Your Thesis can Smell your Fear

Contributed by Christopher Williams on 17 September 2006 at 23:24

So. Thesis writing is hard. It is, in fact, so difficult that I spent a half-hour staring at my keyboard trying to start this blog entry. This post doesn't even have a real thesis! So no one can blame you if you have trouble writing a thesis. But we may be able to help.

There are two ways to approach the secrets of the thesis.

The first is philosophical. What is the purpose of the thesis? What makes a good one? These are vaguer questions than they may seem at first, since there are no concrete answers. No one thing makes for a good thesis in every circumstance. There are, however, certain functions that theses typically perform in a paper. If a thesis fails to perform these functions, it probably fails as a thesis.

1. A thesis should begin to put forth your idea.
2. A thesis should foreshadow your arguments.
3. A thesis should attract a reader’s attention.

I leave these functions with very general phrasing so that I do not limit their application to varied papers with varied needs. How you interpret these functions will depend on your paper, your writing style, and the requirements of your assignment. Philosophically speaking, I cannot offer you any solid rules to thesis writing. You just have to be acutely aware of the reasons why you are writing a thesis in the first place. Understanding the purpose of your thesis will help you write a better one.

The philosophical approach is useful in the long-term perspective of your development as a writer. However, developing an acute awareness of a subtle and difficult part of writing is not going to help you if you have a paper due tomorrow. It's just not practical in that time-frame. This brings me to the pragmatic approach.

Even when presenting pragmatic advice, I won't claim that anything I say is a hard-and-fast rule. You'll have to judge for yourself the merits of my advice as you write. Now, pragmatically speaking, I think that if you focus on creating an interesting thesis, one that attracts a reader's attention, you will probably end up doing a fine job of fulfilling the philosophical requirements listed above. You’re free to prove me wrong, but I don’t recommend it.

1. Be specific. Lots of people think that Old Yeller was a "good" book, but "good" is not very specific about why people liked the book. Use precise language in your thesis (and in all your writing). You will not only write a better* thesis, but you may also have an easier time with the rest of your argument, since you've already articulated it so carefully.
2. Use interesting language. Part of this is using precise language, as in the point above. But also, don't bore your readers with constant repetition of dreary vocabulary. Write interesting words when you can. (Albeit gratifying, do not overindulge this tendency lest you extirpate all prospect of comprehension - see what I mean?) Use action verbs, too. Things are more interesting when they are happening.
3. Keep it simple. Complex sentence structure may be interesting, but it can bury your thoughts in a shroud of clauses. If you want to catch attention, a short, strong sentence can be quite powerful.
4. For some practical examples of theses, I recommend going to the progression of theses on our Wiki.

*Note that "better" is, itself, an insufficiently specific word as used here. How is the thesis better? What word would describe the improvement to the thesis more precisely? How would using that word change the impact of the sentence?

Hopefully, this has been helpful. We'll be back next week with more writing advice, so check back soon. And if you don't mind, leave us some comments at the bottom of this page. I'm interested in how many people are reading this. If you are reading, well, tell your friends, neighbors, and loved ones to come read, too. And if you want advice on anything in particular, just leave a comment, and we'll see what we can do.

Here's your bad joke:
Q: What did the Roman Emperor say to his victims just before drowning them?
A: You who are about to die, we solute you!

Until next week, good luck writing.

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  • 1
    Got Gravatars?

    abc said

    On 20 October 2006 at 13:01

    I thought you meant a master's or Ph.D. thesis not a thesis statement for a paper.

  • 2
    Got Gravatars?

    Christopher Williams said

    On 20 October 2006 at 14:04

    I'm pretty sure that Master's Theses can smell fear, too. I haven't written one yet, however, so I'm not really in a position to comment on the process.

    The Writing Center (which I believe to be in Bellflower) employs graduate students who may be more helpful than this post, depending on your topic of interest. If you sign into TutorTrac (see link at top of page), there's a phone number you can call to reach the Writing Center and ask them.

    Thanks for commenting, at any rate. It's good to know that someone is reading this.

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