Thesis Statements & Subtopic Sentences

Thesis statement:

• The sentence that states the main point you are making for the entire essay. All points made in essay are meant to support this statement (sometimes posed as a question).

• subject (a noun or noun phrase) + verb (how we act upon subject) + object (the idea you have to transform the subject)

• Use specific language over abstract/too general words, whenever possible.

• Along with being more specific, do not be all-incusive in your paint made (everyone, no one, is, all, ...)

• Use an action verb to indicate to your reader how dynamic you are looking at your subject (in Essay 1, Ishmael Beah's morality the myth and what it taught you). 

• The more action on the subject, the more you transform our view of it. The more you can pose questions about subject with that verb.

• something is  v. something illustrates.

• DO NOT BE ELUSIVE. DO NOT TEASE YOUR READER!!!

• One of the most ineffective thesis statements is the type that only suggests ideas but doesn't actually identify what ideas will be developed in the body paragraphs:

• Poor, poor thesis teaser:  The myth changed my life in many ways.  

• Pray-tell, what are those ways? The statement is so broad that the reader has no idea what will be discussed about change in the body paragraphs.)

• Better little thesis: The 'tortoise and the hare' fable showed that being fast does not always help me win.

• Being fast at what? Win what? The writer is attempting to make a clearer statement, but they have to provide more context--be more specific about when, where, how, and even why the fable impacts them. 

• If you have one of these thesis statements after a first draft, go to your body paragraphs to look for how you may have better defined the word fast and how you narrowed down "win." Then go back and modify that thesis statement with clearer answers!

• Best of the three: The 'tortoise and the hare' fable taught me mental and physical endurance, which has helped me in school and at work. 

• This writer provides the clearest focus for the essay, and we look forward to seeing how they 'prove' that the fable taught them how to do well in those two places in those two ways!

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Thesis subtopics do the following:

• Develop the thesis point

• The thesis is the whole car; the subtopics are the car door, tires, steering wheel, etc.!

• 'Show up' in introduction

• Either in thesis statement or introduced as part of the contextual information provided in the entire opening paragraph....

• Each subtopic is then reproduced as a topic sentence of a body paragraph. By "reproduced," we do not mean that you simply re-use the same sentences. We want new sentences that add new information to an idea that was already laid out. 

To generate starter subtopics (before you write an essay draft), here are some (only some) things that strong essayists do to organize their messy thoughts:

• Make a list of ideas you see represented in your text. For the myth, write down quick little ideas:
• 'tortoise and the hare'
• cockiness isn't a skill
• fast isn't always quality
• fast does not equate to best
• endurance matters

• Make a list of things that you see repeated throughout a text. Actions, words, images, etc. For your first 002 essay, you need to do a lot of self-reflection of your behavior/character. What are situations in which you've acted a certain way consistently?

• Then, ask critical questions on those simple patterns you see.

• For example:  1. Calculus senior year--I passed because I spent hours longer doing all assignments. 2. My first job at Goodburger--where Johnny got fired for undercooking fries and burgers so he could 'chill out."

• Be Socrates. Be curious. One critical question on the text should lead to answers with more questions. 

• For example: 

• If the hare myth emphasizes endurance is a skill that leads to success, then how have I showed endurance in my life.  

• Answer: My Calculus course was really difficult, so I spent double the time my friends did on the work. I passed; some of them didn't.  

• Question that spawns from that: What were some of the doubts that entered your mind as you did your homework? Were these routine? How did you push through them?

• ...and so on down the rabbit hole of critical thinking!

• From all of that work (and other things), make a list of three to four big ideas you feel are related and fit together. This is both hard and easy. You must be willing to think critically about the text, your own beliefs, and decide the best set of directions for your essay. 

• In narrowing down your body paragraphs to 3-4 subtopics, you have to decide which ones are repetitive, which ones are most relevant to thesis, which ones show the most variety, etc. Your job is to give a dynamic set of directions.