The Writing Center

Brainstorming

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What this handout is about

This handout discusses techniques that will help you start writing a paper and continue writing
through the challenges of the revising process. Brainstorming can help you choose a topic,
develop an approach to a topic, or deepen your understanding of the topic’s potential.

Introduction

If you consciously take advantage of your natural thinking processes by gathering your brain’s
energies into a “storm,” you can transform these energies into written words or diagrams that
will lead to lively, vibrant writing. Below you will find a brief discussion of what brainstorming is,
why you might brainstorm, and suggestions for how you might brainstorm.

Whether you are starting with too much information or not enough, brainstorming can help you
to put a new writing task in motion or revive a project that hasn’t reached completion. Let’s
take a look at each case:

When you’ve got nothing: You might need a storm to approach when you feel “blank” about the
topic, devoid of inspiration, full of anxiety about the topic, or just too tired to craft an orderly
outline. In this case, brainstorming stirs up the dust, whips some air into our stilled pools of
thought, and gets the breeze of inspiration moving again.

When you’ve got too much: There are times when you have too much chaos in your brain and
need to bring in some conscious order. In this case, brainstorming forces the mental chaos and
random thoughts to rain out onto the page, giving you some concrete words or schemas that
you can then arrange according to their logical relations.

Brainstorming techniques

What follows are great ideas on how to brainstorm—ideas from professional writers, novice
writers, people who would rather avoid writing, and people who spend a lot of time
brainstorming about…well, how to brainstorm.

Try out several of these options and challenge yourself to vary the techniques you rely on;
some techniques might suit a particular writer, academic discipline, or assignment better than
others. If the technique you try first doesn’t seem to help you, move right along and try some
others.
Freewriting

When you freewrite, you let your thoughts flow as they will, putting pen to paper and writing
down whatever comes into your mind. You don’t judge the quality of what you write and you
don’t worry about style or any surface-level issues, like spelling, grammar, or punctuation. If
you can’t think of what to say, you write that down—really. The advantage of this technique is
that you free up your internal critic and allow yourself to write things you might not write if you
were being too self-conscious.

When you freewrite you can set a time limit (“I’ll write for 15 minutes!”) and even use a kitchen
timer or alarm clock or you can set a space limit (“I’ll write until I fill four full notebook pages,
no matter what tries to interrupt me!”) and just write until you reach that goal. You might do
this on the computer or on paper, and you can even try it with your eyes shut or the monitor
off, which encourages speed and freedom of thought.

The crucial point is that you keep on writing even if you believe you are saying nothing. Word
must follow word, no matter the relevance. Your freewriting might even look like this:

“This paper is supposed to be on the politics of tobacco production but even though I went to all
the lectures and read the book I can’t think of what to say and I’ve felt this way for four
minutes now and I have 11 minutes left and I wonder if I’ll keep thinking nothing during every
minute but I’m not sure if it matters that I am babbling and I don’t know what else to say about
this topic and it is rainy today and I never noticed the number of cracks in that wall before and
those cracks remind me of the walls in my grandfather’s study and he smoked and he farmed
and I wonder why he didn’t farm tobacco…”

When you’re done with your set number of minutes or have reached your page goal, read back
over the text. Yes, there will be a lot of filler and unusable thoughts but there also will be little
gems, discoveries, and insights. When you find these gems, highlight them or cut and paste
them into your draft or onto an “ideas” sheet so you can use them in your paper. Even if you
don’t find any diamonds in there, you will have either quieted some of the noisy chaos or
greased the writing gears so that you can now face the assigned paper topic.

Break down the topic into levels

Once you have a course assignment in front of you, you might brainstorm:

the general topic, like “The relationship between tropical fruits and colonial powers”
a specific subtopic or required question, like “How did the availability of multiple tropical
fruits influence competition amongst colonial powers trading from the larger Caribbean
islands during the 19th century?”
a single term or phrase that you sense you’re overusing in the paper. For example: If you
see that you’ve written “increased the competition” about a dozen times in your “tropical
fruits” paper, you could brainstorm variations on the phrase itself or on each of the main
terms: “increased” and “competition.”
Listing/bulleting

In this technique you jot down lists of words or phrases under a particular topic. Try this one by
basing your list either

on the general topic

on one or more words from your particular thesis claim, or
on a word or idea that is the complete opposite of your original word or idea.

For example, if your general assignment is to write about the changes in inventions over time,
and your specific thesis claims that “the 20th century presented a large number of inventions to
advance US society by improving upon the status of 19th-century society,” you could
brainstorm two different lists to ensure you are covering the topic thoroughly and that your
thesis will be easy to prove.

The first list might be based on your thesis; you would jot down as many 20th-century
inventions as you could, as long as you know of their positive effects on society. The second list
might be based on the opposite claim and you would instead jot down inventions that you
associate with a decline in that society’s quality. You could do the same two lists for 19th-
century inventions and then compare the evidence from all four lists.

Using multiple lists will help you to gather more perspective on the topic and ensure that, sure
enough, your thesis is solid as a rock, or, …uh oh, your thesis is full of holes and you’d better
alter your claim to one you can prove.

3 perspectives

Looking at something from different perspectives helps you see it more completely—or at least
in a completely different way, sort of like laying on the floor makes your desk look very
different to you. To use this strategy, answer the questions for each of the three perspectives,
then look for interesting relationships or mismatches you can explore.

1. Describe it: Describe your subject in detail. What is your topic? What are its components?
What are its interesting and distinguishing features? What are its puzzles? Distinguish your
subject from those that are similar to it. How is your subject unlike others?
2. Trace it: What is the history of your subject? How has it changed over time? Why? What
are the significant events that have influenced your subject?
3. Map it: What is your subject related to? What is it influenced by? How? What does it
influence? How? Who has a stake in your topic? Why? What fields do you draw on for the
study of your subject? Why? How has your subject been approached by others? How is
their work related to yours?

Cubing

Cubing enables you to consider your topic from six different directions; just as a cube is six-
sided, your cubing brainstorming will result in six “sides” or approaches to the topic. Take a
sheet of paper, consider your topic, and respond to these six commands.

1. Describe it.
2. Compare it.
3. Associate it.
4. Analyze it.
5. Apply it.
6. Argue for and against it.

Look over what you’ve written. Do any of the responses suggest anything new about your
topic? What interactions do you notice among the “sides”? That is, do you see patterns
repeating, or a theme emerging that you could use to approach the topic or draft a thesis? Does
one side seem particularly fruitful in getting your brain moving? Could that one side help you
draft your thesis statement? Use this technique in a way that serves your topic. It should, at
least, give you a broader awareness of the topic’s complexities, if not a sharper focus on what
you will do with it.

Similes

In this technique, complete the following sentence:

____________________ is/was/are/were like _____________________.

In the first blank put one of the terms or concepts your paper centers on. Then try to
brainstorm as many answers as possible for the second blank, writing them down as you come
up with them.

After you have produced a list of options, look over your ideas. What kinds of ideas come
forward? What patterns or associations do you find?

Clustering/mapping/webbing:

The general idea:

This technique has three (or more) different names, according to how you describe the activity
itself or what the end product looks like. In short, you will write a lot of different terms and
phrases onto a sheet of paper in a random fashion and later go back to link the words together
into a sort of “map” or “web” that forms groups from the separate parts. Allow yourself to start
with chaos. After the chaos subsides, you will be able to create some order out of it.

To really let yourself go in this brainstorming technique, use a large piece of paper or tape two
pieces together. You could also use a blackboard if you are working with a group of people. This
big vertical space allows all members room to “storm” at the same time, but you might have to
copy down the results onto paper later. If you don’t have big paper at the moment, don’t worry.
You can do this on an 8 ½ by 11 as well.

How to do it:
 1. Take your sheet(s) of paper and write your main topic in the center, using a word or two or
three.
2. Moving out from the center and filling in the open space any way you are driven to fill it,
start to write down, fast, as many related concepts or terms as you can associate with the
central topic. Jot them quickly, move into another space, jot some more down, move to
another blank, and just keep moving around and jotting. If you run out of similar concepts,
jot down opposites, jot down things that are only slightly related, or jot down your
grandpa’s name, but try to keep moving and associating. Don’t worry about the (lack of)
sense of what you write, for you can chose to keep or toss out these ideas when the
activity is over.
3. Once the storm has subsided and you are faced with a hail of terms and phrases, you can
start to cluster. Circle terms that seem related and then draw a line connecting the circles.
Find some more and circle them and draw more lines to connect them with what you think
is closely related. When you run out of terms that associate, start with another term. Look
for concepts and terms that might relate to that term. Circle them and then link them with
a connecting line. Continue this process until you have found all the associated terms.
Some of the terms might end up uncircled, but these “loners” can also be useful to you.
(Note: You can use different colored pens/pencils/chalk for this part, if you like. If that’s not
possible, try to vary the kind of line you use to encircle the topics; use a wavy line, a
straight line, a dashed line, a dotted line, a zigzaggy line, etc. in order to see what goes
with what.)
4. There! When you stand back and survey your work, you should see a set of clusters, or a
big web, or a sort of map: hence the names for this activity. At this point you can start to
form conclusions about how to approach your topic. There are about as many possible
results to this activity as there are stars in the night sky, so what you do from here will
depend on your particular results. Let’s take an example or two in order to illustrate how
you might form some logical relationships between the clusters and loners you’ve decided
to keep. At the end of the day, what you do with the particular “map” or “cluster set” or
“web” that you produce depends on what you need. What does this map or web tell you to
do? Explore an option or two and get your draft going!

Relationship between the parts

In this technique, begin by writing the following pairs of terms on opposite margins of one
sheet of paper:

Whole Parts
Part Parts of Parts
Part Parts of Parts
Part Parts of Parts

Looking over these four groups of pairs, start to fill in your ideas below each heading. Keep
going down through as many levels as you can. Now, look at the various parts that comprise
the parts of your whole concept. What sorts of conclusions can you draw according to the
patterns, or lack of patterns, that you see?

Journalistic questions

In this technique you would use the “big six” questions that journalists rely on to thoroughly
research a story. The six are: Who?, What?, When?, Where?, Why?, and How?. Write each
question word on a sheet of paper, leaving space between them. Then, write out some
sentences or phrases in answer, as they fit your particular topic. You might also answer into a
tape recorder if you’d rather talk out your ideas.

Now look over your batch of responses. Do you see that you have more to say about one or two
of the questions? Or, are your answers for each question pretty well balanced in depth and
content? Was there one question that you had absolutely no answer for? How might this
awareness help you to decide how to frame your thesis claim or to organize your paper? Or,
how might it reveal what you must work on further, doing library research or interviews or
further note-taking?

For example, if your answers reveal that you know a lot more about “where” and “why”
something happened than you know about “what” and “when,” how could you use this lack of
balance to direct your research or to shape your paper? How might you organize your paper so
that it emphasizes the known versus the unknown aspects of evidence in the field of study?
What else might you do with your results?

Thinking outside the box

Even when you are writing within a particular academic discipline, you can take advantage of
your semesters of experience in other courses from other departments. Let’s say you are
writing a paper for an English course. You could ask yourself, “Hmmm, if I were writing about
this very same topic in a biology course or using this term in a history course, how might I see
or understand it differently? Are there varying definitions for this concept within, say,
philosophy or physics, that might encourage me to think about this term from a new, richer
point of view?”

For example, when discussing “culture” in your English 101, communications, or cultural studies
course, you could incorporate the definition of “culture” that is frequently used in the biological
sciences. Remember those little Petri dishes from your lab experiments in high school? Those
dishes are used to “culture” substances for bacterial growth and analysis, right? How might it
help you write your paper if you thought of “culture” as a medium upon which certain things
will grow, will develop in new ways or will even flourish beyond expectations, but upon which
the growth of other things might be retarded, significantly altered, or stopped altogether?

Using charts or shapes

If you are more visually inclined, you might create charts, graphs, or tables in lieu of word lists
or phrases as you try to shape or explore an idea. You could use the same phrases or words
that are central to your topic and try different ways to arrange them spatially, say in a graph,
on a grid, or in a table or chart. You might even try the trusty old flow chart. The important
thing here is to get out of the realm of words alone and see how different spatial
representations might help you see the relationships among your ideas. If you can’t imagine the
shape of a chart at first, just put down the words on the page and then draw lines between or
around them. Or think of a shape. Do your ideas most easily form a triangle? square? umbrella?
Can you put some ideas in parallel formation? In a line?

Consider purpose and audience

Think about the parts of communication involved in any writing or speaking event act: purpose
and audience.

What is your purpose? What are you trying to do? What verb captures your intent? Are you
trying to inform? Convince? Describe? Each purpose will lead you to a different set of
information and help you shape material to include and exclude in a draft. Write about why you
are writing this draft in this form.

Who is your audience? Who are you communicating with beyond the grader? What does that
audience need to know? What do they already know? What information does that audience
need first, second, third? Write about who you are writing to and what they need.

Dictionaries, thesauruses, encyclopedias

When all else fails…this is a tried and true method, loved for centuries by writers of all stripe.
Visit the library reference areas or stop by the Writing Center to browse various dictionaries,
thesauruses (or other guide books and reference texts), encyclopedias or surf their online
counterparts. Sometimes these basic steps are the best ones. It is almost guaranteed that
you’ll learn several things you did not know.

If you’re looking at a hard copy reference, turn to your most important terms and see what sort
of variety you find in the definitions. The obscure or archaic definition might help you to
appreciate the term’s breadth or realize how much its meaning has changed as the language
changed. Could that realization be built into your paper somehow?

If you go to online sources, use their own search functions to find your key terms and see what
suggestions they offer. For example, if you plug “good” into a thesaurus search, you will be
given 14 different entries. Whew! If you were analyzing the film Good Will Hunting, imagine
how you could enrich your paper by addressed the six or seven ways that “good” could be
interpreted according to how the scenes, lighting, editing, music, etc., emphasized various
aspects of “good.”

An encyclopedia is sometimes a valuable resource if you need to clarify facts, get quick
background, or get a broader context for an event or item. If you are stuck because you have a
vague sense of a seemingly important issue, do a quick check with this reference and you may
be able to move forward with your ideas.
Closing

Armed with a full quiver of brainstorming techniques and facing sheets of jotted ideas, bulleted
subtopics, or spidery webs relating to your paper, what do you do now?

Take the next step and start to write your first draft, or fill in those gaps you’ve been
brainstorming about to complete your “almost ready” paper. If you’re a fan of outlining, prepare
one that incorporates as much of your brainstorming data as seems logical to you. If you’re not
a fan, don’t make one. Instead, start to write out some larger chunks (large groups of
sentences or full paragraphs) to expand upon your smaller clusters and phrases. Keep building
from there into larger sections of your paper. You don’t have to start at the beginning of the
draft. Start writing the section that comes together most easily. You can always go back to
write the introduction later.

We also have helpful handouts on some of the next steps in your writing process, such as
organization and argument.

Remember, once you’ve begun the paper, you can stop and try another brainstorming
technique whenever you feel stuck. Keep the energy moving and try several techniques to find
what suits you or the particular project you are working on.

Works consulted

We consulted these works while writing the original version of this handout. This is not a
comprehensive list of resources on the handout’s topic, and we encourage you to do your own
research to find the latest publications on this topic. Please do not use this list as a model for
the format of your own reference list, as it may not match the citation style you are using. For
guidance on formatting citations, please see the UNC Libraries citation tutorial.

Allen, Roberta, and Marcia Mascolini. The Process of Writing: Composing through Critical
Thinking. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice. 1997.

Cameron, Julia. The Artist’s Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity. New York: Putnam,
1995.

Goldberg, Natalie. Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within. Boston: Shambhala,
1986.

Rosen, Leonard J., and Laurence Behrens. The Allyn & Bacon Handbook. 3rd ed. Boston: Allyn,
1992.

University of Richmond Writing Center. “Writer’s Web.” 1 Apr. 2003.

<http://writing.richmond.edu/writing/wweb.html>.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs

2.5 License.
You may reproduce it for non-commercial use if you use the entire handout (just click print)
and attribute the source: The Writing Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

If you enjoy using our handouts, we appreciate contributions of acknowledgement.

The Writing Center · Campus Box #5137 · SASB North Suite 0127 · UNC-CH · Chapel Hill, NC 27599 · CSSAC Home · http://cssac.unc.edu/

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© 2010-2012 by The Writing Center at UNC Chapel Hill.

 Page 1 of 7

Developing Your Thesis

WRITING A THESIS SENTENCE
No sentence in your paper will vex you as much as the thesis sentence. And with good
reason: the thesis sentence is typically that ONE sentence in the paper that asserts,
controls, and structures the entire argument. Without a strong persuasive, thoughtful
thesis, a paper might seem unfocused, weak, and not worth the reader's time.

Complicating the matter further is that different disciplines have different notions of what
constitutes a good thesis sentence. Your English professor might frown on a thesis sentence
that says, "This paper will argue X by asserting A, B, and C." Such a thesis would likely be
seen as too formulaic. In a Social Science course, on the other hand, a good thesis might be
crafted in just that way.

So what makes a good thesis sentence?

Despite the differences from discipline to discipline, a good thesis will generally have the
following characteristics:

1. A good thesis sentence will make a claim. This doesn't mean that you have to
reduce an idea to an "either/or" proposition and then take a stand. Rather, you need
to develop an interesting perspective that you can support and defend. This
perspective must be more than an observation. "America is violent" is an
observation. "Americans are violent because they are fearful" (the position that
Michael Moore takes in Bowling for Columbine) is an argument. Why? Because it
posits a perspective. It makes a claim.

Put another way, a good thesis sentence will inspire (rather than quiet) other points
of view. One might argue that America is violent because of its violent entertainment
industry. Or because of the proliferation of guns. Or because of the disintegration of
the family. In short, if your thesis is positing something that no one can (or would
wish to) argue with, then it's not a very good thesis.

2. A good thesis sentences will control the entire argument. Your thesis sentence
determines what you are required to say in a paper. It also determines what you
cannot say. Every paragraph in your paper exists in order to support your thesis.
Accordingly, if one of your paragraphs seems irrelevant to your thesis you have two
choices: get rid of the paragraph, or rewrite your thesis.

Understand that you don't have a third option: you can't simply stick the idea in
without preparing the reader for it in your thesis. The thesis is like a contract
between you and your reader. If you introduce ideas that the reader isn't prepared
for, you've violated that contract.

3. A good thesis will provide a structure for your argument. A good thesis not
only signals to the reader what your argument is, but how your argument will be
presented. In other words, your thesis sentence should either directly or indirectly
suggest the structure of your argument to your reader.

Say, for example, that you are going to argue that "American fearfulness expresses
itself in three curious ways: A, B, and C." In this case, the reader understands that
Courtesy the Odegaard Writing & Research Center
http://www.depts.washington.edu/owrc
Adapted from www.dartmouth.edu/~writing/materials/student/ac_paper/develop.shtml
 Page 2 of 7

you are going to have three important points to cover, and that these points will
appear in a certain order. If you suggest a particular ordering principle and then
abandon it, the reader will feel betrayed, irritated, and confused.

ALTERNATIVES TO THE THESIS SENTENCE

Sometimes, the purpose of a piece of writing is not to make a claim but to raise questions.
Other times, a writer wants to leave a matter unresolved, inspiring the reader to create his
or her own position. In these cases, the thesis sentence might take other forms: the thesis
question or the implied thesis.

The Thesis Question

As we've said, not every piece of writing sets out to make a claim. If your purpose as a
writer is to explore, for instance, the reasons for the 9/11 attacks (a topic for which you are
not prepared to make a claim), your thesis might read: "What forces conspired to bring
these men to crash four jetliners into American soil?"

You'll note that this question, while provocative, does not offer a sense of the argument's
structure. It permits the writer to pursue all ideas, without committing to any. While this
freedom might seem appealing, in fact you will find that the lack of a declarative thesis
statement requires more work: you need to tighten your internal structure and your
transitions from paragraph to paragraph so that the essay is clear and the reader can easily
follow your line of inquiry.

The Implied Thesis

One of the most fascinating things about a thesis sentence is that it is the most important
sentence in a paper - even when it's not there.

Some of our best writers never explicitly declare their thesis. In some essays, you'll find it
difficult to point to a single sentence that declares the argument. Still, the essay is coherent
and makes a point. In these cases, the writers have used an implied thesis.

Writers use an implied thesis when they want the reader to come to his or her own
conclusions about the matter at hand. However, just because the writer doesn't delcare the
thesis doesn't mean that she was working without one. Good writers will have their thesis
clearly stated - either in their own minds, or in their notes for the paper. They may elect not
to put the thesis in the paper, but every paragraph, every sentence that they write is
controlled by the thesis all the same.

If you decide to write a paper with an implied thesis, be sure that you have a strong grasp
of your argument and its structure. Also be sure that you supply adequate transitions, so
that the reader can follow your argument with ease.

THE SIX-STEP THESIS FORMATION METHOD

1. Name your focus topic

EXAMPLE: The Beverly Hill’s Diet

2. Ask a question (make sure it’s not obvious!) about your focused topic
EXAMPLE: Is the Beverly Hill’s Diet advisable for the typical college student?

3. Revise the question into a declarative statement

EXAMPLE: The Beverly Hills Diet is inadvisable for the typical college student.
Courtesy the Odegaard Writing & Research Center
http://www.depts.washington.edu/owrc
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4. Add a group of words summarizing your key ideas

EXAMPLE: Because it is inconvenient, unhealthy, and provide only temporary weight
loss.

5. Recognize the opposition

EXAMPLE: Although it does provide quick weight loss.

6. Call upon editing to put it all together

EXAMPLE: Although it does provide quick weight loss, the Beverly Hills Diet is
inadvisable for the typical college student because it is inconvenient, unhealthy, and
provides only temporary weight loss.

WILL THIS THESIS SENTENCE MAKE THE GRADE? (A CHECK LIST)

In the end, you may have spent a good deal of time writing your thesis and still not know if
it's a good one. Here are some questions to ask yourself.

 Does my thesis sentence attempt to answer (or at least to explore) a challenging

intellectual question?
 Is the point I'm making one that would generate discussion and argument, or is it
one that would leave people asking, "So what?"
 Is my thesis too vague? Too general? Should I focus on some more specific aspect of
my topic?
 Does my thesis deal directly with the topic at hand, or is it a declaration of my
personal feelings?
 Does my thesis indicate the direction of my argument? Does it suggest a structure
for my paper?
 Does my introductory paragraph define terms important to my thesis? If I am writing
a research paper, does my introduction "place" my thesis within the larger, ongoing
scholarly discussion about my topic?
 Is the language in my thesis vivid and clear? Have I structured my sentence so that
the important information is in the main clause? Have I used subordinate clauses to
house less important information? Have I used parallelism to show the relationship
between parts of my thesis? In short, is this thesis the very best sentence that it can
be?

WHAT ELSE DO YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT THESIS SENTENCES?

1. A good thesis usually relies on a strong introduction, sharing the work. As
your writing becomes more sophisticated, you will find that a one-sentence thesis
statement cannot bear the burden of your entire argument. Therefore, you will find
yourself relying increasingly on your introduction to lay the groundwork. Use your
introduction to explain some of your argument's points and/or to define its terms.
Save the "punch" for your thesis. For more information about creating good
introductions that can support your thesis sentences, see Introductions and
Conclusions elsewhere in this website.

2. The structure of your thesis, along with its introduction, should in some way
reflect the logic that brought you to your argument. It's helpful when
structuring your thesis sentence to consider for a moment how it was that you came
Courtesy the Odegaard Writing & Research Center
http://www.depts.washington.edu/owrc
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to your argument in the first place. No matter what discipline you are working in,
you came to your idea by way of certain observations. For example, perhaps you
have noticed in a History of Education course that female college students around
the turn of the century seem very often to write about the idea of service to the
community. How did you come to that observation? What did you observe first? And,
more importantly, how did you go about exploring the significance of this
observation? Did you investigate other college documents to see if the value of
service was explicitly stated there? Or was this value implied in course descriptions,
extra curricular possibilities, and so forth? Reconstruct for yourself how you came to
your observations, and use this to help you to create a coherent introduction and
thesis.

3. A good working thesis is your best friend. Those writers who understand the
concept of "working thesis" are way ahead of the game. A "working thesis" is a
thesis that works for you, helping you to see where your ideas are going. Many
students keep their thesis sentence in front of them at all times to help them to
control the direction of their argument. But what happens when you stumble onto an
idea that your thesis isn't prepared for? Or, more important, what happens when you
think everything is going well in your paper and suddenly you arrive at a block?
Always return to your working thesis, and give it a critical once-over. You may find
that the block in your writing process is related to some limitation in your thesis. Or
you may find that hidden somewhere in that working thesis is the germ of an even
better idea. Stay in conversation with your thesis throughout the writing process.
You'll be surprised at what you can learn from it.

CONSTRUCTING THE THESIS: A WRITER'S CLINIC FOR BEGINNERS

Constructing a good thesis sentence is no easy matter. In creating a thesis, the writer
struggles with her own confusion. She seeks to create some order out of the morass of
observations she has about a text. If you are willing to endure a little confusion, we'll show
you here how it is that a thesis sentence is constructed. As the thesis will pass through
several incarnations before it reaches its final form, we advise you to read this section
completely from beginning to end.

Ready?

When structuring your thesis sentence, it's helpful to start by considering how it was that
you came to your argument in the first place. You arrived at your point of view by way of
certain observations and a particular logic. You will expect your reader to arrive at the same
conclusion, via the same observations and logic that you yourself used.

Let's imagine that you have been assigned a novel for your English 111 class. You've
noticed when reading the book that the author seems to linger on the relatively insignificant
action of women putting on their lipstick. You've also noticed that lipstick stains abound in
the novel, leaving their mark on glasses, sheets, and so on. Finally, you've noticed that the
women characters use lipstick in different ways: Character A puts lipstick on alone in the
bathroom, in front of a mirror; Character B puts lipstick on in front of others, but only when
they seem on the verge of rejecting her; Character C delights in seeing her incriminating
lipstick smears on the shirts and sheets of her lover; Character D wears lipstick only when
she goes to have lunch with her ex-lover, as a way of exaggerating the grimace of her pain.

From these observations, you see a pattern at work. Characters A and B use lipstick to
mask themselves and their feelings; Characters C and D use lipstick to unmask themselves
(or others). Moreover, you notice that the author seems to admire Characters C and D for
Courtesy the Odegaard Writing & Research Center
http://www.depts.washington.edu/owrc
Adapted from www.dartmouth.edu/~writing/materials/student/ac_paper/develop.shtml
 Page 5 of 7

their insistence that emotions be revealed. You think that you have a good idea for a thesis
sentence, and so you give it a go: "In X's novel , the characters' seemingly insignificant use
of lipstick in fact points to one of the novel's larger themes: the masking and unmasking of
the self."

This sentence does mirror for the reader your own process of discovery: it begins with an
observation that a seemingly insignificant event has meaning(s) in the novel, and then it
classifies those meanings into two categories. In other words, some of your logic is indeed
present in the thesis as you've written it.

You'll notice that I've said "some of your logic." It's important to take a second look at this
thesis to see what it is that's been left out.

Put yourself in the place of the reader. What does this thesis sentence tell you about the
structure of the argument to come? Well, as a potential reader I would expect that first, the
writer will provide evidence that lipstick is indeed an important symbol in this novel.
Second, I would expect the writer to argue that lipstick signifies a character's desire to
mask herself (a common observation). Finally, I would expect the writer to show me how,
exactly, lipstick is used to reveal the self.

Now ask yourself what this thesis doesn't tell the reader about the argument to come. We
understand as readers that this paper is going to be about the masking and unmasking of
the self. We understand (because it is common knowledge) that lipstick can be used to
create a mask. But how, precisely, does lipstick unmask the self? Here you seem to be
pointing to some uncommon use of lipstick, but you haven't even hinted at what that
"uncommon use" is, or why it's important. Look closely at your thesis and ask yourself this
hard question: Does my thesis give my reader a sense of the real argument to come?

In this case, it doesn't. However, this doesn't mean that the thesis sentence is useless. In
fact, even though this thesis doesn't provide the reader with a very good "map" of the
essay, it does help you, the writer, to see the overall structure of your argument. In other
words, it's a good working thesis sentence for your paper.

WHAT IS A WORKING TH ESIS SENTENCE?

Let's take a minute to define this term.

A thesis sentence, as we've said, is a kind of contract between you and your reader. It
asserts, controls, and structures your argument for your reader's ease. A working thesis
sentence, on the other hand, is a sentence that you compose in order to make the work of
writing easier. It's a sentence that asserts, controls, and structures the argument for you.

The working thesis need not be eloquent. In fact, it can be quite clunky, declaring your
argument and then clumsily listing your supporting points. Not to worry: you'll be revising
your thesis, and often more than once.

Remember that, as you write, you are bound to come up with new ideas and observations
that you'd like to incorporate into your paper. Every time you make a new discovery, your
thesis sentence will have to be revised. Sometimes you'll find that you're stuck in your
writing. You may need to return to your thesis. Perhaps you haven't clearly defined an
important term or condition in your thesis? Maybe that's why you find yourself unable to
progress beyond a certain point in your argument?

Courtesy the Odegaard Writing & Research Center

http://www.depts.washington.edu/owrc
Adapted from www.dartmouth.edu/~writing/materials/student/ac_paper/develop.shtml
 Page 6 of 7

Revising your working thesis at this juncture could help you to clarify for yourself the
direction of your argument. Don't be afraid to revise! In fact, the most important quality of
a working thesis sentence is its flexibility. A working thesis needs to keep up with your
thinking. It needs to accommodate what you learn as you go along.

Revising the Working Thesis

Let's return now to our in-progress thesis: "In X's novel, the characters' seemingly
insignificant use of lipstick in fact points to one of the novel's larger themes: the masking
and unmasking of the self." Perhaps this thesis served you well as you were writing the first
couple of pages of your paper, but now that you are into the meat of the matter, you are
stuck. How, exactly, is the writer using lipstick and masks to reveal character? And what,
precisely, is his point in doing so?

It's at this juncture that you'll probably return to your thesis and discover a) what it doesn't
say, and b) what it needs to say. We've already determined that the sentence doesn't really
address the most arguable - and interesting - aspect of this argument. Now it's time to ask
yourself why this hasn't been addressed. Perhaps you, the writer, haven't yet articulated
this part of the argument for yourself? Is this why the thesis (and with it, the paper) seems
to trail off?

At this point you should stop drafting the paper and return to the text. Read a bit.
Brainstorm a bit. Write another discovery draft. Read a bit more. Ohmygosh! Here is
something interesting. You've found a passage in which the writer talks about how the
lipstick left behind on a lover's shirt "drew a map for his wife into the dark lands of his
infidelities." And you've found another passage in which the jilted lover's bright orange
lipstick was "like a road sign, guiding her betrayer to the heart of her pain." In these two
passages you see the writer addressing another function of lipstick: that women use it to
draw a kind of map. You look for other lipstick examples that might shed more light on the
idea of mapping, and you find them. Even better, you discover that all of these examples
have something to do with betrayal, guilt, and shame.

In the end, you conclude that lipstick is not being used in this novel just to mask and
unmask. Women also use lipstick to map. The two are in fact linked:

1. Lipstick masks by concealing real feelings (most often feelings of betrayal, guilt, and
shame).
2. Lipstick masks, but in the process reveals or creates a new persona, one who
overcomes the feelings of betrayal, guilt, and shame.
3. The author also uses the act of putting on lipstick as a metaphor for mapping. These
maps might conceal - that is, they might serve to detour the observer from
discovering (or arriving at) the woman's feelings of betrayal, or
4. They might reveal. First, lipstick might draw a map to the truth about a betrayal, as
they do for the betrayed wife in the novel. And second, lipstick might be seen as a
tool with which a woman maps herself, drawing new borders, re-imagining her own
inner landscapes, and re-routing her own destiny.
This idea is very complicated. How do you make a thesis out of this?

Your first try is bound to be clumsy. You need to find a way of putting together all of your
important ideas - lipsticks, masks, maps, concealing, revealing, betrayal - into one
sentence. Can it be done?

Maybe; maybe not. Let's try:

Courtesy the Odegaard Writing & Research Center
http://www.depts.washington.edu/owrc
Adapted from www.dartmouth.edu/~writing/materials/student/ac_paper/develop.shtml
 Page 7 of 7

While lipstick is used in X's novel to conceal feelings of betrayal, it is also used to reveal the
betrayal itself, in that lipstick both masks and maps betrayal, at first allowing women to
hide themselves, but later providing them with the possibility to create new selves, and to
re-route their lives.

Does this sentence work?

Revising Your Thesis For Eloquence

Clearly not.

For one thing, it is simply too long. You are putting too much information into one sentence.
Sometimes writers fail to understand that their argument might best be expressed in a
couple of sentences (with one sentence providing background information and the second
serving as the thesis). Note the difference such a change would make:

While lipstick is used in X's novel to conceal feelings of betrayal, it is also used to reveal the
betrayal itself. Accordingly, lipstick both masks and maps betrayal in this novel, initially
allowing women to hide themselves, but later providing them with the possibility to create
new selves, and to re-route their lives.

Better? Sure, but it could be better still. You will, of course, want to play with your thesis
sentence until it is strong enough to present your complex argument, and clear enough to
guide your reader through your paper. But even more than this, you will want to write a
thesis sentence that evokes something in the reader. You will want to use language that has
some power; you will want to structure the sentence so that it has some "oomph." Pay
attention to diction, to syntax, to nuance, and to tone. In short, write a good sentence.

Understand that you can revise the thesis sentence above in a number of ways. Ask
yourself:

 Is my argument clear?
 Does it present the logic and the structure of my paper?
 Does it emphasize the points I want to emphasize?

Perhaps in the end you decide that the previous sentence seems to make masking and
mapping of equal importance to this paper. You've decided that mapping is the more
original, stronger idea. So you revise once more, for emphasis. Consider this, then, our final
thesis sentence (note how the complete argument now relies on the interaction between
two introductory sentences and the thesis statement itself):

While at first it might appear that lipstick is being used merely to hide the characters'
feelings of betrayal, a closer look reveals that its most essential use is actually to map the
path to the betrayal itself. By using lipstick as the signposts, betrayal can be discovered and
navigated. As a result, characters are able to re-draw the borders of their relationships, and
to re-route the course of their lives.

Perfect!

Courtesy the Odegaard Writing & Research Center

http://www.depts.washington.edu/owrc
Adapted from www.dartmouth.edu/~writing/materials/student/ac_paper/develop.shtml
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General Writing & Research Help Targeted Tutoring

CLUE Evening Drop-in Writing Center
206-543-5755 Mary Gates Hall Gateway Center :: 206-543-5755
Interdisciplinary, open to all undergraduates. No appointment needed. Just print out what you’ve got, grab
your notes, or bring your laptop, and come on over! Staffed by undergraduate and graduate student
tutors, we know what your professors want and can help get you there!
Odegaard Writing & Research Center
206.543.2060 Odegaard Undergraduate Library, Room 121 | 206.543.2060 | owrc@uw.edu
Sunday 12:00-9:00pm, Monday through Thursday 9:00am-9:00pm Friday 9:00am-3:00pm.
Interdisciplinary, open to all members of the UW community, make an appointment online or simply drop in.
The OWRC offers specialized assistance through all stages of the writing and research process.
Whether you need help getting started or would like assistance revising a completed draft--we can help.
Student Research Consultations with Librarians
The Student Consultation Service is designed for UW students needing research assistance with course-
and degree-related projects and assignments. Meet with a librarian one-on-one to discuss focusing a
topic, identifying & evaluating sources, and searching library databases and the Internet effectively.
You may also request a consultation with a specific subject librarian here
Teaching & Learning Center, UW-Tacoma
(253) 692-4417 (253) 692-4417
The TLC can provide writing consultations for any UW Tacoma course that has a writing component.
Sessions are collaborative; we work with you to support your ongoing learning of the writing process.
We are here to help you improve as a writer, to assist you in clearly expressing your thoughts and ideas.
Targeted Tutoring for ESL students!
ESL students taking intro-level, writing-intensive courses in a
variety of fields may group together (3-5 students from a single
section) and be partnered with an OWRC tutor, who facilitates
weekly group meetings in support of the work of that particular
course. These weekly meetings generally serve as collaborative
problem-solving sessions, with all group members contributing
insights on the materials and expectations of the course -- as well
as strategies for the particular writing being asked of them. Each
team works together to better understand assignments,
brainstorm, compare drafting and review strategies, make sense
of teacher comments, prioritize revisions, and make plans that
render the workload more manageable.
This is also a setting in which second language writers are
encouraged to metacognitively think through and discuss the
differences between the writing they've done in the past and what
is being asked of them now. Full participation in Targeted
Tutoring also earns students one credit of GEN ST 391.
Questions: owrc@uw.edu

UW-Bothell Writing and Communication Center

425-352-5253 425-352-5253 :: wacc@uwb.edu :: UW2-124
The Writing and Communication Center (WaCC) supports students of all abilities, at any stage of the
reading, writing, or presentation process. Our goal is to help you become a stronger, more confident
writer and communicator.

Discipline-based and Specialized Writing Centers

The Speaking Center (Communication Research Mentor Center)

Speaking Center: Mon.-Fri. 9:00am-3:30pm
"...committed to providing students, staff, and the public with advice, guidance, and techniques for
success in the field of public speaking and oral communication. Alumni, graduate, and undergraduate
students are encouraged to visit the center during its hours of operation for the purposes of speech
generation/writing, successful delivery techniques, anxiety reduction, or simply for an unbiased opinion
from a trained speech tutor or Department of Communication Teaching Assistant. The center is located on
the third floor of the Communications Building in room 222.

Education Writing Center

Miller 407C :: coewrite@uw.edu
We suggest making an appointment online.
We are a Seattle campus resource for College of Education students, staff and faculty.

History Writing Center

206-543-5692 Smith 020 :: 206-543-5692 :: histwctr@uw.edu
"The History Writing Center offers half-hour, individual appointments with graduate student tutors who
are well versed in the special demands of writing history papers." Open only to History majors, to
students enrolled in History courses, and to Evening Degree students. Computer facilities available in
conjunction with consultations for editing purposes only

Office of Minority Affairs & Diversity Instructional Center

206-543-5425 1307 NE 40th, Room 240 :: 206-543-5425
Services available only to low-income, first-generation and disabled University of Washington students.
Focus is primarily on the stages of the writing process.

Philosophy Writing Center

Savery 362 | philwrit@u.washington.edu
Undergraduates writing papers for philosophy courses.

Political Science / Jackson School / Law, Societies, & Justice Writing Center
206-616-3354 Gowen 111 :: 206-616-3354 :: pswrite@u.washington.edu

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"...assist[ing] undergraduates with their Political Science, International Studies, or Law, Societies, &
Justice writing assignments at any point in the creative process."

Psychology Writing Center

3937 15th Ave NE :: 206-685.8278 :: psywc@u.washington.edu
Faculty and graduate tutors offer one-on-one consultation, handouts, and other resources on general
and scientific writing for undergraduates in psychology. Scheduled appointments have priority, or drop in
if the tutor is available. New -- online scheduling!

Sociology Writing Center

206-543-5396 Savery 203 :: 206-543-5396 :: writesoc@u.washington.edu
"...one-on-one "tutoring" services, primarily through scheduled appointments (45 minutes in length). These
appointments are open to all undergraduate students taking sociology courses, are assignment-focused,
and are intended to help students with all stages of the writing process. In keeping with our departmental
learning objectives, we do not provide editing and proofreading services. However, we may indicate
problematic grammatical and stylistic patterns and refer students to online resources."

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