Ten Pointers for Writing Good Illustration
Essays
1. Illustration compositions are those that contain examples to illustrate an
idea. Examples make abstract ideas more concrete, down to earth, and easier
to understand. Examples will make your writing more interesting and
attention-grabbing. Whenever you introduce an idea, you should ideally
provide your readers with a number of examples to clarify that idea.
2. You should use specific examples in your paper. These are examples taken
from your own life or the lives of people you know. They are unique
examples shared by no other people. For example, if you want to explain a
vague and abstract concept, such as loyalty, kindness, generosity,
embarrassment, fear, courage, joy, curiosity, or industriousness, you can
provide a unique, illustrative incident from your own life to explain the
concept. You can write a whole narrative that is, in effect, one big example,
or you can provide different examples from your life -- a catalogue of
examples -- one for each paragraph of your essay that will illustrate the one
concept you are trying to explain.
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3. You should use typical examples in your paper as well. These are examples
of events that are common in the lives of most people. These examples
represent the experience of many people. For instance, if you wanted to
illustrate the concept of bravery in one paragraph, you could mention a series
of typical examples that everyone would be familiar with: firemen saving
children from a house fire, rescue teams saving skiers trapped by an
avalanche, American soldiers protecting a U.S. embassy when it is under
attack, overcoming one’s fear when skydiving for the first time, receiving
an injection without complaint although you know it’s going to hurt,
protecting the weak by fighting people who are bigger and more powerful, or
undertaking a risky underwater project although the waters are infested with
sharks. These examples are not unique to one person’s experience. They are
things that we can all identify with. If you were to illustrate the concept of
perseverance by mentioning how some injured people never give up their
hope of walking again, how some students overcome great odds to earn their
college degrees, how some single parents cope with raising their children
although they have no help from absent spouses, how some business people
fail and start all over again until they achieve success, and how some
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mountain climbers make many different attempts to reach the highest peaks,
then you would be using typical examples, ones that we can all identify with.
4. You should use hypothetical examples in your essays if you can think of no
specific or typical examples or if those examples are not powerful enough to
illustrate the point you are trying to make. If you want to give an example of,
say, a tragedy, you may wish to exercise your imagination and come up with
a tragedy that beats all tragedies. However, you should always make it clear
to your readers that you are actually using hypothetical (made-up) examples.
You can do this by opening your essay’s body with something like this:
“Let’s imagine a forty-one-year-old woman named Louise standing on the
window ledge 窗台 of an office building some twenty stories up. She has lost
her job as an executive assistant.” Such a beginning will set up a fictional
scenario that will hold a reader’s interest and can well provide you with a
perfect example that you may not otherwise have at your disposal.
5. You are permitted to use mixed examples in your composition; that is,
combinations of specific, typical, and hypothetical examples.
6. An entire essay may be one long example of an abstract idea, or an essay
may have five or six paragraphs, each providing a different example of one
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single idea. You can even have examples at the sentence level. In other words,
a single sentence can contain a series or list of examples. In this case, you can
use exemplifiers to introduce those examples. Do you remember what the
seven exemplifiers in English are? Here are the seven: for example, for
instance, namely, that is, including, such as, and like.
a. Brenda brought snacks to the party; for example, chips, pretzels, and
popcorn.
b. Brenda bought some decorations for the party; for instance, crepe paper,
balloons, and flowers.
c. Brenda likes only one party game; namely, blind man’s bluff.
d. Brenda told everyone to bring a French château; that is, a gift.
e. Brenda selected theme colors for the party, including red, white, and green.
f. Brenda needed different flavors of ice cream for the party, such as vanilla,
strawberry, and chocolate.
g. Brenda invited only her relatives to the party, like her cousin, her aunt, and
her grandmother.
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7. When writing an illustrative essay, you have the opportunity of using not
only exemplifiers (with their respective commas), but you can replace those
with colons.
a. Brenda brought snacks to the party: chips, pretzels 椒鹽脆餅, and popcorn.
b. Brenda bought some decorations for the party: crepe paper 皺紋紙, balloons,
and flowers.
c. Brenda likes only one party game: blind man’s bluff
捉迷藏
.
d. Brenda told everyone to bring a French château(城堡): a gift.
e. Brenda selected theme colors for the party: red, white, and green.
f. Brenda needed different flavors of ice cream for the party: vanilla,
strawberry, and chocolate.
g. Brenda invited only her relatives to the party: her cousin, her aunt, and her
grandmother.
8. You can organize your essay in any number of ways. For example, if you
wish to illustrate the idea of philanthropy, you could write about a famous
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philanthropist, like Andrew Carnegie, and in a series of paragraphs, give five
or six examples from his life of his spending his fortune to help other people.
You may wish to mention his greatest contribution as your last example: his
giving America thousands of free, public libraries. On the other hand, you can
approach the topic quite differently. You can illustrate the idea of
philanthropy by mentioning four or five famous philanthropists in four or five
paragraphs and what the major contribution of each was. However, it is
always better to give examples from your own life. You could say in your
introduction that we all know the names of famous philanthropists, like
Andrew Carnegie, Paul Mellon, John Rockefeller, Bill Gates, and John Paul
Getty. However, the philanthropist that has had the most direct influence on
your life is good, old Aunt Frieda, who left you ten thousand dollars when she
died. Then you could go on to explain all the ways her philanthropy helped
you. Personalization is the key to interesting essays!
9. Do not trivialize your illustrative essay by using examples that are too trite,
too obvious, or too commonplace. Of the hundreds of examples you could
possibly use, choose only those that are most fitting and most interesting. If
you wish to illustrate the idea of pain, telling me how you struck your thumb
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with a hammer by accident just is not significant enough for a meaningful
essay. Telling me how you were forced to give up your child for adoption and
the mental pain it caused you is a much better topic for an illustrative
composition.
10. Finally, you should use examples in all your essays, not just illustrative
essays. Just as you can use deep description in a narrative essay or little
stories in illustrative essays, you can use examples in any essay regardless of
the major rhetorical strategy that essay is focusing on. Try using examples in
description essays, narrative essays, process-analysis essays,
comparison-contrast essays, division-classification essays, definition essays,
cause-effect essays, and argumentation-persuasion essays.
Cultural Difference
Wherever there is a great cultural distance between two people, there are
bound to be problems arising from differences in behavior and expectations.
An example is the American couple who consulted a psychiatrist about their
marital problems. The husband was from New England and had been brought
up by reserved parents who taught him to control his emotions and to respect
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the need for privacy. His wife was from an Italian family and had been
brought up in close contact with all the members of her large family, who are
extremely warm, volatile, and demonstrative. When the husband came home
after a hard day at the office, dragging his feet and longing for peace and
quiet, his wife would rush to him and smother him. Clasping his hands,
rubbing his brow, crooning 低聲唱 over his weary head, she never left him
alone. But when the wife was upset or anxious about her day, the husband’s
response was to withdraw completely and leave her alone. No comforting, no
affectionate embrace, no attention- just solitude. The woman became
convinced her husband didn’t love her and, in desperation, she consulted a
psychiatrist. Their problem wasn’t basically psychological but cultural.
Assignment: Choosing a Person to Marry
Background Information:世俗的婚姻觀是什麼?我因何人?何事?何種思想的影
響?導致我的婚姻觀的形成
Thesis: If I want to choose my spouse, three factors, education,
personality and health must be considered.
Topic Sentence
1: My spouse should at least hold a BA degree.
2. My marriage partner should be friendly, optimistic and honest.
3. My husband should be healthy in mind and body.
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