Do’s
1. Do write a thesis from the guts or that has a strong emotional connection to you and your audience (visceral).
2. Do write a thesis that is relevant to current events and make that relevance apparent.
3. Do write a thesis that is relevant to the human condition.
4. Do write a thesis that is born from discontent, anger, perplexity, and a hunger for making things right.
5. Do write a thesis that answers a compelling question you and your readers want answered.
6. Do write a thesis in a single sentence, followed by mapping components that support your argument.
7. Do emphasize argument over information whenever possible.
8. Do take intellectual risks and say that which us unsafe or contrarian or against the mainstream.
9.
Do write a thesis that results from you arduously exploring all sides
of the topic and had you changing your opinion umpteen times before you
committed to what you’re convinced is the most reasonable position.
10.
Do write a thesis that is crystal clear in your mind since you can
only write a powerful, clear essay if the thoughts inside your head are
clear and powerful.
Don’ts
1. Don’t write an easy thesis that is so self-evident or obvious
that to support it is a complete waste of time that will bore your
reader to tears, anguish, and resentment over your bovine effort.
2.
Don’t write a thesis that leads to a sermon in which you bloviate a
bunch of homilies, bromides, and truisms to your rankled reader.
3. Don’t write a thesis that is so broad and general that the only way to support it is with a 500-page book.
4.
Don’t write a thesis that you don’t understand or believe in because
your lack of conviction will give your paper a limp, soggy quality that
will depress both you and your reader.
5. Don’t write a thesis
that is cold, cerebral, and intellectually detached for this approach
will result in a frosty academic treatise with no vitality or fire to
inflame your readers’ interest.
6. Don’t write a thesis that is
ridiculous for ridiculous’ sake because, lacking in any vital ideas,
you’re desperate to pique and provoke your reader with lame gimmicks.
7.
Don’t write a thesis that “sounds good” but in truth bores the hell
out of you so that when you sit down to write your essay you cry and
curse your decision to enroll in a composition class.
8. Don’t
write a thesis for which there is no accessible research material so
that you’re left making up fictitious articles for your Works Cited
page.
9. Don’t write the same thesis that your friend wrote
because “he got an A” when in fact you have no emotional connection to
this carbon copy essay.
10. Don’t write a thesis that simply
echoes the same points of the essay you’re writing about, which results
in a summary of the essay, not an analysis.
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