The Art of the Audio Essay
PWR 2 Fall Quarter 2007
Jonah G. Willihnganz
Stanford University


Structured Brainstorming (adapted from Sanford Kaye)

This is a handout to accompany our in-class discussion of what we will call structured brainstorming. This is an approach to writing polemical essays that is aimed at those of us who need a handy way of collecting and logically organizing our thoughts. The virtue of this approach is that it produces a well-developed outline for our essay in 5 easy steps.

Note, though, that this approach brings us just to a standard form of an argument-driven essay, with a beginning, middle and end, step by step points, etc. While it will help you devise your argument and organize evidence to support it, structured brainstorming does not suggest particular rhetorical strategies that might make the argument more convincing, entertaining, or provocative. For strategies such as the rhetorical question, conceptual reduction, the anecdote, the typical case, etc. or possible ways of analyzing an issue (definition, cause and effect, function, etc.), one needs to look to the criticism we have read.

Important caveat about this structure: As we have discussed in class, essays that attempt to develop a relationship between two seemingly unlike objects, trends, styles, etc. don’t usually take a position in a pre-existing debate (such as abortion, the death penalty, etc.) so Step 4 does not usually apply to a great extent.

So, here are the 5 steps in structured brainstorming:

Step 1: Propose a provisional argument (thesis). An argument, as we have said, is something with which someone might take issue. (If I propose that people should try to do what makes them happy, I most likely do not have an argument because it is difficult to imagine anyone mounting a serious argument against it.) We say this is provisional because it may be refined as you explore the evidence and counter-arguments in steps 2 and 3. A provisional argument might be: "To create its effects, John Dos Passos' fiction relies on the kind of spatial organization developed in the graphic arts in the early 20th century."

Step 2: Generate “because. . .” clauses. Now that you have a provisional argument, you need to ask of it the question “why?” For example, if my provisional argument is that Dos Passos' fiction relies on the kind of spatial organization developed in the graphic arts I then ask: why do I think so? You now try to generate as many “because. . .” clauses as possible. Shoot for, say, ten of these, being careful not to duplicate.

Step 3: Analyze the because clauses. This is the heart of the work you do in structured brainstorming. Here you need to test the because clause’s power to support your claim and its relevance. If my first because clause (following our example here) was for example “because the juxtaposition of narratives with newspaper headlines resembles the juxtaposition of visual images and words in graphic arts montage" I now need to think about how I would prove that. What evidence can I marshal? What exactly is the resemblance? Are the effects the same in each medium? Different? Similar or different in important ways? Etc.

Step 4: Generate “although. . .” clauses. Take the opposite view of your thesis and repeat steps 2 and 3, though less exhaustively. This should produce possible counter-arguments. In our argument outline this becomes a potential “although. . .” clause since we will raise the point only in order to refute it. (You will recognize here the strategy of anticipating and defusing objections.) This step often helps you discover potential points of your own argument that have been left out until now.

Step 5: Order the clauses by strength and relevance. Now put in order of relevance and strength both the “because. . .” clauses and the “although. . .” clauses. You will no doubt find that after you attempted to develop some of them in step 3 that they appeared weak, irrelevant or just too minor to bother with, so you will also do some pruning here. This is where you decide what to keep.


Now you have an argument outline—and a pretty well developed one, potentially half the work of a rough draft. The last thing you need to do before writing the rough draft is to organize the material you have in the best order. This is true both for order of the points you make in the essay and for the order of the development within each paragraph.

One of the principal decision you will need to make after roughing out this outline is whether to begin your essay with a controlling question, an initial version of the thesis (which will be refined in the course of the analysis), or the thesis itself. Beginning with the thesis itself is the safest bet, but often beginning with a controlling question an initial version of your thesis is rhetorically effective because it helps to create a story, a narrative of discovery, and as we have discussed, our minds are strongly engaged by the narrative form. So consider what question or initial version of your thesis would allow you to recreate the journey of your own discovery-process and cast your argument in terms of a narrative.