How to Develop a Thesis Statement

Without a clear thesis, your writing will be aimless.

A thesis statement is the heart and soul of your work, the main and central idea you want to communicate, or a short summary of the contents of your writing. It tells the reader what you plan to do. Think of your thesis as the seed, your paper as the fully developed fruit. All the qualities of the fruit are contained within the seed, only in a much smaller form. Crafting a clear thesis is the key to writing a well-organized essay or paper, but also realize that as you write, your thesis may change as you think deeper about your topic; that's fine. A thesis can be modified as needed.

Instructions

1. Depending upon your instructor, you may already have a general direction assigned to you; if so, carefully read the assignment and make sure you know what your professor expects. When beginning to write a thesis, formulate a general direction of what you think you will be writing about. You don't have to know exactly where you are going, but you do need to figure out the basic direction.

2. Refine and define the direction of your work into a "working" thesis by deciding exactly what you will write about.
   1) What is the main idea of my paper?
   2) What do I want to communicate?
   3) What is this paper about?
   4) What am I trying to prove? demonstrate? convince my reader of?
   5) What is the most important thing I want to leave my reader with?

   When you have answered these questions you will have basic "working" thesis: it is defined enough that it makes your topic manageable and workable, but it's not in its final form yet -- you can still manipulate it.

3. Do the first stage of research based on your thesis. Don't be too concerned about whether everything conforms to what you think your final thesis will be yet. This is an important time of discovering what other elements of your thesis you may be missing. Ask yourself:
   1) What are the most important works on this topic?
   2) Who are the most important writers on this topic?
   3) Who agrees with me? Why?
   4) Who disagrees with me? Why?
   5) What do I need to learn, clarify, understand about my topic?

4. After your initial research, formulate your second "working" thesis. This will be more defined, but still open to being "worked" as new information comes to you.
   1) Decide on a final direction for you work.
   2) Write this final direction in sentence form.
   3) Make this sentence as concise and clear as you can -- make it short and sweet.

5. Start to develop your second "working" thesis by drafting your paper. Select information that conforms to your thesis and proves the points you wish to make in your essay until you have completed a rough draft.

6. Formulate a "final" thesis. Now that you've drafted a rough draft and have completed your research, you are ready to state, once and for all, what this work is about. Tell your readers what the subject is, and how you plan to work with it.
   Your thesis should:
   1) Be as brief as possible without omitting important details.
   2) State what you will do: argue, prove, disprove, demonstrate, apply,
   contrast or illuminate.
   3) Provide a preview of your work. Your thesis provides an overview of your whole paper; it should be a preview of things to come.

7. Make sure your "final" thesis is developed properly in your paper.

   Now that you have your "final" (ultimate, perfect, unchangeable) thesis you need to rewrite your paper in the clear light of THE FINAL THESIS.

Tips & Warnings

• The thesis statement should generally be placed in the introductory paragraph, at the very end (i.e., the last sentence of the first paragraph). There are certainly exceptions to this rule, but most readers will expect to see it early in the paper.

References

• Developing a Thesis Statement