5 Chapter Five: So What? Creating a Thesis Statement

Once you have a topic figured out along with your audience and purpose, and you’ve come up with some content, you need to decide what point you are trying to make about that topic. That’s the basis of a thesis statement. It’s the “So what?” of your topic. This “So what?” is present in any kind of writing: formal papers, essay question responses, emails, presentations, social media posts, proposals to clients. Every piece of writing needs a point.

Getting Started: Thinking about the Thesis Statement

In a paper, a thesis tends to be more formal and is ideally one complete sentence, defining the “So what?” of the paper.

For example, let’s say your topic is about difficulties high school students have when filling out the FAFSA (Free Application for Student Financial Aid) when they want to go to college.

So what?

What are you going to say about this topic? This might lead you to think about audience and purpose again.

Once you figure out your audience and purpose, then you can start thinking of your thesis.

So, let’s say your audience is a group of high school students who have divorced parents. Your purpose is to help them navigate communicating to their parents the requirements of the FAFSA.

Next, you can go back to your exploring and look for information, examples, evidence, and research that you collected. You might need to go back and look for more now that you really know your focus.

Finally, write a working thesis. “Working” means it’s a draft:

That’s a good start! As you continue throughout the writing process, your thesis will most likely change to fit the information and ideas that continue to develop.

Elements of a Good Thesis Statement

So, what makes a good working thesis? Ask yourself two major questions:

What makes a thesis statement interesting?

Being interesting doesn’t have to mean the writing is about mutant zombies who become cheerleaders for a professional football team (although that would be interesting!). The question to ask is “To whom is this interesting?” This means making sure your thesis is relevant to your audience. Is it meaningful? Can the audience connect to it or can you make them connect to it? For example, maybe your topic is worm composting. You decide your audience will be a local gardening club because the topic is interesting and relevant to that population. Your thesis, then, would draw more on how to make the topic interesting to that audience.

Maybe you are given an audience and purpose. You have a write a report and present it to your class and your purpose it to teach them something about the class topic (American Literature). You would want to find a topic that interests you and your audience and then create a thesis that will engage the audience as much as possible.

Sometimes, your audience is your nursing instructor or a client at work. Then you need to think about what their expectations are. You also need to think about what you know or what you can learn (through research). Find the intersection between those two things, and you will have a good thesis.

What makes a thesis statement specific?

Having a specific thesis means making sure your topic fits your writing assignment. Is it too broad or too narrow? Does the thesis fit the assignment or writing project? A thesis for an email to a potential employer, for example, needs to be focused because emails should be short and to the point:

Short, to the point. The rest of the email, then, would discuss this additional information.

Keep in mind that when writing a thesis, it’s very easy to go too broad:

Whoa! That’s way too big. People have written whole books on this topic! First of all, what is considered “young”? Which social media platform? What kind of essay will this be (informative? persuasive? cause and effect?)? Who is the audience? All of this will help you to limit your thesis and topic.

But you also need to be careful not to go too specific either. What about this thesis statement?

This is essentially a fact. There could be an additional sentence proving that statement using research, but there isn’t anywhere else to go with that statement.  How about this one?

• What are these new social media platforms? What are the older ones?
• What are the developers of the new platforms actually saying?
• How do they impact mental health, and how is the writer going to prove it?

Though you have questions, you also have a clear direction of where this essay is going. That’s a great sign that you have a solid thesis statement.

Using Thesis Statements to Stay Organized

Sometimes thesis statements give away the structure of the essay by listing not just the WHAT, but the WHY.

For example, the following is a good thesis:

It is focused, and it is arguable. It says WHAT should happen. We can take it a step further, though, by adding the WHY:

Ah ha! After the “because,” we have a list. That list not only answers why college students should take online classes, but those are also the topics for the body paragraphs that follow. Based on this thesis, we know that we’re going to read about these things in order in the rest of the essay:

There will be four paragraphs, and they will be in the same order as presented in the thesis statement. It’s handy to keep you organized as the writer, and it also helps the reader understand what they’re getting into with your essay.

Where Does the Thesis Statement Go in the Essay?

Generally, the thesis should be in your introduction, often toward the end of it, often the last sentence. This allows you to introduce the topic, give context to the subject and then narrow to your specific thesis, your what and why.

Keep in mind that once your thesis statement is given, everything in the body of the paper should be focused on supporting and developing it—nothing should go beyond it. That’s why you may sometimes need to rewrite your thesis several times as you are drafting and revising.

Quick Tips for Writing a Thesis Statement

A Formula for a Great Thesis

A good formula for creating a thesis statement looks something like this:

Still not sure if what you have is phrased well? You can think of it this way: a thesis should fit well into the following blank: “In this essay I say, ‘______.’”  But don’t use that phrase in your thesis–just say it!

Resources

“Developing Strong Thesis Statements.” Purdue University OWL, 2025, https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/general_writing/academic_writing/establishing_arguments/index.html.

“The Thesis Statement.” Capital Community College Guide to Grammar and Writing, 2004, https://www.guidetogrammar.org/grammar/composition/thesis.htm.

“Tips and Examples for Writing Thesis Statements.” Purdue University OWL, 2025, https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/general_writing/the_writing_process/thesis_statement_tips.html.