When I was in graduate school, I labored long and hard on the proposal for my dissertation about Bernard Shaw. When it was finished, I proudly sent it to my chairman, along with a note asking what he thought of my main point.

Here’s the response I got back: “Which one?”

Oops. I had to start over with a more narrow focus. That tendency to go in too many directions at once is a persistent problem with my writing, and over the years I’ve seen other writers struggle with it too. For example, I’m a member of the editorial board for a Shaw journal, and sometimes I read submissions that go on for a whole page without mentioning Shaw.

I spotted a similar problem this week in an intriguing article in the latest issue of The New Yorker magazine: “The Woman Card – How feminism and antifeminism created Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.” Jill Lepore is an excellent writer, and the article is interesting and worthwhile – but it kept getting away from her.

Today I’m going to use Lepore’s article as the focus for a mini-lesson in writing. (I encourage you to take a look at her article, available free at the New Yorker website.) Like Lepore (and like me when I was writing my dissertation proposal), it’s likely that you sometimes have difficulty taming a writing task.

Here are some issues to watch for:

1.   Multiple focuses instead of a single thesis

Lepore’s thesis (main point) is easy to spot because it’s stated in her subtitle: “How feminism and antifeminism created Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.” You’re expecting to hear about the ideas and events that shaped these two Presidential candidates.

But Lepore’s article has several extra thesis statements (the same problem I ran into with my proposal). Here are two of them:

“Long before women could vote, they carried into the parties a political style they had perfected first as abolitionists and then as prohibitionists: the moral crusade. No election has been the same since.”

“Donald Trump is widely viewed as the savior the Republican Party has been looking for since 1948.”

2.  The article frequently gets sidetracked. For example, Lepore traces the history of the women’s suffrage movement, the role of African-American women, attempts to pass the Equal Rights Amendment (which we learn was originally a Republican project), and Clinton and Trump’s political histories (she started out as a Republican, and he used to be a Democrat.) One long section of the article – 2,481 words – doesn’t mention Trump at all, and another one – 755 words – mentions Clinton only once and Trump not at all.

Solutions

At this point you’re probably expecting me to show you how to organize an effective essay, article, or report. But that kind of instruction is widely available in textbooks and online. (Go to www.PlanMyPaper.com to review these skills.)

Today I’d like to do something different. I’m going to discuss two warning signs that a writing task is getting away from you (along with some tips for getting it back on track).

1.   Make a list of keywords, and use the Find feature in your software to make sure they appear in every paragraph. In Lepore’s article, those words would be Clinton, Trump, feminism, and antifeminism. Synonyms like women’s suffrage, equality, liberation and reform are fine too – as long as they’re connected to Clinton and Trump every time you mention them. If you read for more than a minute without encountering one of your keywords, something is wrong. Start revising!

2.  After you finish a draft, use this process to review your piece: Read the first paragraph and the first sentence (only) in every other paragraph. They should all hang together. If there’s a big jump anywhere, start looking for ways to tighten and strengthen your draft.

I’m going to finish this post with a warning you’ve probably heard before. Postmodern language theorists keep telling us that language has a will of its own – a strong one – that can take you and your readers to parts unknown before you notice that you’ve lost your way. Stay alert, and keep a firm hand on the rudder!