Generating ideas

How does one decide what to say in an essay? The usual advice is to write about what interests you. The notion of expressive writing, indeed, encourages students to present their personal reactions to whatever they're studying. In a lot of ways that's a good thing, but sometimes it can make writers think that any idea is as good as another, as long as it's"honest."

　　But where you start is critical to determining where you end up, and how strong your essay will be. A foolish idea or tired angle, no matter how honest and heartfelt, means at best a mediocre essay. Thus writing about what interests or appeals to you isn't very helpful advice for students. There's no guarantee that what interests you will spark an interesting paper for others （especially for that Cerberus with a gradebook, your teacher）.

　　So here are six tried-and-true ways to help generate good ideas. None of them, except perhaps the last, is a quick fix. They're really lifetime mental habits you should inculcate, the sooner the better.

　　1. Read

　　Would you rather build a house out of bricks or straw? Same with essays. If you want to build strong essays, you need good material. In the short term that comes from solid research, the hours spent studying the topic, reading and taking careful notes. But research, vital as it is, is a relatively narrow activity.

　　Beyond research, a good writer needs to develop a lifelong habit of reading. Real writers read a lot—newspapers, magazines, journals, scholarly books, history, memoirs, novels, even poetry. I'm not talking about seeking out information on a particular topic, but reading broadly about nature, science, history, culture, politics, commerce."That tempting range of relevancies," George Eliot called the universe, and indeed to a person who has cultivated her curiosity everything connects, and anything can spark a good idea or insight. Cultivate a lifelong habit of reading and reflection.

　　You'd like some reading suggestions? It depends on you, of course, but if you really want a starting-point, here's a bare-bones periodicals guide:

　　General news, etc.: the New York Times （www.nytimes.com, free）. Great coverage of news, politics, culture, etc., plus a bonus of terrific expository writing. Among the many highlights: well-written op-ed columns, Science Times on Tuesdays, movie and art reviews, the Times Book Review on Sundays, and the language column in the Sunday Magazine.

　　Commerce: the Wall Street Journal （www.wsj.com）. Besides the obvious, a surprising number of fascinating stories about the human side of business.

　　Science: Science Magazine （www.sciencemag.org）. Heavy going for laymen, but must reading for scientists-in-training. For popular science coverage check out Discover Magazine （www.discover.com） or the somewhat weightier Scientific American （www.scientificamerican.com）, whose online site has a great bookmark feature.

　　History: The Journal of Modern History （www.journals.uchicago.edu/JMH/home.html）, one example of a leading scholarly history journal. Coverage of Europe since the Renaissance. For easier reading, I'd recommend the excellent companion web sites to PBS' many superb documentaries, which you can find at www.pbs.org/neighborhoods/history/.

　　E-culture: Salon.com （www.salon.com）. A leading webzine with sharp takes on American culture, such as it is, including extensive book reviews and reading lists.

　　One more recommendation: the inevitable Amazon.com. Check out the best-selling titles and Amazon's recommendations in whatever category you're interested in.

　　If you have other suggestions, let me know.

　　2. Suspend judgment

　　Another good way to generate good ideas is to develop the habit of suspending judgment as you read and study. Most people make poor arguers because they've already made up their minds before they ever open their mouths or put pen to paper. Passionate partisanship sometimes produces brilliant argument, but most of the time it diminishes an argument's power by acting as a kind of mental blinder, leading the writer to ignore anything that doesn't fit her preconceived argument.

　　So keep Aristotle's stricture in mind. Read to learn, not just to shore up what you already think you know.

　　3. Problematize

　　One of the first things grad students learn as they undertake their advanced studies is to"problematize"—to look for problems in whatever it is they're studying as the basis for their own work. It's excellent advice for undergraduates faced with writing papers, as well. Don't just read texts or study data looking for answers: look for questions, for tensions, for unresolved issues. Those provide the critical openings for you to say something new, to take a fresh tack on an old issue. In the ideal case one not only comes up with a penetrating question, but a sharp answer as well, but often the question is all that really matters.

　　To make the essay feel complete, as a general rule you should at least suggest the best reasonable answer, or several reasonable answers; you might also propose how one would go about answering the question in the future.

　　If this advice seems a little weird and risky—"You want me to write essays that ask questions and don't answer them?" （not exactly, but close）—try a little exercise: ask your teachers whether they'd rather read an essay that asks an interesting question but provides no definite answer, or an essay that asks a familiar question and gives a familiar but well-supported answer. I guarantee they'll prefer the interesting question—and that their grades will reflect it.

　　4. Contextualize

　　The third Nuts and Bolts rule of thumb for generating good ideas is to contextualize. That is, try to figure out how whatever you're writing about—an event, text, experiment, finding or whatever—fits into your larger subject or field. If you're looking at something your teacher has assigned or suggested, try to figure out why it got assigned in the first place. How does it fit into the course? What concepts, theories, or paradigms does it relate to? The refrain I try to drum into my students' heads until they can repeat it in their sleep:"What is this an example of?" If you can give a solid answer to that question when you're writing about something, you're in good shape.

　　As practice, contextualize when you read textbooks: why this example, that story, that fact? And when you take notes, make sure not to get lost in a stream of facts; periodically step back to survey the big picture.

　　5. Record your notes and ideas

　　If you don't keep track of what you're thinking, you'll forget most of it. It doesn't matter how you record your thoughts as long as you develop a routine that works for you. Some people have complicated systems with color-coded notebooks or pens, some use tape recorders, some spend a lot of money on fancy tech products. At this point, though, a cheap composition book probably works better than a Palm Pilot. In any case, however you do it, record your thoughts or kiss them goodbye.

　　6. Ask

　　The thinking person's secret weapon. Ask your friends, classmates, parents, librarians, and professors—above all, ask your teacher. Most students don't like to ask questions because they see them as a mark of ignorance, and ignorance as something to hide. Here's a better way to look at it: questions are a sign one is trying to learn. What true teacher wouldn't welcome that? Especially when it's a chance to share some of that hard-won and meagerly-rewarded learning?

　　And when you ask your teacher about a topic, assignment or argument, you get an answer straight from the horse's mouth—what an assignment is really about, what the key ideas in a text are, whether you're on the right track.