Put your thesis statement to work!

Source: Wikimedia Commons public domain photo
 (with text added by the author).

Almost everyone knows that an essay requires a thesis statement. To use an analogy, a thesis statement is to a persuasive (or expository) essay what a hypothesis is to a scientific experiment. But, just like a scientific hypothesis, a thesis statement must be modified if the evidence does not support it as originally written. Ultimately, you must craft your thesis statement to fit the available evidence, not the other way around. Never attempt to shoehorn evidence that doesn't fit so that it squeezes in to match your pre-existing thesis statement. To do so would be a corruption of the process.

These are some of the reasons why I prefer to use the term working thesis statement. This type of thesis statement is a self-declared work-in-progress, decidedly not carved into stone, and it can (and perhaps should) change as a writer conducts research to support his or her ideas. Writers frequently modify a thesis statement while writing successive drafts, but this process of exploration and revision of ideas is kept hidden from view in early drafts and in the research process. The final published draft will make it appear that a writer had been confident of his or her ideas from the get-go, but this confidence is a well-crafted mirage. A working thesis statement, in fact, is not even composed for any reader, but is instead written for you -- the writer. It's purpose is to help clarify and organize your own ideas so that you can begin thinking and researching. After all, writing is thinking. Nobody truly knows what their complex thoughts mean until they have hammered them into prose.

Now, if during this drafting and researching process, evidence that you uncover persuades you to modify (or even refute) a long-held, cherished belief, will some people accuse you of hypocrisy, of being a "flip-flopper"? Sure. But ignore them and remain open-minded to change. Like Ralph Waldo Emerson reminds us in his essay "Self-Reliance" about the importance of being a nonconformist: "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds." Instead of being foolishly consistent and frightened by the specter of change, conduct careful, unbiased research and put your thesis statement to work.

© 2014 Bob Dial.  All rights reserved.