The Five Es of Development in Scholarly Research Writing

When I used to teach in-person writing courses, I would sometimes comment on papers about questions I had as a reader. Every time my students would verbally answer the questions – their explanations made perfect sense. However, those ideas needed to be complete and clear in the writing. Unlike a conversation you have with a person, once you write something down, that is it! It is frozen, solid, locked-in. You can’t go back and expand or clarify. You can’t follow people around as they read your work telling them: “Well, what I meant was…” That’s why it is important to get your writing as complete as possible. 

A complete piece of writing is a developed piece of writing, and well-developed writing relies on the inclusion of relevant and plentiful details. But what counts as details? In today’s blog post, I would like to present the idea of the “Big Es” that I use to encourage Walden University writers to more-fully develop their ideas. 

Evidence
Evidence includes details you have found in your research that are related to your topic, interesting, and that spark a response in you. These include statistics, data, or proof of some sort. Remember, you will be commenting on the research in some way, which is why it is important that this data or evidence means something to you.

For example, in a paper about emergency room safety, a writer would want to include statistics that prove how safe (or unsafe) that environment is. If the writer wanted to prove that the emergency room in their city was unsafe, statistics and data showing a high rate of post-visit infections would do a lot of support that claim.

Experts
Expert opinion can be a useful detail as it gives you a chance to engage in a conversation with the leading voices in your field. As a student writer, you are working on becoming an expert in your field. Eventually, you will be interacting with other experts. You can practice this in your course work by including expert opinion and then responding to it. Do you agree? Disagree? How does it relate to other content you have read? Additionally, it is possible to use experts to bolster your own opinion. It can be powerful to include expert opinion when that expert agrees with you. While we can’t solely paraphrase and quote experts over and over and expect that to develop our writing, if you find an expert who agrees with you, it is possible to point to them as proof that your thinking is sound.

For example, if a writer was proposing a new health regulation, they could base their regulation on suggestions made by experts. It isn’t possible to be an expert on everything, so if this writer is an expert in legislation, they would need some help from experts in other fields to craft proposed bills, laws, and regulations.

Examples
An example is helpful because it shows your topic in action. Examples are short summaries of something that happened at some point in time. They illustrate complex theories or ideas that are hard to see otherwise. If you are writing a narrative or personal reflection, you will likely want to include some examples from your own life and work. As you describe what happened to you, you will then be able to follow it up with analysis about why it is important, what it reveals, or how it inspired you. Note that you can also include examples that you read about in your research; case studies are common examples writers include.

For example, in a paper that looks at the pros and cons of different instructional strategies, the writer may want to use examples from their own classroom to illustrate the challenges and benefits they saw. These examples could be paired with other examples and results found in the research as well, which would work together to develop a comprehensive look at those instructional strategies.

Explanation 

I know that this is redundant, but explanation is where you get to explain. Try to answer questions like: What does this mean? Why is it important? What is significant? Who should care? How can someone use this information? If you can walk the reader through your flow of ideas by providing a step-by-step guide to your logic, the reader is easily able to see where you are coming from and may be more likely to agree with your final argument or conclusion. 

For example, in a paper about how organizational leaders can capitalize on the strengths of their teams, the writer would likely define what it means to capitalize on strengths, present research and expert voices on this strategy, and perhaps even share examples of how they have done so in their own work. Following this, the writer could explain why it is important to capitalize on strengths in that way. Explaining how and why can help your reader follow along.

Energy! 

Ok, ok, ok, energy isn’t really a concrete thing you can include in your writing. It can’t be found in a source or typed in a document. However, energy matters because you can have a thousand details, but readers can tell if your passion and energy are missing. Reading something where the writer’s interest shines through makes it more engaging for the reader as well. If you don’t have an interest in your topic, it’s a good idea to see what parts of it you can shift so that it is interesting to you.

For example, if a student has to write about counseling strategies they could use with a specific hypothetical client, the student could see if they can choose which client to write about. They could also review all of the counseling strategies to pick the one(s) they feel the most passionate about. Either of these would help bring more of their energy and excitement to the writing.

These Big Es can help remind you of all the content out that that you can include as details or evidence in your paragraphs. Feeling stuck in the middle of drafting can be frustrating, so turn to this list to see if inspiration hits in terms of finding a new type of detail to include. If you want to spend more time thinking about your paragraphs and development, consider working on our paragraph development module or watching our webinar on building and organizing academic arguments.

Melissa Sharpe is a Writing Instructor in teh Walden University Writing Center. Her favorite part of working with writers is helping to facilitate the writing process. 

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