• Describe strategies for doing preliminary research on a topic
• Describe strategies for synthesizing research with your own ideas

A critical step in the writing process is to find evidence that supports and explains the claim you make in your thesis statement. Often, this means doing research and finding information, facts, stories, data, and reports related to your topic, but sometimes, especially in narrative writing, it means adding support through your own experiences and examples.

Support and Elaboration

When we talk about support and elaboration in writing, we are discussing specific details and information writers use to develop their topic. The key to developing support and focusing on elaboration is to focus on being specific. Good writers use concrete, specific details, and relevant information to create mental images for their readers.

Two important concepts in support and elaboration are sufficiency and relatedness.

sufficiency

Sufficiency refers to the amount of detail — is there enough detail to support the topic? Good writers supply their readers with sufficient details to comprehend what they have written.

• In narrative writing, this means providing enough descriptive details for the reader to construct a picture of the story in their mind.
• In expository writing, this means not only finding enough information to support your purpose, whether it is to inform or persuade your audience, but also finding information that is credible and accurate.

Sufficiency, however, is not enough. The power of your information is determined less by the quantity of details than by their quality. Look for evidence that is accurate and comes from credible sources.

relatedness

Relatedness refers to the quality of the details and their relevance to the topic. Good writers select only the details that will support their focus, deleting irrelevant information.

• In narrative writing, details should be included only if they are concrete, specific details that contribute to, rather than detract from, the picture provided by the narrative.
• In expository writing, information should be included only if it is relevant to the writer’s goal and strengthens rather than weakens the writer’s ability to meet that goal.

Guiding Questions for Support and Elaboration

For narrative writing:

• Is your story developed with specific details that are related to the main event?
• Do all of the details move the story along?
• Does your story have enough elaboration so that your reader can see and feel what is happening? Can you show me an example where your reader can see or feel what is happening?

For informational writing:

• Is your essay developed with specific information (facts, statistics, etc.) that is related to the main topic?
• Does all of the information support the main topic?
• Does your essay have enough information to fulfill your reader’s needs?

For argumentative writing:

• Is your essay developed with specific details that are related to the main topic?
• Does all of the information support the main argument?
• Does your essay have enough supporting evidence to persuade your reader?