If you are a college student, this post is for you.
Is your paper longer than the word limit? Is your thesis statement just a list of points you plan to cover in the body paragraphs (i.e., “listy”)? Do you have a gut sense that the paper’s structure might be “off”?
Below is some advice I just sent to students. In fact, I wrote it in response to a student who’d asked for feedback on a draft of their final paper.
Each paragraph needs to begin with its point, and each should have just one. Here are a few strategies on how to reorganize a paper. Doing these things often leads to a better thesis statement because they force the writer to closely examine the steps in their argument.
- Start by pasting just the first sentence of each paragraph into a blank document.
- Read over the list of sentences to see if the argument can be gotten from them alone.
- Any gaps in the logic point to structural weaknesses in the overall essay.
- Go through each paragraph with two differently colored highlighters. Use one color to highlight each key point you want the reader to take from that paragraph. Use the other to highlight evidence (including argumentation) in favor of key points. If there is more than one key point in a paragraph, the paragraph needs to be broken up, and the essay may need to be re-planned.