Answering the ‘So What?’ Question and Stating your argument .
• “So what?”: Paragraph One, Page One
• This first paragraph should tell me and your reader, more broadly, why you have chosen your topic. You are basically answering the reader’s, and for the love of God my, skepticism about your topic, with a general, explanatory paragraph about why this topic is important, who this issue might affect, and ultimately, why anyone should care about what you are writing about.
• Stating your Argument Paragraph: Two, Page One
• This paragraph should serve as the first committed statement of your argument, this can go a few ways.
It can read something like, I am arguing that X directly affects Y.
Meaning that maybe you argue that poverty directly contributes to specific acts of terrorism.
Your statement should be clear, and at least at the outset unequivocal. If you are using someone else’s argument this can mean that there is a fair amount of citation here. Meaning that, “According to and the argument that poverty causes terrorism is convincing, to test this argument I stipulate their original points and will use their work to support my own.”
• In this paragraph you will define things that need defining for your piece.
Let us say you are claiming that poverty equals terrorism. Herein, you will be relating how you are defining those ideas. Is it absolute poverty? Is it relative poverty? Is it cultural poverty? Etc. Or defining terrorism, always fun since there are many ways to define terrorism. Maybe, this is state terrorism. Maybe, this is non-state actor terrorism.
