Try Writing an Essay . . .

Nicely put:

IDEA AND ESSAY Expository WRITING

When we talk about figuring out what our idea is in a given essay, we don’t mean settling on the essay’s topic. We mean articulating a relationship between two or more things in a way that holds the potential for a lively exploration or argument. We want our idea statement to be clear but also to be suggestive—it is a seed, a kernel, that already has packed within it all the meaning that sprouts, branches, and flowers through the rest of your essay. This is true even if we are writing an exploratory essay that doesn’t contain a traditional thesis statement. We should still be able to express our idea in this clear and complete way, as many of you do on the cover sheets to your drafts.

Example:
People who live to shop, rather than shop to live, may be creating more problems for
themselves than they are solving when they set out for the mall.