Writing Analytically, 6th Edition - Rosenwasser, David & Stephen, Jill [146]
Revision Strategy 7: Constellate the evidence to experiment with alternative thesis options. Notice how the hypothetical revision we’ve been producing has made use of looking for difference within similarity to explore alternative ways of connecting the evidence—a selected set of zooms—into an overall explanation. We call this activity constellating the evidence: like the imaginary lines that connect real stars into a recognizable shape, your thinking configures the examples into some larger meaning. In this case, instead of repeatedly concluding that the gods destroy humans when humans fail to make them happy, the writer might be on his way to a thesis about the relative optimism or skepticism of the way the flood stories represent change.
Possible thesis #1: The flood stories propose the view that real change is necessarily apocalyptic rather than evolutionary.
Possible thesis #2: The flood stories present qualified optimism about the possibility of new starts.
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Try This 10.3: Describing Evidence
Have a conversation with yourself (on paper) about some piece of evidence you are studying. Start with the question we proposed for the student writer of the flood stories essay: What can be said with some certainty about this evidence? What, in other words, is clearly true of the data? What can be reported about it as fact without going on to interpretation of the facts?
This distinction between fact and interpretation can be a tricky one, but it is also essential because, if you can’t keep your data separate from what you’ve begun to think about them, you risk losing sight of the data altogether. Press yourself to keep answering the same question—What can be said with some certainty about this evidence? or a variant of the question, such as What’s clearly true of this evidence is.…
You may find it helpful to do this exercise with a partner or in a small group. If you work in a small group.If you work in a small group, have one member record the results as these emerge. You might also try this exercise as a freewrite and then share your results with others by reading aloud your list of facts or putting them on a blackboard along with other people’s results. Once you’ve assembled a list of what can fairly be stated as fact about your evidence, you are ready to start on some version of the question, What do these facts suggest? or What features of these data seem most to invite/require interpretation?
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DOING 10 ON 1: A STUDENT PAPER (GOOD BYE LENIN!)
The essay below is an exploratory draft on a film, using a single scene to generate its thinking. As you read the essay, watch how the writer uses 10 on 1. Unlike “Flood Stories,” in which the writer felt compelled to make all of his evidence fit a narrow thesis, here the writer repeatedly tests her tentative conclusions against the evidence until she arrives at a plausible working thesis that might organize the next draft.
Think of the working thesis as an ultimate So what?—the product of other, smaller interpretive leaps along the way. As we did in Chapter 6 Interpretation, we have written in the So what? prompt where the writer has used it to move from observation to implication to conclusions. Notice how the writer allows her evidence to complicate and stimulate her thinking rather than just confirm (corroborate) her general idea.
On the Edge: A Scene from Good Bye Lenin!
[1] The movie shows us Alex and Lara’s first date, which is to a sort of underground music club where the performers wear costumes made of plastic tubing and leather, and play loud