2.8 Step 3: Enhance Your Existing Topics
Can you express a topic as an organized set of subtopics?
| Table 2-2C. The scaffolding steps covered so far in Chapter 2. | |
|---|---|
| Step 1 | Generate broad topics: Write each topic on the blank side of an index card |
| Step 2 | Organize and evaluate topics: Manipulate index cards into a plausible order |
| Step 3 | Enhance existing topic cards: Convert broad topics into finer detailed subtopics and write each subtopic on its own index card |
In the 1982 film Blade Runner, protagonist Rick Deckard scans a grainy photograph into an ‘Esper’ supercomputer. The computer displays the photo on a screen while superimposing a grid. Using voice commands, Deckard explores what he sees: “Track 45 right. Stop. Center and stop.” The computer alters the display accordingly. Seeing something interesting, Deckard commands the machine to add details to a particular region: “Enhance 34 to 36.” The machine adds missing details while increasing the image’s resolution.
Analogous to Deckard’s approach, in Step 3 (Table 2-2C) you try to enhance each topic card you generated and organized in steps 1 and 2. You do so by replacing each topic card with a set of cards; each new card expresses finer details about the original topic. In Step 3, you analyze each topic card into several more specific subtopic cards.
How do I enhance my topics? I answer a basic question: what subtopics do I need to write about to communicate my broader topic? I write each answer down on a new index card. I then add my new cards to my display. I might replace the original topic card with the subtopics cards I generated to it. I might keep the original card in place and position the subtopics cards nearby to make my topics’ hierarchical structure visible.
I created the current chapter by enhancing my Step 2 scaffold for it. In my Step 2 scaffold for Chapter 2, an index card read ‘Describe my method’. Step 3 enhanced the topic card, replacing it with nine different cards, each naming one method step. Section titles in Chapter 2 (Step 1, Step 2 and so on) provide what I wrote on each new subtopic card when I enhanced the broad topic.
As you create new subtopic cards during Step 3, you also think about their organization. You must ask ‘What subtopics order best communicates my broader topic?’ as soon as you have some new cards. Remember you conduct embodied thinking when you rearrange cards; place your new cards in a plausible location when you add them to your scaffold.
In Blade Runner, Deckard enhances the photograph recursively. After finding something new, he commands Esper to further enhance an already enhanced image. When you evaluate subtopic card order, you also enhance recursively. As you consider each subtopic, you can ask whether you can also express the subtopic using ordered sub-subtopics. If so, then you replace the subtopic with new index cards, each expressing a sub-subtopic. Ideally such recursive enhancing continues until you feel each final topic you have can be expressed with a single paragraph (Figure 2-5).
As you enhance your original topic cards, you can also add cards to represent other manuscript components. For instance, during Step 3 you could add references you want to cite, figures or tables which you want to include, or quotes you want to use. You represent each additional item on its own index card; I use different colored cards to distinguish cards representing other components from cards representing topics or subtopics.
Your scaffold aids all your Step 3 activities. You don’t have to remember your topics because you can read them. You remember your new subtopics using index cards; you think about subtopics by moving cards around in space. Step 3 elaborates the scaffold, but the scaffold supports its own elaboration.
Of course, Step 3 cannot go on indefinitely. At some point you must stop breaking topics into subtopics. When do you stop enhancing the scaffold?
