Writing · Writing: Essays and Literary AnalysisGenerating and Developing Ideas: Finding a Problem Worth Writing About
1.2About 65 minutes
Learning goals- I can generate ideas by hunting for puzzles in a text: contradictions, repetitions, shifts and gaps.
- I can expand and explore ideas with the believing and doubting game, lens questions and a so what? chain.
- I can focus a cluster of notes into one problem and a working thesis that I am prepared to change.
- I can keep an honest record of where my ideas came from, so that I can credit them.
Words to know
problem (in an essay)
Something puzzling, contradictory or unresolved in a text or issue that an essay sets out to explain.
motive
The reason an essay needs to be written: the puzzle, gap or common misreading it responds to.
believing and doubting game
A method from writing teacher Peter Elbow: first argue as strongly as you can for an idea, then as strongly as you can against it.
working thesis
A provisional claim that guides early drafting and is expected to change as you test it.
so what? chain
Asking so what? about each answer until you reach the larger significance of an idea.
cluster
A group of notes or observations that point toward the same idea.
Good essays begin with a problem, not a topic
In Grade 11 you generated ideas by asking questions at three levels, freewriting and looping, mapping and keeping double-entry notes. Those tools still work. Grade 12 adds a sharper goal: find a problem.
A problem is something in the text that does not quite make sense yet: a contradiction, a strange repetition, a sudden shift, a silence. Problems are valuable because they give your essay a motive, a reason to exist. An essay that explains something everyone already sees has no motive. An essay that explains something puzzling does.
We will practise on a poem you read in Grade 11 Reading Literary Texts: Shelley's Ozymandias.
Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley (published 1818; public domain)
I met a traveller from an antique land, (1) Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone (2) Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand, (3) Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown, (4) And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, (5) Tell that its sculptor well those passions read (6) Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, (7) The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed; (8) And on the pedestal, these words appear: (9) My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings; (10) Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair! (11) Nothing beside remains. Round the decay (12) Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare (13) The lone and level sands stretch far away." (14)
Punctuation and capital letters differ slightly between editions; this is the version you met in Grade 11.
Strategy 1: the puzzle hunt
Read the text slowly and write down every moment that makes you ask Why is that there? Aim for ten or more. Do not judge them yet.
Strategy 2: the believing and doubting game
Writing teacher Peter Elbow described two complementary ways of thinking. Take one of your ideas.
- Believe it: for five minutes, write the strongest possible case for it. Find every piece of support.
- Doubt it: for five minutes, write the strongest case against it. Find every counter-example.
Ideas that survive both rounds are worth keeping. Ideas that collapse under doubt saved you from a weak essay.
Strategy 3: lens questions
Ask the same question through different critical lenses (you will study these fully in Literary Analysis II). For Ozymandias: What does the poem say about power? (a political lens), Who made the statue, and who is remembered? (a class or labour lens), Who is telling this story about Egypt, and from where? (a postcolonial lens).
Strategy 4: the so what? chain
Take an observation and keep asking so what? until you reach something that matters beyond the text.
Worked exampleLet's run a *so what?* chain on Ozymandias
Start from a simple observation and develop it into a problem and a working thesis.
- Observation: the inscription says Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair! (line 11), but there are no works to look at: Nothing beside remains (12).
- So what? The king meant despair, because you can never match me. Now the line means despair, because this will happen to you too. The same words have reversed their meaning.
- So what? The poem shows that a text's meaning is not controlled by its author. Time and context rewrite it.
- So what? And the poem itself is a text too. Shelley's statue is made of words, passed through a traveller and a speaker before it reaches us.
- Problem: the poem mocks a ruler's faith that his words and statue will last, yet the poem is itself an attempt to make words last. Is Shelley exempt from his own warning?
- Believing: yes; the poem survives because it does not boast, it questions. Doubting: no; the sculptor is praised for reading the king well, so art outlives power, which is its own kind of boast.
- Working thesis: Although Ozymandias mocks a king's faith that stone and words can preserve his power, it quietly places its own faith in art, suggesting that the artist, not the ruler, wins the contest with time.
A working thesis with a motive (a contradiction inside the poem) and a significance (a claim about art and power). It is provisional: the essay will test it.
Generating is wide; focusing is narrow. You need both. The working thesis at the end is a claim to test, so expect to revise it.Focusing: from a pile of notes to one question
After generating, you will have more ideas than one essay can hold. To focus:
- Cluster notes that point in the same direction. Give each cluster a short label.
- Choose the cluster with the most evidence and the most interesting problem.
- Write a question with one key term you can define (power, defeat, freedom, memory).
- Draft a working thesis that answers it. Mark it working at the top of the page; it will change.
Keeping honest records
While you generate, note where each idea came from: your own reading, a class discussion, a teacher's comment, a website, a critic. At Grade 12 and in university, an idea taken from a source and not credited is plagiarism even if the words are your own. A simple code in the margin works: (me), (class), (source: author, title).
Signs you have found a real problem
- You can phrase it as a how or why question.
- A thoughtful reader could reasonably answer it in more than one way.
- Answering it needs evidence from several places in the text.
- The answer would change how someone reads the text.
Hands-on activityPuzzle jar
You need: a printed or hand-copied short text (a poem, a song lyric, or one page of a story you are studying), about 15 small scraps of paper, a pen, a jar or bowl, and a timer.
- Set the timer for 10 minutes. Hunt for puzzles and write one per scrap (contradiction, repetition, shift, gap). Fold each one and drop it in the jar.
- Draw three scraps at random. For each, play the believing and doubting game for three minutes per side, out loud or on paper.
- Choose the scrap that survived best. Run a so what? chain of at least four links.
- Write a working thesis and label it working.
- Explain your thesis to someone at home in under one minute. If they ask So what?, add one more link.
What to look for: puzzles phrased as questions; doubting rounds that find real counter-evidence; a working thesis with a motive and a significance.
Just for funShelley wrote Ozymandias partly as a friendly contest: his friend Horace Smith wrote a sonnet on the same subject around the same time. Two poets, one ancient statue, and a reminder that even your rough-draft rivals can push you toward a classic.
Your turn
1What is the difference between a topic and a problem?
A topic names an area (power in Ozymandias). A problem is a puzzle within it that needs explaining (why does a poem that mocks lasting monuments try to be one?).
2Name the four kinds of puzzle to hunt for.
Contradiction, repetition, shift, gap or silence.
3Find one shift in Ozymandias.
The voice shifts from the speaker (I met a traveller, line 1) to the traveller (from line 2) and then to the king's inscription (lines 10-11). There is also a shift from the boast to Nothing beside remains (12).
4Explain the believing and doubting game in two sentences.
First argue as strongly as possible for an idea; then argue as strongly as possible against it. Ideas that survive both are worth writing about.
5Continue this so what? chain by one link: The sculptor's work outlasts the king's power. So what?
Sample: So the poem suggests that art preserves truth about the powerful even when they are gone, because the sculptor recorded the king's cruelty ("sneer of cold command").
6Why should you label a working thesis working?
It reminds you that it is provisional: drafting and evidence may change it, and you should let them.
More practice: warm-up
1What does motive mean in an essay?
The reason the essay needs to exist: a puzzle, gap or common misreading it responds to.
2Who described the believing and doubting game?
Writing teacher Peter Elbow.
3In Ozymandias, what remains beside the statue's ruins?
Nothing: Nothing beside remains (line 12), only sand.
4What simple margin code can you use to track where ideas came from?
Codes such as (me), (class), (source: author, title).
5Is a working thesis final?
No. It is provisional and expected to change.
More practice: on your own
1Find a gap or silence in a story or poem you know and turn it into a how or why question.
Sample (Ozymandias): Why does the poem never describe the king's actual works? Answers will vary; the question should point at something the text leaves out and could be answered in more than one way.
2Play the doubting game against this idea: Ozymandias proves that art lasts forever.
Sample: The statue that preserves the sculptor's skill is itself broken and half sunk; the art is decaying too. And we know the scene only second-hand, through a traveller. So the poem may suggest that art lasts longer than power, but not forever.
3You have five clusters of notes. Give two criteria for choosing which one to write about.
Choose the cluster with the most evidence and the most interesting problem (one a reader could answer in more than one way). Also check it fits the task and length.
4Turn this observation into a problem: The poem has a lot of sand imagery.
Sample: Why does the poem end on sand that is "boundless" and "level" right after a king's boast of supremacy? The landscape seems to answer the inscription, flattening every claim to be above others.
5A friend tells you an idea in class and you use it. How should your notes show this, and why does it matter?
Mark it (class: friend's name or discussion). Ideas, not only words, must be credited; at university, using an uncredited idea is plagiarism.
Challenge
1Write a complete so what? chain (five links) starting from the phrase The hand that mocked them (line 8), and end with a working thesis.
Sample: 1) Mocked means both imitated and ridiculed. 2) So the sculptor copied the king's passions and also judged them. 3) So the artist secretly had the last word over a ruler. 4) So power cannot control how it is represented. 5) So the poem is about who controls history's image of the powerful. Working thesis: Through the double meaning of "mocked," Ozymandias suggests that rulers cannot control how art records them, and that the sculptor's quiet judgement outlives the king's loud command.
2Explain why an essay with no motive tends to turn into summary, and how a problem prevents that.
Without a puzzle, there is nothing to explain, so the writer can only report what happens. A problem forces analysis: the writer must gather evidence from several places and reason toward an answer that is not obvious, which is exactly what summary does not do.
3Use two different lens questions on Ozymandias to produce two different working theses.
Sample, class or labour lens: The poem honours the unnamed sculptor's skill over the named king's power, suggesting that the labour of ordinary makers outlasts the rulers who command it. Postcolonial lens: The poem views Egypt only through the report of a European traveller, so its lesson about fallen empires is told from outside, which may say as much about the British Empire of Shelley's time as about ancient Egypt. Any two that clearly come from different lens questions are fine.
Quiz
1. Which is a problem rather than a topic?
2. The believing and doubting game asks you to:
4. A working thesis should be:
5. Which is a shift in Ozymandias?
6. You use an idea a classmate suggested in discussion. You should:
Big idea: This lesson covers expectation 1.2: generating, expanding, exploring and focusing ideas. The Grade 12 twist is that good essays start from a problem (something puzzling) rather than a topic, which gives the essay a reason to exist.
How to help: play the believing and doubting game with your teen. Take their idea and argue against it kindly but seriously; then switch sides. Ask So what? gently, more than once. When they say I don't know what to write about, ask What in the text surprised or bothered you?
Common difficulties: settling on the first idea; choosing a topic with nothing puzzling in it, which leads to summary; refusing to change a working thesis when the evidence points elsewhere; forgetting to record where ideas came from. The Horace Smith detail in the fun box is a well-documented part of the poem's history; the model theses were written for this site.