1. Start with brainstorming about the topic. If you were given a chance to choose a topic on your own, then you will need to pick an interesting topic first. Think what side you will choose: for or against. Then use a simple brainstorming technique: start writing everything you know about the topic. Don’t think about the grammar or text structure, just write until you feel that you are empty of ideas. Touch such points as your future audience and the main points that you want to express in your paper. Your thesis, encapsulated in your thesis statement, is the central point you’re trying to make. The thesis of Bertrand Russell’s essay “In Praise of Idleness,” for example, is that people focus too much on work and don’t value discover time spent idly. Essays can occasionally stray and go into related tangents, but they always come back to that one core idea in the thesis.