally television advertising.
-^ Discuss each of the parallel subtopic details (listed in Step 5) in the same order
for each topic. For radio, for instance, discuss visual/auditory details first, then
copy details, and finally availability details. Repeat the same order for print
and then for television advertising.
STEP 8: Writing—Following the Plan
With the preparation and planning behind you, you are ready to prepare the first
draft of your classification paper:
-^ Begin your classification with the topic sentence (for a paragraph) or
introductory paragraph and thesis sentence (for a theme).