Strategies for Writing the Cause-and-Effect Analysis

Strategies for Writing the Cause-and-Effect Analysis

As you craft your cause-and-effect analysis, keep the following strategies in mind to guide your writing process.

1. Topic selection: First, brainstorm about possible topics that could fit a cause-and-effect analysis. Don’t forget to think about your own experience as possible topics; for example, you could discuss the effects your first job had on your life or what caused you to decide to attend college.
2. Purpose: Next, think carefully about your purpose. Do you want to entertain, inform, or persuade your audience?
3. Audience: Now, consider what your audience is like. What type of background and experience do they have? What do you think they already know about your topic?
4. Generating ideas: Consider the following techniques.
1. List all possible causes and effects that you can think of. It may help you to write it out in a chain, as Writing at Colorado State University suggests:  Several causes leading to single effect: Cause 1 + Cause 2 + Cause 3  equals to Effect
2. One cause leading to multiple effects: Cause is Effect 1 + Effect 2 + Effect 3 ... Cause/Effect Analysis Writing Tips : (http://writing.colostate.edu/guides/processes/purpose/com2d5.cfm)
3. Stop to ask yourself questions such as “Why?” and “Then what?” to open up different possibilities.
4. Consider whether you need to correct any assumptions people may have about your topic.
5. Decide whether telling a story, listing data, using process analysis, or giving examples would be effective.
6. Looking over all your ideas, write out a list of ideas that you’ve now generated.
5. Organizing: Take the list of ideas and begin to number them in an appropriate order. Don’t forget that you can use causal chains as a possible organizational strategy.
6. Drafting: Now, it’s time to take your ideas and begin drafting. Try to write out a rough draft without stopping and include as many ideas from your list as possible.