To narrow a topic is to focus on the smaller parts of a general topic until you find a more limited topic or an angle that is interesting and specific. In real life, you narrow topics all the time: You talk with friends about a particular song rather than music, about a particular person rather than the human race, or about a class you are taking rather than every class the college offers.

In college writing, you often need to do the same thing. A professor may give you a broad topic like “religion and culture,” “cheating in our society,” or “goals in life.” These topics are too general to write about in a short essay, so you need to know how to narrow them.

ASK YOURSELF QUESTIONS

For the broad essay topic “religion and culture,” one student asked the questions below to make it manageable.

MAP YOUR IDEAS

Use circles and lines to help visually break a general topic into more specific ones. Start in the center of a blank piece of paper, and write your topic. Circle your topic, and ask yourself some questions about it, such as “What do I know about it?” or “What’s important about it?” Write your ideas around the topic, drawing lines from your topic to the ideas and then circling them. Keep adding ideas, connecting them with the lines and circles. This technique is called mapping or clustering. After mapping, look at each cluster of ideas, and consider using one of the narrower topics.

LIST NARROWER TOPICS