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Explain Your Solution

Your solution is what most readers will remember about your essay. Once you’ve defined the problem and proposed your solution, explain your solution by going into detail, offering support for your ideas, and considering your solution in light of promising alternatives.

Go into detail. A surprising number of problem-solving essays spend several pages defining and discussing the consequences of a problem, only to offer a skimpy discussion of a proposed solution. However, readers are rarely satisfied by such an approach, so be sure to spend some time identifying the key aspects of your solution. Help your readers understand, in detail, how you would implement the solution, how much it would cost to put into effect, what kinds of effects the solution would have on the problem, and how you would judge its effectiveness in addressing the problem.

Provide support for your points. Most problem-solving essays rely heavily on evidence to establish the existence of a problem, support a proposed solution, and dismiss alternative solutions. Your solution should offer a reasonable and thoughtful response to the problem, and it should be clear that your proposed solution is superior to alternatives.

You can use evidence to

identify and frame your solution
provide examples and illustrations
illustrate processes that might be required to put the solution into place
associate particular ideas and concepts with authorities, such as political leaders, subject-matter experts, or people who have been affected by the problem

To develop support, list the key points you are making about your proposed solution. For each point, review your sources and notes to identify relevant evidence, and then list the evidence below each point. If your sources support your solution, draw on evidence from them to show your readers why your solution is likely to be effective. If your sources do not directly address your solution, consider using personal experience. You can read more about how to use evidence to support your points in Chapter 14.

Address promising alternative solutions. As you draft your problem-solving essay, be sure to consider alternative solutions that are likely to occur to your readers. In proposing a solution to a problem, you are essentially making an argument that your solution is preferable to others. If your readers can think of alternatives, especially alternatives that might be less expensive or more effective than yours, they might wonder why you haven’t mentioned them.

To address (and dismiss) alternative solutions, you can do the following:

Identify the strongest alternative solution, explain why it’s the best of several alternatives, and then explain why your solution is better.
Identify a group of alternative solutions that share the same weakness, such as high cost or impracticality, and explain why this group of solutions is weaker than your solution.
Identify a group of promising alternatives, and dismiss each solution, one after the other.

You can gain insights into effective strategies for organizing your response to alternative solutions by reading about organizing patterns in Chapter 15.