animal
vegetable
mineral
If we were to start thinking in terms of subcategories and greater detail, we could start to expand any (or all) of these. I'll introduce only one of many possibilities:
That's level two. Let's add a third level and a possibility for level four ...
- animal
- predator
- prey
- vegetable
- mineral
Level Four starts to get detailed enough to invite some comments. You can use an outline to pull out unexpected thoughts about a subject in an orderly fashion. At this point, you don't know if you can use them, but the more you assemble, the more you may find a shape and a direction to your thinking. (Don't worry if outlining doesn't work for you ... this is a tool for certain kinds of personality, and useless for others. At least try it.) Here are some additions using Level Four:
- animal
- predator
- cat
- wild
- tame
- dog
- prey
- rabbit
- deer
- vegetable
- mineral
But we don't need to stop there ... we can continue to 'zoom in' on any of the categories, getting closer and closer to an individual example.
- animal
- predator
- cat
- wild
- Wild cats have a reputation for stealth and nobility. Their numbers are shrinking, suggesting that former predators are now a new kind of prey.
- How 'wild' is an animal that exists only because of special efforts to allow it to continue its behavior? In a sense, a park that is managed is a larger kind of zoo.
- tame
- dog
- prey
- rabbit
- deer
- vegetable
- mineral
An outline feature in a word-processing program allows you to collapse and expand the views to include or exclude any of these levels, which helps greatly in simplifying detail when it's necessary to confirm the larger organization.
- animal
- predator
- cat
- wild
- Wild cats have a reputation for stealth and nobility. Their numbers are shrinking, suggesting that former predators are now a new kind of prey.
- How 'wild' is an animal that exists only because of special efforts to allow it to continue its behavior? In a sense, a park that is managed is a larger kind of zoo.
- tiger
- Bengal
- Siberian
- the tiger I saw in the Columbus Zoo, on his back close to the glass where visitors could scratch the glass at his ear
- lynx
- cougar
- tame
- alley
- household
- purebred
- siamese
- persian
- short-haired
- long-haired
- dog
- prey
- rabbit
- deer
- vegetable
- mineral
When you decide you've probed and outlined enough, you would extract the parts you like that fit together, and write out what you want to say without making this framework obvious. The process is like constructing a building ... when it's finished, you don't want to leave the scaffold in place against the walls. If you synthesize your 'blocks' well, the walls stand on their own.
go to top
This page
is maintained by David Sharpe
Please email comments or suggestions to sharpe@ohio.edu
Revised
October 27, 2008
©2008 David Sharpe