Writing Analytically, 6th Edition - Rosenwasser, David & Stephen, Jill.original_ [148]
[5] The movie allows us this dichotomy and, I think, fights to sustain it. On one hand, Alex and Lara would not be on this date if the wall hadn’t come down, and yet the scene is more than just another representation of East Germany torn between Communism and the new Westernization. [Working thesis:] The movie tries hard to remind us that the rapid Westernization of East Germany devastated while it liberated in other ways. This scene uses space to represent Alex and Lara’s (and East Germany’s) dilemma: Alex and Lara gaze out at the night sky but only because the wall has been blown apart. The exposed apartment is uninhabitable and yet the lights still work, the pictures are still hung, and a young couple leans against one another inside.
This draft is a good example of a writer using evidence to complicate as well as support her claims. Her thinking evolves through successive complications; that is, she complicates a previous claim that was a complication. When the writer arrives at tentative answers, she tests them rather than just adding more evidence to prove she is right.
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Try This 10.4: Marking Claims, Evidence, and Complications in a Draft
As a check on the range of concepts that this and the previous chapter have introduced, mark the student draft as follows:
Mark claims—assertions made about the evidence—with the letter C. Claims are ideas that the evidence seems to support. An example of a claim is in paragraph 4: “I don’t think, however, that the movie lets us entertain this one romanticized reading of the scene for long.”
Underline evidence. The evidence is the pool of primary material (data)— details from the film, rather than the writer’s ideas about it. An example of evidence is in paragraph 2: “The young couple sits, hand in hand, and gazes together into the night sky; yet, as the camera pans away, we see that the apartment where the two have retreated is missing its façade.” This piece of evidence is the 1 of the 10 on 1. In effect, the whole draft goes after the range of possible implications that may be inferred from the image of the young couple sitting at the edge of an apartment that is missing one of its walls, presumably a result of war damage.
Circle complications. Complications can be found both in the evidence a writer cites and in the claims a writer makes about it. Complicating evidence is evidence that does not fit the claims the writer has been making. For example, in paragraph 4: “As the camera pans away, we see that this isn’t a new Westernized apartment; this is an East German flat decorated in much the same way as Alex’s home was only months before. The image is alarming; the wall here has been ripped down.” This evidence causes the writer to reconsider an earlier claim from paragraph 3, that the scene is about the couple moving “toward some shared domestic life, toward living together, toward becoming a family.”
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A TEMPLATE FOR ORGANIZING PAPERS USING 10 ON 1: AN ALTERNATIVE TO FIVE-PARAGRAPH FORM
Here is a template for writing papers using 10 on 1. It brings together much of the key terminology introduced in this chapter. Think of it not as a rigid format but as an outline for moving from one phase of your paper to the next. Unlike five-paragraph form, the template will give you room to think and to establish connections among your ideas.
1. In your introduction, start by noting (panning on) an interesting pattern or tendency you have found in your evidence. (As explained at the beginning of the chapter, you may find it useful to do 1 on 10 in order to discover the pattern.) Explain what attracted you to it—why you find it potentially significant and worth looking at. This paragraph would end with a tentative theory (working thesis) about what this pattern or