Working Thesis and Outline

This assignment is designed to help you further articulate your working thesis for your essay and consider how you might develop or refine it as you begin writing.

Thesis

Your essay should have a clear, specific working thesis – a main complex claim you explore and develop in the essay – to help focus your topic. In a few sentences, articulate your thesis at the top of your outline.

Remember that a “working” thesis means that this idea can and will change as you write your essay. What your write now is enough to get your paper started and for your initial readers to see the focused claim guiding your discussion in the paper.

Writing the Outline

Draft a bird’s-eye-view of how you might develop the discussion of your initial claim or guiding question. Doing an outline, before writing your draft, should help you see how might organize your ideas and evidence – be it examples, observations, interviews, or secondary sources. This is supposed to help you brainstorm and give you a way to possibly begin the first draft. You are not, however, tied to your outline once you start writing; this assignment will hopefully be useful in developing your writing, not shutting it down.

You may not be able to deal with every aspect of your paper in detail right now, but do think in terms of:

• an introduction, leading readers to your initial claim or question for the paper (basically this is the thinking problem or the “catalyst” getting the essay set up for further analysis, discussion, and research).
• providing specific evidence (examples, sources, details) to help you develop analysis and evolve your idea/theory (both primary and secondary sources play a part in this)
• providing context for your readers by discussing what others have said about your topic
• how your thesis evolves (and/or the way you answer your guiding question)
• a conclusion that offers readers a take-away idea or theory – one that doesn’t just repeat what you’ve already in the paper, nor suddenly introduce a new topic. Of course, you may not be ready for this portion yet.

Assignment Requirements:

• Your working thesis and essay outline is due via Canvas. It should offer a strong, working thesis at the top of your outline that shows an attempt at adhering to the thesis features discussed in class and in our Canvas writing handbook.
• You should offer an outline which roughly organizes the development/examination of your thesis using short, concise complete sentences and a system of numbers and letters which show levels of generality.

Guidelines for constructing an outline:

1. Put the thesis at the top
2. Make items at the same level of generality as parallel as possible.
3. Use sentences or phrases
4. Use the conventional system of numbers and letters for the levels of generality.
5. Be flexible; be prepared to change your outline as your drafts evolve.

Here are some questions to help you offer ideas in outline form:

Introduction:

• What is the “big, burning question” or the hypothesis/initial claim this paper will explore?
• Why is it important or interesting?
• What might be an interesting way to introduce your readers to your essay topic?

Providing a context to help your readers understand the issue:

• What have other writers said about this topic? How does it relate to your claim or question?
• What information do readers need to understand the context of this idea/issue/subject?
• What evidence (details, examples, experiences) can help readers see or understand this idea or subject?

Sharing and analyzing the information you’ve discovered:

• What evidence will you look at to explore your guiding claim or question?
• What evidence do you find most interesting?

Answering “so what? – making your voice/conclusion clear:

• How might you answer your opening question or refine the claim/thesis you started with?
• What do you want your readers to be thinking about or better understand after they read this paper?

Your focus should be on developing a new idea or new insight, gained by your analysis/study, work with source material, and examination of multiple perspectives. The take-away of your paper should try to avoid just providing an opinion (for/against, pro/con). Instead, push yourself to develop a nuanced theory or an idea that moves beyond just taking a position or pushing an opinion.