Developing a Main Idea for Essay 3

Here are some questions I've heard you ask, or some hunches that might turn into main ideas:

Your self-image can't change!

How does your self-image influence who you are and how you grow?

How does a role model function for young athletes?

Image is freedom; the word is a prison.  Or is image  a prison and the word freedom?

You can't really separate image and word.  We understand words by visualizing images, and we understand images through the concepts that are words.

What communicates love most powerfully?  Images or words?

To what extent can cultural images affect our self-images?

To arrive at an idea, look over your notes and think about which essay(s) might help you answer your question.  The main thing is to have something you would enjoy thinking and writing about--in other words, some writing about a real question.  Think about how your own image, which you've begun to analyze, might help you answer your question.  Do some focused freewriting to explore your ideas.  (You could list thoughts or brainstorm first.)  Make sure, at some point, that you bring in your image and one reading.  So the suggested process looks like this:
1. Come up with question
2. Brainstorm several answers, relying upon the image analysis, the essay(s), and anything else you can think of
3. Come up with a main idea and see whether it meets the requirements of a good idea (complex, intriguing)
4. Decide upon what the various parts of your essay would be and what order they would go in.