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Generating: Thesis and Themes The Direction of Your Interest Clarifying your particular approach to the reader and to the material gives you a sense of the scope of your project. Estimating the scale gives you a sense of how to organize general ideas, specific informtion, and representative examples into a consistent, balanced structure within your timetable. On this foundation, a provisional thesis, including because-clauses, provides a framework for gathering and sifting the material.
The provisional thesis for a research writing project is rougher and more malleable than that of an exam essay or an urgent position paper: it is less an answer and more a means of driving questions into the open for your consideration. In research writing, concepts mature over time. Generating a provisional thesis and condensed because-clauses is an efficient way to begin your search. Whether you have been assigned a topic or choose your own, whether you already know a good deal about it or nothing at all, it makes sense to put your own interest in the subject into words at the start. You have at least three major aims: getting the project done well, on time; finding answers to questions and finding new questions to consider; and enlarging your capacity to discover and present information. A provisional thesis reflects each of these goals, providing the basis for both the research writing process and product, and your own developing writing policy. You may begin, as many scientists and artists do, by transforming a hunch, or an instinct, or a conviction into a provisional thesis to be tested or transformed in the material. You might want to discover where your interest leads by freewriting about the question. You might want to talk through the topic with a careful listener, to discover what you do and don't know, and what you think you need to know. The object is to take direction from your own interests and your own style of learning so that you can make use of every interview, every experiment, every book and article you read. With QUICK WRITING PROCESS, the process of doing research is not divorced from the process of writing. Gathering and filtering material is done within the framework of assembling it for presentation to the reader. On the foundation of preparation and planning, generating a provisional thesis enables you to proceed on two levels simultaneously: you are constantly learning as you prepare to teach the reader what you have learned. Given the rarity of authentic writing at every level of education, it is not surprising that few people pursue research projects with any sense of pleasure or confidence. They rush into research with a kind of anxious energy and then bog down in confusion or lack of direction. Or they may discover in the middle of a rough draft that they have gathered information on an aspect of the topic that is tangential to the meaning they have begun to read back from their analysis. But a provisional thesis gives you a system for comparing material with your becauseclauses on two levels: what you are looking for, and what you want to say about it. In the course of your research, the original clauses may transform or deepen or be replaced by new ones specifically related to your developing interests. You may find that your provisional thesis is incomplete or too narrow. Clarifying the direction of your interests at the start makes these discoveries an organic part of the research process itself You make the most of what you know in order to find out what you don't know, collecting and comparing data to construct meaning. The provisional thesis is disposable; it exists to give direction and a basis for comparison. But the process of generating the provisional thesis and because-clauses strengthens the whole project. Transforming a hunch, a feeling, or a conviction into a provisional thesis is at the heart of almost everything we write. The provisional thesis simply brings these hunches, feelings, and convictions to a conscious level and fits words to them to be tested in the material. The thesis is not a magnet that inexorably draws material to it, but a compass to orient the writer in relation to it. In some cases, the thesis need serve only that function; in others, it will sustain the whole project and lead to new ones. You may find that your original feelings on the subject were based on too little evidence, or were too fragile to withstand analysis. You then construct a new thesis, adapted to the material you are gathering. Or you may find that your original hunch, although stated too simply, was a good one, leading to interesting questions which direct your search more efficiently. If your assigned research topic is dull or narrow, do a directed freewriting on the subject, generating thoughts and ideas for about ten or fifteen minutes without regard to the quality of the writing. Don't edit, don't go back, and don't stop writing. Freewriting helps you avoid selfcensorship: when you read over what you have written, you will find ideas, feelings, and questions that point you in the direction of your own interest. If your topic is overwhelmingly interesting, a directed freewriting will protect you from feeling swamped, and will lead you to a manageable thesis to be tested in the material. Open assignments or articles can be especially difficult. Free to choose a topic, you may draw a blank, or feel overwhelmed. In that case, talking through the requirements of the project will help you establish reasonable boundaries. Talk-throughs serve some of the same purposes as directed freewritings, but go further. If you discuss an assignment with a willing listener for an hour, you will find some issues that interest you: you'll hear the interest in your voice, or your listener will point it out to you. You will hear, too, your own frustrations and confusions. As you answer your listener's questions you will begin to shape your own ideas, and your own method of investigation. If you discover paradoxes and contradictions early in the project, these will lead you to new paths of inquiry, rather than blocking your way in an avalanche of anxiety later on. If your listener takes notes for you, or if you use a tape recorder, you can keep track of the questions, the con- nections, the examples you uncover during your conversation. Although the goal of a talk-through is to come up with a provisional question and some possible answers, you may find, in addition, that you have generated some material for your beginning, middle, or end, and perhaps a sense of a larger perspective for you and your reader. Freewritings and talk-throughs are absorbing and effortless, and their yield is disproportionately large for a writer's investment. Both furnish the inexperienced writer with some of the advantages of professional writers who keep journals, or establish lifelong files of notes, or habitually air their work in discussions with friends and colleagues. Most people are cut off from this kind of nourishment. They don't keep track of their thoughts and interests on a wide variety of subjects systematically, and they don't get much help from others. Often, the most vivid insight people have into the research writing process is when it goes wrong: the dishonest work of an investigative journalist, a research scientist, or a staff writer. Overburdened teachers give less and less feedback on student papers; insecure students don't often seek out busy professors in office hours; and supervisors at work don't know what to say to help improve the draft of a report. But without such nourishment, research projects can be isolating and exhausting, depriving the writer of the pleasure of learning and teaching. Watson The Double Helix shows how productive the continual dialogue between colleagues can be. Talking and writing about the questions and tentative answers will sustain the energy of any research writing project. Research writing that is free of the pressure of time, and not directed toward a grade, a promotion, or a grant is a unique pleasure. It is a kind of freedom that has become increasingly rare, not only in school but at work and in the scholarly professions. Usually, only those people who have made the choice (with all its attendant sacrifices) to devote their lives to research experience it. There are people who do research but who have not been able to write about it with satisfaction. There are people who can write about other people's research, but who have not been able to sustain their own. Yet anyone can link a sense of discovery with the power of presentation if they proceed with common sense in a systematic way. Once you have constructed the QUICK WRITING PROCESS provisional thesis, you can begin gathering material efficiently. Discovering and Developing Material Let us say that you are under pressure to write about research on an assigned topic. By transforming a hunch, or adapting the question to your own interests through a focused freewriting, or talking through the subject first, you have found a direction into the material that you have put into words as a provisional thesis. People usually begin to gather sources through a course reading list or a bibliography in a text. They may get an overall sense of a subject by reading an encyclopedia article. You will certainly need to search the card catalog, the entries in the reference bibliographies in the field, and the guides to current periodicals and books. A reference librarian can direct you to these standard sources, and there are handbooks that list them in useful categories. But your provisional thesis enables you to begin your research in a more personal way by conducting you, through the card catalog, to the appropriate library shelves for some purposeful browsing. Experienced research writers are inveterate browsers. They constantly gather information, whether or not it is immediately useful, and develop their own systems for keeping track of it. A science writer, for example, will have file cabinets full of notes and articles on several subjects of interest which may or may not lead to articles or books. This kind of specialized, personal research file (easily indexed now with a personal computer) gives the professional writer a place to start, the impetus to explore a subject thoroughly, and a profile of his or her own interests. But such a file is built up over time as a lifelong professional resource. For almost everyone else, getting started is hard, and taking down specific titles at the card catalog and from indexes to literature is a tedious, often frustrating way to begin. If, instead, you use the catalog to discover where to look, in general, you have at your command a library within a library, devoted entirely to your subject and topics related to it. This focused browsing gives you some of the freedom of the unpressured, experienced researcher. You will discover articles and books that help you make connections and direct you to other helpful books. Because you can survey a whole range of related readings at the shelves, you deepen your sense of your subject. By examining the most recent books, you will get an immediate sense of the present context for the issue, and this sense can be augmented by browsing through the latest journals in the field. As with talking through a subject, there is no great investment of time or energy in this purposeful browsing among the stacks and periodical shelves. A few hours will put you in contact with the subject in a personal way that allows you to make practical choices. You will find books you want to read thoroughly. You will take direction from the bibliographies of some of the books on the shelves and immediately seek out references that seem especially interesting. You can pass over books that are derivative, sketchy, or too general for your purposes. Later on, as your knowledge of the subject matures, you will come back to the library with specific needs in mind, books or articles you want to consult, questions you need to answer. But to start, you will find interesting passages, approaches, and writers; and finding them on your own through unhurried browsing increases your involvement and confidence. It's an unexpected pleasure at the beginning of a research writing project, more efficient and more wholesome than tracking down a few specific titles from a fistful of call number slips that may or may not be what you need. Reading the material you have gathered, you will note immediately what intrinsically interests you and what is related to your provisional thesis. These may be two different functions at first, but both are important in efficient research writing. Since you have an idea, a hypothesis to test in the material, you can pursue evidence and examples that support or refute some part of your thesis. But in the long run, you are discovering and refining the because-clauses of your eventual final thesis in the material. You want to be open to new ideas, or a more useful approach, or a more appropriate thesis in light of your developing interests. Record whatever strikes you as really interesting, whether or not you can see its immediate relevance. This is not as complicated as you may think. You want to establish your own level of discourse for the project: the boundaries for your hypothesis, evidence, generalizations, and conclusions. Although you have a sense of the scope, scale, and style of the project, you can't be precise about these boundaries at the start. As you read, you continually adjust them to include as much as you can find of the richest material. This continuous concentration on a thesis, and your openness to new ideas, provides more than enough good material. A simple way to keep track of it is through a research journal, on the model of a scientist's lab notebook or an artist's working diary. The Research Journal: Emerging Themes Students required to write research papers are often asked to deliver a series of products to their teacher: the selection of the topic, an outline, a bibliography, note cards, and the rough and final drafts. In theory, each stage is both a demonstration of work done, and an opportunity for guidance, for mid-course corrections. But in practice, each stage becomes a hurdle in itself rather than part of a continuous process of discovery and presentation. The criterion for success at each stage might be the length of an outline, the number of sources, the thickness of the pack of note cards. But there is usually little interaction between student and teacher about how ideas mature into an argument. The whole process degenerates from a formal exercise to a frustrating ritual. That's why it is important, when teaching yourself to do efficient, authentic research writing, to look for ideas--both those of the writers you read, and your own. Make your reading notes as simple as possible: not full quotations, or underlined paragraphs, but key words or phrases, a couple of sentences, the essence of what interests you either for itself, or because it relates to your thesis. Record the location so you can go back to it for a quotation or a reference. If you are reading an article, head a note card with the bibliographic material you'll need later, and then keep track of what interests you page by page, in as few words as possible. As they accumulate, your notes become a running record of your interest in the subject. Review your notes periodically. This will enable you to discover your own unique insights, the concepts and connections you will want to shape and order for your reader. As you gather more and more material, these periodic reviews will reveal emerging themes that support, deepen, or redirect your provisional thesis. If you add a commentary in your notes about these emerging themes (again, in a few words), you build the inner structure of your argument, the blocks of language for your raw draft. In essence, this series of periodic reviews is the research writer's version of generating because-clauses, only now you construct them from the material itself, and from your ideas about that material. Most people have some sort of a system for taking notes, but this periodic review to build emerging themes allows you to filter material in a way that broadens and deepens your understanding of your subject and sharpens your own thesis within it. Instead of simply gathering as much material as you can within the limits of time and space, you track ideas as you go along, and develop your own view of the importance of those ideas. This makes the project intensely personal and unique, and this intensity constantly renews your momentum and confidence. Analyzing the Research Journal: Theme-Families You have notes and comments keyed to a list of emerging themes in your research journal. As you read, some of these themes gather a large number of references, others only a few. Analyzing these themefamilies is analogous to analyzing the because-clauses freely generated to fit a provisional thesis. You select what counts, what keeps your interest, what draws the most energy and feeling out of you for the project. You leave behind whatever is tangential, indirect, or dull. You will discover gaps in your argument, and issues that need further examination. This is the time for focused research to balance, amplify, or illuminate an idea, or to develop the argument for the "other side." Now you return to the library with specific needs: a book or an article that may be useful; an idea that must be tested; interpretations you need to consider or reconsider for your own argument. When you have completed this final research, you have comprehensive notes and comments selected for their relevance to the main ideas of your project. The Argument-Outline: An Index to Meaning Some of the theme-families can be combined to make a major point in your argument. Others can be grouped together to form a whole section of interrelated ideas, evidence, and interpretation. The range of material will run from specific to general. This range will contribute to shaping your argument-outline around the progression from the simplest to the most complicated ideas. Once you have established the order of your raw draft, you read back from it a fuller thesis, which becomes the full introduction of your paper. With research writing, the argument-oudine is not only the pattern for the raw draft but, with the attendant references in your notes for each theme, an index to meaning. You can order the notes and comments for each separate point in your argument, and then write freely with confidence. You do not need to move through your outline in order. If you choose to write the most complicated part of your argument first, to give it adequate time and energy, you can arrange the notes for that section and start writing. The outline is at hand; you needn't worry that you will lose your way or bog down. The goal of the raw draft, after all, is to get a sense of the whole paper. Then you can begin to cut. |