Development

Development

There are a number of ways to develop an idea. Most textbooks describe them under the following headings. Compare the different versions of these paragraphs for interest and effectiveness of communication.

Use specific details

1a. My landlady gave me a table, but it was unusable. It looked terrible and was partly broken. The wood was bad, even if it was fireproof, and the whole thing seemed to be falling apart. It was held together only by a piece of wire in some places. Some parts were missing altogether, and the drawer wouldn't open all the way. Furthermore, it was too big.

1b. My landlady gave me a table, but it was unusable. The wood was rough and saw-marked, and the finish was dull and spotty. A label on the underside promised that it was fireproof, but that had not prevented several cigarette-burns on the top, along with various stains of unidentifiable origin. The joints were ill-fitted, and one leg was held on by a wire. The metal cap on one of the legs, which was supposed to protect the carpet, was missing. The drawer, which had no handle, could not be opened more than six or sever centimeters. Furthermore, the table was too long for practical use and so wide that I would not have been able to get it through the door easily (M, 91).

2a. A financial manager has to know a lot. His job is very important, and he has to do it right. If he doesn't, there could be a disaster. In order to do his job right, he has to master the ins and outs of several special subjects, none of which are easy to learn.

2b. A financial manager has to know a lot. He has to keep up with business in general and know about investment, taxes, debt, and credit. He must cope with the normal ups and downs in business. He has to know not only his own company, but also its competitors. He must also know a lot about the law and sometimes even foreign countries.

2c. A financial manager has to know a lot. He must keep up with the general level of business activity to determine the company's needs for assets and funds, which may vary with current events and the season of the year. He must know when to borrow and when to invest to take advantage of changing tax and interest rates. He must know what his competitors are offering on the market and how it is being received. He has to know not only tax regulations but also customs law if his company imports products from other countries, and if exports are involved, he also has to know the customs laws of foreign countries.

3a. The thought patterns of the sexes differ. A woman usually thinks differently from a man.

3b. The thought patterns of the sexes differ. A woman usually thinks differently from a man. Women are more down-to-earth and home-oriented. Men are more ambitious.

3c. A major difference between the sexes is that their thought patterns vary widely. A woman is apt to think of the here and now; a man more often keeps his eye on the future. A woman's thinking usually centers around home, love, and security; a man's around adventure and sex. Small accomplishments will delight a woman, but a man is dissatisfied unless he can achieve major successes. In fact, there are few areas in which the thought patterns of the sexes mesh.

Use examples

1a. One way the thought patterns of the sexes differ is that women take delight in small accomplishments, while men like to achieve major successes. Men think bigger than women.

1b. One way the thought patterns of the sexes differ is that women take delight in small accomplishments, while men like to achieve major successes. Men think bigger than women. Women, for example, love to make dresses for their daughters, to cook special dishes, and to grow rare plants. Men, on the other hand, want to add a room to the house, or to build a cabin in the mountains, or to establish a new civic organization. Women can be happy earning a few extra dollars selling Christmas cards; men want to make killings on big real estate deals. In short, women think small; men think big.

2a. Good manners are an asset to any girl. Properly introducing your date to your parents is only one of many opportunities that good manners have to shine.

2b. Good manners are an asset to any girl. Introducing your date to your parents, for example, is a simple act of politeness that will put everybody at ease. Allowing your date to order for you will give him a feeling of importance and manliness. Listening politely and not dominating the conversation will give your date and your friends a pleasing sense of your agreeableness. Good manners, indeed, are no bar to vivacity and insure quick acceptance on all occasions.

3a. Another reason why intelligent college students sometimes fail is that the teachers often don't try to understand the student's problems. They don't seem to take a personal interest in their students.

3b. Another reason why intelligent college students sometimes fail is that the teachers often don't try to understand the student's problems. For example, there is a brilliant lawyer in my home town who flunked out of Torts University as a freshman. He had been compelled, because of illness, to enter college two weeks late, and in each of his classes the major assignments had already been made. Being somewhat shy, he was afraid to ask his professors what he needed to do to catch up, so he drifted around without being sure just what was expected of him. Not a single professor ever spoke to him personally. Consequently, he never did get oriented and received an F in every subject for the first semester. He left Torts discouraged, but entered Blackstone University the next fall and established an outstanding record. Torts could have had the honor of being his alma mater if just one professor had taken a personal interest in him.

Analyze causes and results

No doubt the chief cause of this kind of school rivalry [intense rivalry between two high schools] is a natural desire for competition. Young people love to outdo each other. When groups are involved, this drive is made stronger.
No doubt the chief cause of this kind of school rivalry stems from a natural desire among young people to engage in competitive activities. A teenager feels good when it is demonstrated that he or a group he belongs to is superior to a rival. Consequently, even in an activity as innocent as a ball game the desire to win is very strong on both sides, particularly if the teams "belong" to teenagers. This natural individual drive becomes accentuated when large numbers of individuals are thrown together at one time with the same competitive desire. The result is apt to be an extension of the competitive feeling beyond the mere game itself. In fact, little fracases are apt to break out. After this sort of thing has happened two or three years in a row, a "tradition" of rivalry is apt to grow up between two schools. Thus there exist many established, permanent, intense school rivalries. It all goes back to the natural human desire for competition.
School rivalry is very intense in high school. The basic reason for this is the natural desire for competition. Young people love to try to outdo each other because they are in the process of learning about themselves. They need to find out where their strengths and weaknesses lie. When groups are involved, this individual drive is transferred to the group that the young person identifies with. This identification is much stronger among young people, since they have not yet fully established their individual identity and feel more confident as part of a group. Their feeling of competition as a group against other groups, therefore, is also stronger, and even a ball game can seem a matter of life and death. In time, groups that pit themselves against each other regularly, as school teams do, become traditional and often fierce rivals.

Describe a process

Here is an example:

Dogs can be taught to protect young children. The first step for the trainer is to make the dog aware that the child is helpless. He does this by letting the dog see him rescue the child from various difficulties. Next he tries waiting until the last moment to rescue the child, thus giving the dog a chance to perform the rescue himself. The intelligent dog will soon catch on and begin to take an interest in the child. Then the trainer undertakes to teach the dog various dangerous situations that confront the child, such as those involving the streets, high places, stray animals, and loose objects. With such training an adaptable dog will soon become a better protector than the child's own mother.

Make a comparison or contrast

For example:

Another problem facing a beekeeper is getting to know a new hive and getting it to know him. This is a delicate problem, something like that of a young man becoming acquainted with a sensitive, slightly suspicious young lady. First he must let her know of his presence without getting too close, say in a library. Then he may approach her gently, engaging her in light, non-committal conversation, or, in the case of the bees, approaching the mouth of the hive. The bees, like the shy young lady, will soon get used to the beekeeper and no longer see him as an intruder.
My little Volkswagen is called the "Beetle" for good reason. It is oval-shaped and has a low body to decrease air resistance. Like real beetles, my car doesn't fly, but it has good traction due to the engine weight being in the rear. It takes in "food" in the form of gasoline from the front, and air from the back, which is also the case with beetles. Both the car and the insect use their fuel more efficiently than larger species. The one point where they differ is that I normally dislike bugs, but I like my VW so much that I may change my mind about that too.
The modern kitchen is different from the old-style one. The old kitchen was full of charming, often intricate designs on the wallpaper, the curtains, and the tablecloth; the modern kitchen is all stainless steel and bright but monotonous colors. In Grandma's kitchen you talked things over, had a leisurely hot drink, and savored the odor of bread baking in the oven. The modern kitchen is designed for speed. The object is to prepare the meal, serve it, and wash up as fast as possible. Instead of being the center of family life, the kitchen today is a mere workplace where you spend as little time as possible.

Making extended definitions

Some examples:

1 Journalists often make fun of those they like to call "conspiracy buffs." But just what is a conspiracy? It is a secret plan by two or more people to do something bad. By this definition, we are surrounded by conspiracies, depending, on what we see as "bad." What government is not guilty of conspiracy? The U.S. government has a number of institutions whose function is conspiratorial, the most notorious being the CIA. "Covert operations" are conspiracies by definition, unless one wants to contend that there is nothing bad or illegal about them, a standpoint that not even the CIA itself would take, since that is what supposedly justifies their being covert. What is the CIA's Directorate of Operations if not an institutionalized conspiracy?

2. The term "conservative" is usually applied to those who take a hard line on crime, national defense, and federal spending. At the same time, self-proclaimed conservatives like to identify themselves with the traditional American values of the Founding Fathers, as expressed in the Constitution. How, then, can such a conservative justify state-sanctioned murder, which certainly qualifies as "cruel and unusual punishment" (Art. 8)? How can he justify wars that are not declared by Congress (Art. 1, Sect. 8), i.e. all U.S. wars in the second half of this century? How can he defend the spending of at least $100 million per day of tax dollars for purposes he is barred from knowing, in blatant violation of the constitutional principle of fiscal accountability (Art. 1, Sect. 9)? Yet the so-called conservatives in Congress are the last we can expect to "conserve" the spirit and the letter of our fundamental legal document.

3. "Democracy" is a word we all believe we understand. It means, originally, "people power," and the application of the term to the major western governments is taken for granted. Everybody in the United States, for example, can vote, as long as they are old enough and have enough confidence in the system to bother to register; therefore, ours is a democratic country. But where is the "people power" when 10% of the population own more than half the wealth of the country, when 30 giant corporations own most of the media outlets (newspapers, magazines, book publishers, radio and TV stations, film studios) that determine what we hear, see, and read? What is democratic about a country where one-fifth of the population has no health insurance and more than half of the people executed by the state are black, though blacks make up only 12% of the population? Is it democratic for more than half the population (women) to be represented by a tiny minority in Congress? "Democracy," clearly, is a relative term.