Drawing on Louis Kahn's notion that a good architect never has all the answers to a building's problems before its physical construction, Cioffi maintains that in argument, too, answers must be forged along the way, as the writer inventively deals with emergent problems and unforeseen complexities.

Preface xi Acknowledgments xxi Chapter 1: An Introduction to the Writing of Essays 1 Chapter 2: Audience, or For Whom Are You Writing? 12 Chapter 3: Prewriting and the Writing Process 31 Chapter 4: The Thesis 43 Chapter 5: Saying Something New: Ways toward Creativity 61 Chapter 6: Paragraph Design 72 Chapter 7: Developing an Argument 85 Chapter 8: Different Structures, Novel Organizational Principles 104 Chapter 9: The Imaginative Research Paper 116 Chapter 10: Figures and Fallacies, or Being Forceful but Not Cheating at Argument 135 Chapter 11: The Argument of Style 149 Chapter 12: Concluding a Manifesto: The Future of Writing 172 Appendix I. Sample Essays 183 Appendix II. Writing Prompts 202 Works Cited 209 Index 215

"The Imaginative Argument is an extremely useful writing guide. Cioffi makes a good case for the importance of writing in our day-to-day lives - as a tool for clarifying our thoughts, persuading others, and enhancing our lives. Writing teachers as well as students will find it interesting and accessible." - Kathryn Watterson, University of Pennsylvania"

The Imaginative Argument is the culmination of many years of thought and practice, the summing up of a lifetime dedicated to reading, writing, teaching composition, and, above all, thinking about writing and its connection to the imagination. Anyone interested in the process of writing will learn a great deal from this book. Anyone who teaches writing will learn even more--new and useful techniques for their classroom. And, most important of all, students will learn bold and efficient ways to master college writing. -- Murray Sperber, Professor Emeritus of English, Indiana University, Bloomington Frank Cioffi's manifesto is intellectually rigorous, but it is also passionate, stylish, meticulous, idiosyncratic, and unique among college writing texts. Its insistence on wholly original writing--hence, wholly original thinking--is heartening. Indeed, The Imaginative Argument is a model of the kind of writing college students should be producing. -- Valerie Sayers, author of "Due East and Brain Fever", and Professor of Creative Writing, University of Notre Dame Would that I had read this book or taken Frank Cioffi's class fifty years ago. Better yet, I wish the contents of this book resided in the minds of all of us who produce soporific sentences in the name of 'technical' or 'professional' writing. If it did, we would all benefit. God knows I would read more technical papers. And kudos to the author for nicely making the point that creative writing is not solely the property of those who write fiction. -- James L. Adams, Stanford University, author of "Conceptual Blockbusting" It's not enough to have an opinion or an idea. Writing well means making your reader follow, understand, agree or disagree, care. To do that you'll need the 'imaginative argument' Frank Cioffi explores here. With its sympathetic diagnoses of writing goals and writing problems, this useful book celebrates the kind of writing that actually gets work done. -- William Germano, author of "From Dissertation to Book" The Imaginative Argument is an extremely useful writing guide. Cioffi makes a good case for the importance of writing in our day-to-day lives-as a tool for clarifying our thoughts, persuading others, and enhancing our lives. Writing teachers as well as students will find it interesting and accessible. -- Kathryn Watterson, University of Pennsylvania This book is a significant contribution to the expository writing field. Cioffi's ideas about imagination and his suggestions for teaching it are brilliant and provocative. His own writing is consistently sparkling, frequently witty, and serves as a model for students. -- Alfred E. Guy, Jr., Yale University