Formulating a Controlling Idea

Early on in a writing project, perhaps immediately after choosing your assignment question from the list, if that is the case, you need to spend time reflecting on and formulating what the question asks you to do. To help you find a controlling idea, it is helpful to define your writing task in a sentence or two, beginning like this:

In this essay I am going to argue that / show that / explain how__________.

Say, for example, you have been studying the Principles of War in a Military Studies course. At the outset of your research and writing you might come up with something like the following, based on an assignment question:

In this essay I am going to examine how the principles of war were applied in the Normandy Campaign.

This controlling idea, which may indeed be a restatement of the assignment question, immediately defines your topic and describes your field of research in specific terms: solid noun phrases like the principles of war and the Normandy Campaign.

Next, you need to have a question that you are seeking to provide an answer for, something that you do not know, and that you assume the reader does not either. You need a because-I-want-to-find-out-how/why statement to provide a rationale for your topic:

In this essay I am going to examine how the principles of war were applied in the Normandy Campaign because I am trying to find out to what extent they were followed.

Having thought this far about your controlling idea, you have emerged with a clear statement of your topic and your reason for wanting to write about it. Already you have enough vision about your project to give direction to your research and thinking.

After some preliminary research, as early as you can, try to define your controlling idea more specifically, to indicate something about the topic that you want to better understand and that has motivated you to write. This may be a hard task at first. And it may be that you are unable to revise your controlling idea any further until you are nearly finished your research and writing. But taking this further step in refining and defining your controlling idea will motivate the necessary critical analytical elements in your essay, and give further significance to the results of your research:

In this essay I am going to examine how the principles of war were applied in the Normandy Campaign because I am trying to find out to what extent they were followed in order to judge the performance of the First Canadian Army.

When you can add a reason for pursuing your topic, as underlined here, you give focus and significance to your research and writing task. You define a line of enquiry that not only interests you but may be of interest to your reader as well. And you further define the chunks of material that will form your discussion.

At this point, you may only have an intuitive sense of what you will discover about your subject and the attendant new understanding that new knowledge will bring. Indeed, most likely your controlling idea will not be fully fledged until you are near completing your writing project. The controlling idea is an evolving description of your journey of discovery. It will help you keep on track as you proceed with your research and writing, and will eventually lead to the final formulation of your thesis statement.