A common mistake among writers is to have a theme that is far too broad. The writer then has too much information that he must convey, and he then writes a sentence or two on each idea relating to that theme. But he can’t develop or illustrate them well because he lacks the time or space to do so. The result is often a jumble of disconnected ideas that the reader cannot follow. The reader reaches the end of the essay and does not know what the main point–the theme–is. The solution to this is to delimit the theme.
To delimit is to set boundaries. When we delimit the theme, we narrow the focus of our theme and thus our writing.
A narrow theme with clearly written ideas that are organized well is far easier to read and understand than a broad theme with disconnected, vaguely stated ideas. It is also easier to write when we have delimited our theme.
To illustrate, suppose our theme is “You should visit Galveston because it is a fun place to visit.” That is very broad. Fun means different things to different people, so we would need to write about a great number of the attractions Galveston offers f we wanted to convince the reader to visit Galveston. For example, we would have to write about The Strand, the beaches, Moody Gardens, the historic buildings, Mardi Gras, Dickens on the Strand, and many other things. All of these are fun. If we tried to write about all of these things in one paper or essay, we simply couldn’t cover any of them adequately. We would jump from The Strand to the beaches to Moody Gardens to the historic buildings. The reader would be confused.
But if we narrowed our theme to “Galveston offers attractions that appeal to many different people,” we don’t have to write about everything. We could write about a few of those attractions, such as The Strand, the beaches, and Moody Gardens, to illustrate our point that Galveston offers a diversity of attractions.
It isn’t always easy to delimit. It is easy to want to write about every detail and nuance. But what is easy to want isn’t always easy to execute effectively. Our goal as a writer is to communicate an idea. We can do that much more effectively when that idea is focused, when it is delimited.
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