Now that you have searched for potential topics, it’s time to make a choice. Your goal is to select the topic that best meets the following three criteria:

Once you are satisfied that your topic meets these criteria, you can begin to consider how to break down your topic further so that it is more specific and manageable. This will aid you a great deal in your research (a topic we will discuss later in this chapter) because it is considerably easier to find information on a specific topic (traditional Jewish foods served for Passover) than an extremely general one (the Jewish faith). One way to narrow down your topic is to break it up into categories. Write your general topic at the top of a list, with each succeeding word a more specific or concrete topic. As illustrated in Figure 12.2, you might begin with the very general topic of volunteering and then narrow the topic down a step at a time until you focus on one particular volunteer program (for example, Read to a Child) and decide to persuade your listeners about the advantages of offering personal time to read to a local elementary school child.