|
What's a Good Idea?
by Steve Peha of Teaching That Makes Sense
Some Ideas are Better Than Others
Just because it’s on a list you made doesn’t mean it’s necessarily a great thing to write about. Sometimes you may want to consider things a bit more carefully before you start writing. To help you with that, here’s a series of questions you can ask yourself about any topic you choose. How you answer these questions may help you discover that some of your topics are better than others.
Is the Topic Something You Have Strong Feelings About?
The degree to which you care about your topic is one of the strongest predictors of success with the finished piece. Your feelings about the topic affect your writing in three ways:
- The amount of effort of you put in will be greater if you care about your topic. The extra effort will probably lead you to produce better work.
- Your voice will be stronger if you care about the topic. Voice is the personal quality in a piece of writing, it’s how your personality shapes the piece in ways that make it different from anyone else’s. It’s also the aspect of your writing that will be most interesting to the majority of your readers.
- You’ll have a lot more fun writing a piece if you care about the topic. The work will go faster and be more enjoyable.
Is the Topic Something You Know a Lot About?
Writing is really two activities wrapped up into one. The first activity involves coming up with the ideas you plan to write about. The second involves writing those ideas down in ways that are interesting and understandable to your readers. The truth is that you can’t do the second if you haven’t figured out the first. If you don’t know a lot about your topic, you have two choices:
- You can do some research and learn more about it, or
- You can pick something different to work on that you know more about.
Is the Topic Something You Can Describe in Great Detail?
Details are the heart of any good piece of writing. Details are also what make your writing different from anyone else’s. Without good details, most pieces are boring. Part of knowing a lot about your topic is knowing the little things about it that your readers probably don’t know.
Is the Topic Something Your Audience Will be Interested In?
Before you can answer this question, you have to know who you’re writing for. In school, your audience usually consists of the other students in your class plus your teacher. But often we write for wider audiences, too. In either case, you have to know who your audience is and why they might be interested in the topic you’ve chosen to write about.
Is the Topic Something Your Audience Will Feel was Worth Reading?
Your readers have to expend time and effort to read your writing. What do you have to say to them about your topic that will keep them reading all the way to the end, and make them feel like they got their money’s worth when they get there?
|
