Selecting the Best Primary Support

After you have generated possible support, review your ideas; then, select the best ones to use as primary support. Here you take control of your topic, shaping the way readers will see it and the main point you are making about it. The following steps can help.

  1. Carefully read the ideas you have generated.
  2. Select three to five primary support points that will be clearest and most convincing to your readers, providing the best examples, facts, and observations to support your main point. If you are writing a paragraph, these points will become the primary support for your topic sentence. If you are writing an essay, they will become topic sentences of the individual paragraphs that support your thesis statement.
  3. Cross out ideas that are not closely related to your main point.
  4. If you find that you have crossed out most of your ideas and do not have enough left to support your main point, use one of the three strategies from “Generating Support” to find more.