The Thesis Trident

copyright 2008 by Gary L. Pullman

Before writing an essay, give careful planning, both to the thesis (what you want to say--the claim that you are making about your essay's topic) and what you want to say about it (including the evidence you intend to present in support and development of the claim, or thesis). We saw how, in an earlier post, you can profit from brainstorming about your essay's topic in order to generate a thesis for it and details of support and development for the thesis. In this post, we are considering how outlining your topic can be helpful in supporting and developing a thesis.

In "A Three-Step Brainstorming Process," we learned how to use three simple steps to generate a thesis for any type of essay.

In this post, we introduce another simple, sure-fire way of generating a thesis for any type of essay, the Thesis Trident.

Contruct a trident like this:

At the top, write the essay's topic. In this case, the essay (a comparison-contrast essay) that deals with two movies, My Fair Lady and She's All That, so we write "My Fair Lady and She's All That" (without the quotation marks) at the top of the Thesis Trident:

My Fair Lady and She's All That

At the end of each point of the Thesis Trident, write one of the three related points that will make up your thesis' plan of development. Here, we have chosen these three points:

1. Bet
2. Antagonists' transformations
3. Protagonists' transformations

Therefore, we place one of these points at the end of each of the Thesis Trident's three points.

My Fair Lady and She's All That

Now, by reading in a counter-clockwise direction (around to the right, from the top to the bottom right side of the Thesis Trident) and inserting necessary words, such as a verb, any prepositions, conjubctions, articles, and other connecting words, we the Thesis Trident all but generates a thesis sentence for us:

In My Fair Lady and She's All That, bets result in the antafonists' transformations, which, in turn, lead to the protagonists' transformations.

Viola! You've generated a sound, clear, specific, three-point thesis sentence for a comparison-contrast essay concerning the bets between characters and the outcomes of those bets in these two movies. Again, the Thesis Trident can be used to generate a thesis sentence for any kind of essay.