Stage 1. Think (Step 3)
At this point in the writing process, you have generated a good idea for writing and started planning by considering your purpose and audience. Though you are getting close to actually writing your first paragraphs, you still need to define exactly what you will write about. You will need a thesis statement, which will guide you for the rest of the writing process.
Andrea Piacquadio | Pexels
Creating a Thesis Statement
The prewriting and planning steps you have completed so far have helped you select a manageable topic and plan your strategy. Now you must decide what you will say about the topic and ideas you have selected. You need a clear vision for your product so that you know exactly what your central message is. You need a thesis statement, which is the controlling idea and central point of a written document.
When your readers have finished reading your product, how will they summarize it in a single sentence? That sentence is your thesis statement, the central idea that you set out to describe, support, defend, or clarify.
Think of your thesis statement as a guiding post that keeping you on course at all times while you write; therefore, you need a clear thesis before you start writing.
Henri Mathieu-Saint-Laurent | Pexels
The thesis statement also orients your readers. That is why your thesis statement should appear somewhere in your first paragraph. It summarizes your idea so your readers are ready from the start to understand your supporting ideas.
Identical Topic, Very Different Theses
In Figure 1 below, you can see how you can start with a broad subject (e.g., “friendships”) and narrow that topic to something more manageable (“online friendships”).
What you want to say about it is the controlling idea about the topic (e.g., “are lacking” or “are beneficial” or whatever you want to say about “online friendships”). This portion of the thesis is called the controlling idea because, essentially, it “controls” where your ideas are allowed to go. If you include in your writing something contrary to your own thesis, your writing no longer makes sense. By keeping an eye on the thesis statement prevents you from doing straying away like that.
Adding the topic and the controlling idea together gives you the thesis statement. That is a sentence stating what your topic is (online friendships) and what you are going to say about the topic.
Defining a thesis statement | Example A
| Broad Subject |
Uniforms ↓ |
Narrow Topic
|
school uniforms |
| Controlling Idea |
should be adopted |
| Thesis Statement |
1. Schools uniforms should be adopted for three main reasons.
2. Administrators should adopt school uniforms for three main reasons.
|
Defining a thesis statement | Example B
| Broad Subject |
Uniforms ↓ |
Narrow Topic
|
school uniforms |
| Controlling Idea |
should not be adopted |
| Thesis Statement |
1. Schools uniforms should not be adopted for three main reasons.
2. Administrators should stop adopting school uniforms for three main reasons.
|
Figure 1: Defining a thesis statement (what you will actually write about the topic) from a broad topic (friendship).
Here is a description of Figure 1 for screen readers.
Example A.
Using the topic of uniforms, you can narrow the topic to “school uniforms” specifically. Then you add a controlling idea, that is, that school uniforms should be adopted.
Next, you define a thesis statement as follows: School uniforms should be adopted for three main reasons.
Example B.
Using the same topic of uniforms, you can narrow the topic again to “school uniforms” specifically. But now you add a different controlling idea, that is, that school uniforms should not be adopted.
Then, you define a thesis statement as follows: School uniforms should not be adopted for three main reasons. A variation of this thesis could be that administrators should stop adopting school uniforms for three main reasons.
Note that you can narrow your topic further. For example, in Example B above, you may decide that you oppose school uniforms in high school grades only. To restrict your topic as such, you can simply modify the thesis statement to, for example, “high school administrators should not adopt school uniforms for three main reasons.”
The Working Thesis Statement
When you first write a thesis statement, it can be a working thesis—that is, it is subject to change as you complete your paragraphs. Do not wait to have “the perfect thesis statement” to start writing your paragraphs.
For example, your working thesis can be
Schools uniforms should be adopted for several main reasons.
”Several reasons” is not specific enough. Perhaps you have several reasons, but still need to decide on the main ones. As you learn more about the topic, you may realize you have one main reason only, which you will expand into body paragraphs. You may also realize there are several valid reasons, but you want to focus on three main ones. You can then finalize your thesis statement as
School uniforms should be adopted because they promote a sense of unity, improve discipline, and reduce peer pressure.
In your body paragraphs, you can then elaborate on each of these three main reasons.
Friendly Warning and Advice
The idea behind the working thesis statement is to be flexible about your idea; however, you must be careful at this point. The more well thought out your initial working theses, the less likely you are to make so many changes as you write your product that you get lost in your own idea.
Spend enough time at this planning stage so you come up with as solid a thesis statement as possible and allow yourself the flexibility to make minor changes as your ideas mature during the writing stage.
Outlining Your Writing
Let’s use the thesis statement we came up with above: School uniforms should be adopted because they promote a sense of unity, improve discipline, and reduce peer pressure.
Notice how the thesis itself already gives us a rough outline for your work:
Thirdman | Pexels
- Introduce the topic of school uniforms and introduce the thesis.
- write one or more paragraphs about each part of the controlling idea,
- elaborate on how adopting school uniforms promotes a sense of unity,
- elaborate on how it improves discipline, and
- elaborate on how it reduces peer pressure.
- Finally, pull all these ideas together and conclude with the argument that you set out to support in the thesis statement from the start.
Formalizing the Outline
At the core of the above example thesis about school uniforms is that they “should be adopted.” By presenting your thesis as “School uniforms should be adopted because they promote a sense of unity, improve discipline, and reduce peer pressure,” the thesis statement lets the reader know you will elaborate on three reasons to create an argument to support your main point, that is, that adopting school uniforms is a good idea.
There are many ways you could develop that thesis statement into writing. One way would be to introduce it in an opening paragraph, develop each reason in a paragraph, and concluding it in a final paragraph. (We will see more about that in the next section about writing paragraphs.)
The formal outline in Figure 2 shows a possible way to structure an essay for “School uniforms should be adopted because they promote a sense of unity, improve discipline, and reduce peer pressure.”
Introduction
- Paragraph 1 - Introduction: Provide some background information on school uniforms and introduce the thesis statement (“School uniforms should be adopted because they promote a sense of unity, improve discipline, and reduce peer pressure:”)
Body
- Paragraph 2 - Reason 1: one reason school uniforms should be adopted.
- Paragraph 3 - Reason 2: another reason school uniforms should be adopted.
- Paragraph 4 - Reason 3: the other reason school uniforms should be adopted.
Conclusion
- Paragraph 5 - Concluding paragraph. (We will see concluding paragraphs in more detail in another portion of this course.)
This paragraph provides closure. It reminds the reader what the writer set out to do, briefly highlights information presented, and presents the information in a new light (in this case, showing how adopting school uniforms would be beneficial to parents, teachers, and students, for example).
Figure 2: Possible structure for a 5-paragraph essay based on a thesis statement that calls for reasons to be listed.
Note about 5-paragraph essays
Five-paragraph essays, sometimes referred to as the emphatic method, are often assigned for instructional purposes. The goal is to get novice writers to practice organizing persuasive essays around an introduction, three body paragraphs, and a conclusion.
However, there is nothing “magical” about writing 5 paragraphs. Effective writers write as many paragraphs as needed to support their theses. In the above example (Figure 2), for example, you can use two or more paragraphs to elaborate on one of the reasons alone, which would results in more than 5 paragraphs.
Up Next: Stage 2. Writing Paragraphs (Part 1)
Continue the lesson to learn about writing paragraphs.