Writing Analytically, 6th Edition - Rosenwasser, David & Stephen, Jill [149]
To find the most revealing piece or feature of the evidence, keep asking yourself, “What can I say with some certainty about the evidence?” If you continually rehearse the facts, you are less likely to let an early idea blind you to subsequent evidence.
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Assignment: Writing a Paper Using the 10 on 1 Template
Write a paper in which you do 10 on 1 with a single representative example of something you are trying to think more carefully about. The template should work with virtually any content. It could be an in-depth look at a particular kind of film (vampire films or feel-good sports stories or tragic death at an early age films), or the advertisements for a particular product (cars, make-up, hair care, sports equipment, suntan lotion). It could be a more academic subject: economic stimulus packages, government bail-outs, intelligence tests, failed revolutions, successful fascist dictatorships. You might choose a representative passage from a story or a representative story from a volume of stories by a single author—or a representative poem from a short volume of poetry or a representative passage from a nonfiction book or article. It could be a passage from a favorite columnist or a single representative song from a CD. It could be a single scene or moment or character from a film or play or other performance. It could be one picture or work of art that is representative of a larger exhibit.
Brainstorm your “1” on the page, making observations and asking, So what? Draw out as much meaning as possible from your representative example. Go for depth. Then use this example as a lens for viewing similar examples. Remember to use the template in the previous section as a model for organizing the paper.
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Chapter 11
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Making a Thesis Evolve
THIS CHAPTER IS AT THE HEART of what we have to say about essay writing, especially about the function of thesis statements. The chapter argues that even in a final draft a thesis develops through successive complications; it doesn’t remain static, as people tend to believe. Even in cases such as the report format of the natural and social sciences, where the thesis itself cannot change, there is still development between the beginning of the paper and the end. The thesis, usually called a hypothesis, is tested in various ways in order to evaluate its adequacy.
Formulating a claim, seeking conflicting evidence, and then using these conflicts to revise the claim is a primary movement of mind in analytical writing. Here’s the mantra: the complications you encounter are an opportunity to make your thesis evolve, not a problem. An evolving thesis is one that responds more fully and accurately to evidence.
This chapter contains one heuristic, Six Steps for Making a Thesis Evolve Through Successive Complications. Here is a skeletal version of this process, which the chapter will demonstrate and define in more detail.
SIX STEPS FOR MAKING A THESIS EVOLVE THROUGH SUCCESSIVE COMPLICATIONS
Formulate an idea about your subject, a working thesis.
See how far you can make this thesis go in accounting for confirming evidence.
Locate evidence that is not adequately accounted for by the thesis.
Make explicit the apparent mismatch between the thesis and selected evidence, asking and answering “so what?”
Reshape your claim to accommodate the evidence that hasn’t fit.
Repeat steps 2, 3, 4, and 5 several times.
Your ability to discover ideas and improve on them in revision, as we’ve argued in the preceding chapters, depends largely on your attitude toward evidence—on your ability to use it as a means of testing and developing your ideas rather than just (statically) confirming and reasserting them.
MOVING FROM IDEA TO THESIS STATEMENT: WHAT A GOOD THESIS LOOKS LIKE
Considerable misunderstanding exists about thesis statements among students—and among many teachers. We have chosen to use the term “thesis” because, by and large, it is the most common