It is a truth universally acknowledged that a writer, confronted with a looming deadline, will be in desperate want of a good thesis statement. Everyone—from 5th graders to college freshmen to professors—experiences a main idea meltdown at one point or another. Maybe it’s at the beginning ("Am I explaining or arguing?"), or maybe it’s later in the writing process ("Did I bite off more than I can chew?"), or maybe you arrive at your counter argument and quickly descend into existential crisis ("Wait a minute…what do I even believe anymore??").
Why do we have so much anxiety around these pesky little sentences?
Let’s state the obvious: a good thesis is incredibly important, for both the reader and the writer.
For the reader, it summarizes the central argument—what you’re writing about, what your take on it is, and why they should care. For you as the writer, it functions as a mini-outline, a guide you can return to after each sentence, keeping your thought train on track (choo-choo).
Plus, writing a good thesis isn’t easy—it’s a task that requires a huge amount of higher-order thinking.
If you’re familiar with Bloom’s Taxonomy, you know that analysis, synthesis, and evaluation—things essays often ask us to do!—are pretty far up on the cognitive food chain. Yes, we need to understand the rhyme scheme of a Frost poem, but we also need to communicate why it matters. Particularly hairy assignments (like AP exams) might ask us to think across texts or draw on domain-specific knowledge (of a certain historical era, for example, or literary genre).
Of course, that’s only the tip of the iceberg. We also have to think about language, audience, and essay structure. A thesis has to be broad enough to capture the entirety of an argument, yet clear and specific enough to avoid confusing the reader.
So, how do you write a thesis that's actually good?
Like so many things in the writing realm, there is no one-size-fits-all magic formula for writing a thesis.
Different genres call for different types of thesis statements, different teachers have different grading criteria. Rubrics are both clinical and vague: what does it mean to “establish” a “specific” and “defensible” claim? What is a “premise to be maintained or proved”? And more pressingly—how do I do that?
Here’s the good news: thesis statements are everywhere.
Sleuthing them out for yourself—in opinion columns and magazine reviews, scientific papers and narrative essays—can help you bootstrap your own practical, grassroots thesis how-to guide. Let’s look at an example together:
From “Why Taylor Swift Hasn’t Changed” by David Sims (The Atlantic, 2014)
Sims’s review of Taylor Swift’s single “Out of the Woods” is a good reminder that any art or music review has its roots in the literary analysis essay. Here’s his thesis:
What’s fascinating, though, is that even as Swift pulls from a whole new sonic palette, “Out of the Woods” feels like a spiritual successor to “Tim McGraw.” She has performed a rare pop feat—trendily redoing her sound but maintaining her distinct identity.
Lucky for us, this thesis happens exactly where we expect it: after his introductory paragraph. Let’s break it down:
- His topic: Swift’s recent single.
- His take on it: While her new song sounds really different, it’s still on brand.
- Why we should care: This is trickier–it’s implied, rather than stated explicitly. But the short phrase “rare pop feat” points us to a broader world (pop culture and music) and qualifies Swift’s sonic transformation as uncommon, and thus worthy of our attention. Word choice helps him double down: rare further intensifies feat, already an act of skill, endurance, or ingenuity.
But wait, what about that other sentence? Is “what’s fascinating…” part of the introduction, or do we have a two-sentence thesis on our hands?
Honestly, what we call it doesn’t really matter. What’s important is what it does: it names the two sources he’ll use to prove his central idea (AKA his thesis) and it clues the reader into the article’s organizational structure. Since he’s examining the differences (“trendily redoing her sound”) and similarities (“maintaining her distinct identity”) between two singles (“Out of the Woods” and “Tim McGraw”), we can probably expect some compare and contrast moves.
This thesis also has what we call good scope. It’s very specific in certain ways: he’s chosen two songs, rather than all of her music. The delicious ambiguity of “sonic palette,” however, gives Sims room to dive into any number of things—maybe lyrics, or instrumentation, or tempo. It’s a little similar to using a phrase like “figurative language.” You’re certainly not going to talk about plot or rhyme scheme, but you might choose to highlight a few different types of figurative language—metaphor, personification, etc.
Now, if we put our teacher hats on, we could work backwards and imagine a prompt for this article:
Write an essay that compares one or more craft elements across two texts by the same author. Make sure to state a specific, defendable thesis supported by evidence and interpretation.
If you get stuck, put your essay down. Peruse the New York Times Books column. Or skim album reviews from Rolling Stone. Make yourself a database of thesis statements. Then, compare them to your rubric for a good thesis. How can these examples help you further develop your own?
In Part 2, we’ll look at a few more examples and talk about thesis statement revision. Spoiler alert: it’s crucial part of writing a thesis!
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