Creating an Argument

The place to start when writing an essay is, first and foremost, creating an argument. Now, we're not saying that you need to know every step of your paper from the very beginning; what you are doing at this stage is looking at your brainstorming activities and sorting through your notes to ascertain a topic to explore. Is there a theme to your brainstorming notes? Is there something that you focused on? Repeated? As we talked about in the Brainstorming section (of the Thinking Phase), the easiest way to begin developing an argument is to concentrate on the things that pique your interest. Once you have settled on a topic, you will begin outlining.