You are about to learn how to expand your generated ideas. Keep in mind that this is completely rooted in practice. Although this information may be profound for you, don’t just glance over it to ignore it afterwards. Remember, you’re going to need to put this knowledge into use by practicing it over and over again, until you master it.

The secret to expanding ideas is the same as generating them; frameworks. You need to think in frameworks to expand ideas. This is the most important tool you could ever master when it comes to IELTS or Creative Writing. In this (Link) video I explained how to describe objects using a framework that centers on the knowledge of adjectives. So, let us create a similar framework on how you can expand ideas instead of objects.

For reference, italicized text means it is part of my actual writing attempt, while normal text means I am talking to you.

If we take the main ideas that we generated in the previous article (How to Generate Ideas):

and apply a very simple framework, we can expand them indefinitely.

Idea Expansion Framework:

1. ⦁ Origin and Motivation
2. Main argument (logic)
3. Feasibility
4. Practicality
5. Real-Life examples (case study)
6. Cause and Effect (Addressing the problem)
7. Alternate Ideas
8. Comparison with other ideas
9. Stakeholders’ Perspectives
10. Short-term vs Long-term Outcomes
11. Cultural and Ethical Dimensions
12. Rebuttals
13. History of similar ideas
14. Global vs Local Relevance
15. Economical aspect
16. Phycological and Social Impact

Let’s take the first idea “Savings can help during rainy days” and expand it using our newly learned framework.

1-Origin and Motivation

We can talk about how the idea originated and what is the motivation behind it. For essays (for IELTS Task 2), it is always recommended to draw from personal experiences. So, that’s exactly what I’ll do.

In March 2023, I got unexpectedly laid off from my first ever corporate job. It was a sales position and I had to take some time off to prepare for a test; when I came back, they did not let me in. This meant I was jobless, had no other sources of income and had to carefully use my savings for the next few months, not to run overboard with my expenses until I could land another job. If I had more savings, I would be much more comfortable while sailing through those rainy days.

(Rainy days is an idiom, it means a period of financial difficulties.)

2-Main Argument

Now let’s apply some logic to this.

Argument = If we save more, we can cruise through financial difficulty.
Premise = Savings over spending. We must be earning enough to save more.

To save more, we can either increase our income or reduce our expenses, but ideally, we should try to do both. In any case, if we prioritize our savings, we can have some financial cushion in the case we lose our source of income. So, savings can act as a fallback income until we get our footing back. This makes all the sense in the world and presents a solid case to prioritize savings over expenditure.

3-Feasibility

Depending on the level of your income, it may not be suitable for you to save as much or as less, compared to others. So, this is one point where we need a neutral approach to savings, but, for high income earners, more savings are generally more comfortable as their disposable income is also high enough. It is the low-income earners that need to prioritize earning more income before they can start reasonable savings without effecting their spendable money.

In other words, savings are not affordable for everybody, so their feasibility will naturally vary across different income groups.

4-Practicality

You can apply practicality to your ideas by testing your logic against the unspoken rules of the modern era. Note how we can develop this point for our idea as follows.

In today’s economy, the turnover rate is high, and financial stability is not guaranteed. That means that you may need extra cash at any time under any unforeseen circumstances. So, piling up on your savings is practical now more than ever.

5-Real-Life Examples

I myself am a living, breathing example of this idea. Every time I have had to switch my job or start an initiative, I had to make sure that there was enough cash in my bank account to live off of, for months, until I could establish a steady income again. I simply take note of my monthly expenditures, and multiply that with how many months I think I would need to recover and build an income stream. That should be the amount in savings for me.

6-Cause and Effect

On a large scale, a habit of saving over spending certainly means less consumerism and more minimalism (an excellent life choice in my opinion). But even on an individual level, saving instead of spending can teach you a lot about yourself as a person. How much are you willing to sacrifice your today for your tomorrow? To what vices can you say no to?

This approach to living can certainly reveal your own monetary addictions. For example, I was addicted to buying videogames, even if I didn’t have any time to play them. Restraining myself from doing this, has resulted in improving my mental health and bumping up my bank account.

There are many things that can cause a habit of saving, but for most people, it’s the promise of a better, more fulfilling tomorrow.

Although there are many effects of savings, the most prominent ones I can think of are generational wealth and restricted spending habits.

7-Alternate and opposite ideas

This is where you can think of alternate ideas and explain your reasoning for offering an alternative in the first place.

Alternate Idea = Savings can be invested for a return (Positive development)

Now the premise has shifted. Now, you are not saving just with the intentions of having a safety net for a potential financial downfall, but with the intent of investing that cash to grow it and reap dividends and return from your investment.

You can think of many ideas as an alternate as long as they are precisely an alternative. Meaning, they can be chosen to replace your original idea. If they shift in tone, then the line between an alternative and an opposite will get blurry. You always want to establish and develop a clear position when it comes to IELTS Essay Writing in Task 2.

Opposite Idea = Reduce savings and increase disposable income (Negative development)

I’ll let you develop this one yourself, get some mental writing reps in here while you can.

8-Comparison with other ideas

I am writing this as a separate point instead of joining it with point 7 because there is much to a comparison than just listing a separate idea. Actually, you can use all 6 points above here and develop your essay even more. This simple trick can double, even triple your word count. But use it sparingly while keeping your task response and time limitations in mind.

This is literally a cheat code to expand your essays forever and ever, no matter the subject at hand.

For expansion via comparison, apply this same framework on the other ideas from my idea generation table. Do you finally understand how much can you keep on writing if you don’t restrain yourself?

From this point on, there will be mostly a repetition or improvement in the previous points of this framework.

9-Stakes and a wider perspective

We can further expand the feasibility of an idea by changing the perspective. For example, the spending habits of individuals can never be the same as the ones with families, or as institutions.

Drawing again from my own experiences, when I started making money, I loved spending it. Buying electronics, snacks, fast food, travelling and experiences, you name it. But this was easy for me as a single earner with no dependents.

On the other hand, if we take the perspective of my father, he is the sole bread-winner for 6 people including himself. This means, ever since building a family, he has had to use his disposable income very sparingly. He cannot simply go out and spend thousands in a luxury restaurant in just one weekend. He has to save more in case of medical emergencies, to pay utilities and bills, to pay for the education and basic necessities of his children and wife.

So, it is safe to conclude that the feasibility of an idea changes with the shift in perspective and especially varies from person to person.

In a similar fashion, governments and corporations do not spend alike but budget their cash flows instead. Since I have a bachelors in accounting, I can tell you with experience and knowledge that budgeting is way more optimized on an institutional level.

For our idea, governments and corporations do not save, they optimize cash flow so that they do not have un-utilized funds sitting around chilling in the bank vault. Yes, some measures are taken under the name of retained earnings or contingent liabilities (two vastly different things by the way), but cash is always kept in circulation one way or another. Vastly different from individual or family spending and saving; where cash may be put into a savings account and forgotten about until a wedding, home purchase or a similar major life event.

10-Short term vs long term outcomes

Time to compare the timely or delayed implications of our idea.

Savings can cause short term irritability as they reduce your spending power for the moment, but in the long run, this habit can pay off with financial integrity and stability even during tough times.

Saving money is the ultimate test of delayed gratification. (I’ll let you google what that means in case you don’t know.)

11-Cultural and Ethical Dilemmas

This is an interesting one. This part of the framework is completely dependent on geography. You can use your cultural and religious inspirations to add nuance to your argumentation. For example, I am from South Asia and while our religious values push us towards minimalism, savings over nonsensical expenditures, optimization instead of financial waste, our culture is exactly the opposite.

Take weddings for instance. People go into generational debt just to create a mirage, a false image of financial prowess. Naturally, the framework benefits from this and we can easily expand our word count and make notable observations. For our idea;

South Asian people may prefer to save but due to cultural influences and a pressure to ‘Look Rich’, end up spending much more than they can afford. The lack of incentives to save more is also an issue that plagues this region. Your savings are not secure, this is reason enough for people not to give another thought to their spending habits, regardless of it being a questionable assumption.

12-Rebuttals and Counter-arguments

Not all ideas are flawless. Even the most optimal idea is prone to some lapse in logic or thought in one or many aspects of life, because c’est la vie (Such is life). Keeping that in mind, think and try to rebuke your own idea by finding its weak spots. Look for any viable counter-argument. For our idea;

Main rebuttal = If a person saves too much, all the time, they can quickly become shrewd, stingy, frugal and even annoying.

Explanation = When we make savings our life goal, and never spend a penny from our riches, even if it brings more value than saving, then we ultimately hurt us by denying ourselves with a better and more valuable experience in life.

Example = A good example of this can be observed in frugal people who buy low quality food items and end up getting sick even though they could afford high quality food and stay healthy. They chose saving money over having good health. A rather stupid bargain if you ask me.

13-History of Similar ideas

I’m sure you really do not need this many options to expand an idea with, because by now you should be well over the minimum word limit of 250 in IELTS Writing Task 2. But as I could say the same about mangoes, coffee or shawarma, the more the merrier.

Since our main idea is not really all that groundbreaking, it surely must have been applied by someone, somewhere, somehow. All we need to do, is assume or make up that assumption, or if we know a few real-life examples, observe and report their outputs. For our idea;

Accumulating and keeping funds for emergency cases is not a new idea. In fact, humans have been hoarding resources for trade since the dawn of civilization. The hunter gatherers used to store meat by pouring salt over it and possibly putting it on ice if they were living in snowy mountains, so that they can trade it for agricultural or other produce. As humans advanced into the imperial age, the concept of money was introduced. Now you could trade a coin as a token of value in exchange for your desired items. People started to realize that, in order to make expensive purchases, they would need to save and accumulate more coins or money. So, banks were invented. If everybody started carrying all that they earned everywhere, they would need wider roads and stronger bodies. The fundamental purpose of a bank is to put your money somewhere safe, so that you can use it in the future when the need arises. Somebody must have thought this exact idea and found it so profound that they went on to invent a bank.

Alright, not my strongest writing but I’d say it’s better than nothing.

14-Global vs Local relevance

It is fairly obvious that this idea has a strong relevance everywhere in the world. Yes, the degree of income put into savings may differ from country to country, but from literally all the points discussed above, we can safely assume saving cash is a worldwide hobby.

15-Economical Aspect

We can dive deeper into the global and local relevance of an idea by touching on its financial aspects in terms of micro and macro-economics.

If we take a narrower look and discuss the micro first, for our idea;

Savings can affect the spending power of people. The rate of change in savings vs spending can have immediate consequences on the financial standing of a household. As we can assess from the current situation, high-income earners are investing in assets such as purchasing a house, plot or such properties, ultimately increasing their net worth. Middle-income earners are more worried about comfort goods that seem to keep getting more and more expensive every passing fiscal year, so they put up major chunks of their income into savings. On the other hand, low-income earners will always have the least amount of savings as their disposable income simply is not enough to meet the necessary expenses of everyday life.

Zooming out for a more macro approach;

The nuances of micro economics have sort of a spillover effect into the macro. If all the high-income earners are busy buying assets, the price of assets skyrockets and it does not take too long before comfort goods become luxuries by definition. Nobody can afford them but the ultra-rich. This has severely negative effects on the national and international economy. Just take a look at the housing crises, this is a global phenomenon. So, although the rising inflation is making savings sound like a redundant plan, there’s really no other option in terms of accumulating wealth, except making more money and putting it in a fixed deposit account.

16-Psychological and Social Impact

Finally, we can end on a high note. Join me on a poignant voyage of self-discovery as I take you on a deep dive to explore the minds of individuals and collectives alike, regarding savings of course.

Individually, savings can have a calming effect on the mind. Knowing that your stash of cash will carry you in a flash from the disappointing feeling of feeling abashed, as you have stashed the excess cash from your past in case you needed it real fast.

Sorry, I just had to, my inner poet could not resist anymore. I’ll let you add on that before I tackle the social aspect.

On a wider scale, people may have conflicting opinions about the ratio of savings, but most would agree to keep some form of backup to fall back on. Savings induce those around us to save more due to the herd mentality effect and on a societal level, cultural and religious values may also play a significant role.

We can similarly expand all the other ideas mentioned in the agree/disagree table by applying the same framework to each one individually.

Ok, I think that was enough for a lifetime. So, think of ideas, expand them, share them with us in the comments down below and have fun!

Written by:
Awais Ahmed
IELTSwithawais.com