Elevator Pitch

Imagine you have one minute to present yourself and your ideas to someone. What would you say in that one minute elevator ride to convince this person that your ideas are worthy of attention. You have ten floors to make a compelling case. Take a few minutes to figure out how to make your proposal professional, succinct, and interesting. Then, write it down.

Gun Protest with Sex Toys

Creating Structure

People have been writing causal analyses for centuries. Here is the title page of Edward Jenner’s 1798 publication, An Inquiry into the Causes and Effects of the Variolae Vaccinae. His research led to the vaccine for small pox.

An Inquiry Into the Causes and Effects of the Variolæ Vaccinæ, Or Cow Pox. 1798 By Edward Jenner

Small pox has been all but eradicated by modern medicine. By the careful study of small pox focusing on the causes and effects, he was able to develop a vaccine to save human life.

Introductions

Writing Effective Introductions

Introductions are very important. The link above has some great examples and explanations for writing introductions.

Much like an elevator pitch, an introduction has to make a good impression, grab your reader’s interest, and make them want to keep reading.

Take the elevator pitch you just wrote and figure out how to work it into your introduction. The elevator pitch can work as the intro, or add to your intro, to make a case for reading the rest of the essay.

Why College Students Aren’t Voting

What is the question  you are exploring? Use why, how, and what if to come up with your question.

Why do we have some many school shootings?

Why did Harvey Weinstein get away with it for so long?

Explain why something happened

  • Intro
  • First cause
  • second cause
  • best cause
  • Conclusion

Explain the consequences of a phenomenon

Open by describing the situation that will have consequences.

  • Intro
  • first effect likely to follow + reasons
  • other effects + reasons
  • Conclusion

Suggest an alternative view of cause and effect

In this one, you are refuting someone else’s cause and effects.

  • Intro
  • reason to doubt claim + evidence
  • alternative cause
  • best cause + reasons/evidence
  • Conclusion

Explain a chain of causes

Much like the Ed Gein work we did last class, you can connect a line of causes that operate in order.

  • Introduction suggestion the chain
  • First link + evidence
  • next link + evidence
  • final link + evidence
  • Conclusion

These are all just suggestions. If one of these fits into how you are organizing your causal analysis, definitely use it. You can also come up with your own structure, but remember it needs to makes sense, that is be logical to anyone reading it, and use evidence to support each point. Your turn.

Outline

Create an outline for your causal analysis. This is a very good prewriting technique to help you organize your ideas. Use the different techniques we looked at to help organize your causal analysis.