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how do you come up with an interesting
worthwhile argument
otherwise known as a thesis for your
essay in other words how do you go from
whatever it is you're trying to write
about to an argument that both you
and your reader would actually find
valid interesting
and persuasive my name is lucia zaitseva
and i teach writing at harvard
university
i'm also the founder of ivywright and in
today's video i'm going over the top
three things you need to keep in mind
so you can go from simply absorbing
information
passively from others to actually
producing original insights of your own
the first step and some of you are not
going to like this is to actually reread
and re-examine
whatever it is you're trying to write
about if you read a poem or short story
or an essay
go ahead and reread it if you read a
longer work
skim the important parts and i hope you
took good notes
re-watch the film study the data again
look at the painting
after all no worthwhile insight comes
from looking at something just once
right
you should do this a minimum of one time
before you actually start writing
and keep in mind that you're going to
end up revisiting whatever it is you're
writing about a bunch of times in the
process
once you've done that something about
what you've read should strike you as
strange
interesting or noteworthy we'll call
that thing a snag
you know like if you put on your
favorite sweater only to discover that
there's a loose thread because maybe you
got stuck on a nail somewhere
a snag is something that makes you want
to look again because it catches your
attention
if you're writing about a literary text
it might be a really strange word choice
to describe a character or
a particularly striking metaphor that
catches you off guard
if you're writing about an essay or
scholarly text it might be a claim you
don't think
is fully substantiated or maybe an
internal contradiction
if you're working with data and this
could be historical
statistical you name it it could be
something in the data set that just
doesn't make sense
like maybe in a certain population you
find
a lower incidence of a disease than you
would expect or
perhaps in a primary historical document
you see an attitude reflected that
contradicts the popularly held attitude
you thought people
had at the time all of those are snags
and if you think about it the metaphor
is really an apt one because if you pull
on the loose thread
the whole sweater is gonna come apart or
to put it another way
you'll unravel whatever mystery it is
that you've stumbled upon
whatever you notice trust that unless
you're just confused about the evidence
you're probably on to something
if on the other hand your question can
be answered by just studying the source
a little bit more carefully
then you probably need to dig a little
bit deeper let's assume you have
the next step is to ask a question we
talked a little bit about analytical
questions in last week's video
which i'll link here and we'll talk
about them again
in next week's video but here are some
examples based on the snags we just saw
a moment ago
and a few new ones in isaac babel's
short story my first goose
why does the narrator describe the army
commander's legs
as girls sheave to the neck and shining
riding boots
how can we draw the line between illness
and
simple divergence from the norm in
harvard professor
michael sandell's argument about the
proper uses of genetic enhancement
is waving patent protection for the
covid19 vaccine an effective solution to
unequal access
you'll notice that all of these
questions are genuine open-ended
questions and they're pretty interesting
too
the first one opens up a portal into
questions of
masculinity and belonging in the writing
of one of the greatest
russian authors of the 20th century the
second helps us think about a pressing
problem waiting just around the bend of
human progress
and the third one well need i really say
more
the answer to the question you come up
with as a result of studying the source
carefully trusting your gut
and posing your curiosity or confusion
as a question
will be your thesis easy right
if you work this way though you'll be so
much more likely to come up with a
genuinely interesting thesis
that you actually want to write and
other people want to read in next week's
video we'll go over the nitty-gritty
details of how to evaluate the answer to
your question
once you've actually got it this is
what's called the thesis
test have you encountered other helpful
ways for coming up with a thesis
let me know down in the comments below
and like and subscribe to the channel if
you found this video helpful
so you'll know when i come out with the
next one see you next time
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