Five Common Topics
This topic answers the question, "Who or what is X?"
What is topic of definition?
This trope uses 'like' or 'as' to compare two different things that share a common quality.
What is simile?
The following is an example of this: "Whether Edmund should have followed the White Witch."
What is an issue?
What is the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe?
This topic answers the question, "How is X similar to/different from Y?"
What is the topic of comparison?
The scheme where two opposite ideas are stated in parallel form.
What is antithesis?
These three stages of writing solve the three broad challenges all writers face.
What are the canons of composition (Invention, Arrangement, Elocution).
This story featured a piece of jewelry with a star and two best friends.
What is Number the Stars?
The part of an outline states the amount of proofs or reasons.
What is enumeration?
This topic features the question of what witnesses say about a character or his actions.
What is the topic of testimony?
What are passive and active verbs.
In this column of an ANI chart, gathered information is placed that fits in neither of the other two columns.
What is Interesting?
This character was an apprentice who longed for an opportunity for learning, and found it in unexpected places.
Who is Mr. Bowditch?
This tool expresses to whom your thesis matters and why.
This topic answers the question, "What is happening elsewhere at the same time?"
What is the topic of circumstance?
Below is an example of what tool used in Elocution: "Here they used to sit in the shade through a long lazy summer's day, talking listlessly over village gossip, or telling endless sleepy stories about nothing."
This is an argument that we use to defend our thesis.
What is a proof?
This story set in medieval England features a boy who overcame great personal hardship to find freedom from a troubled family background.
What is Crispin: The Cross of Lead?
This tool describes the point of disagreement between the writer and an opponent.
What is division?
These are all the five common topics.
"The exhausted student went to his Latin class." "The exhausted student traipsed wearily to his Latin class." The words "went" and "traipsed" are examples of these kinds of verbs.
What are imprecise and precise verbs?
This is used to grab the reader's attention at the beginning of an essay.
Exordium
This story set in medieval England features a boy who overcame great personal hardship to save a castle from invasion.
What is The Door in the Wall?
This tool is the response to an opposing argument where you state two of the opponent's proofs and show why they are inadequate.
What is refutation?