How can you make your revised thesis more like this last version?

The Perfect Thesis:

The thesis of a review or comparison/contrast paper is very important: it can help you create a focused argument and give your reader a road map so she/he doesn’t get lost in the sea of points you are about to make. As in any paper, you will want to replace vague reports of your general topic (for example, “This paper will compare and contrast two pizza places,” or “Pepper’s and Amante are similar in some ways and different in others,” or “Pepper’s and Amante are similar in many ways, but they have one major difference”) with something more detailed and specific. For example, you might say, “Pepper’s and Amante have similar prices and ingredients, but their atmospheres and willingness to deliver set them apart.”

Be careful, though—although this thesis is fairly specific and does propose a simple argument (that atmosphere and delivery make the two pizza places different), your instructor will often be looking for a bit more analysis. In this case, the obvious question is “So what? Why should anyone care that Pepper’s and Amante are different in this way?” One might also wonder why the writer chose those two particular pizza places to compare—why not Papa John’s, Dominos, or Pizza Hut? Again, thinking about the context the class provides may help you answer such questions and make a stronger argument.

Here’s a revision of the thesis mentioned earlier:

Pepper’s and Amante both offer a greater variety of ingredients than other Chapel Hill/Carrboro pizza places (and than any of the national chains), but the funky, lively atmosphere at Pepper’s makes it a better place to give visiting friends and family a taste of local culture.  (“Comparing and Contrasting” University of North Carolina Writing Center)

How can you make your revised thesis more like this last version?

Compare and Contrast Essay Checklist

1. Have you chosen the best subject, one that will allow you depth and detail and keep you engaged? Have you drawn upon personal experience to add details?
2. Have you established ethos in the draft with specific details? Did you narrow the focus enough to allow for greater specifics? Do you feel you have been persuasive?              
3. Have you provided enough details for people unfamiliar with your subject?
4. Did you choose the best criteria for your comparison? What are the three most important traits of your subjects and how can you describe them?                   
5. Did you go beyond simple assessment of the subject “it was good or bad” to offer a range of commentary on the subject’s strengths and weaknesses?
6. Did you include enough evidence to support your assertions?
7. Have you thought about including a scene, a pattern of storytelling and description to engage the reader?
8. Did you maintain balance, honestly discussing both the positives and negatives? Did anything you wrote surprise you?
9. How do you plan to grab the reader’s interest in the lead paragraph? Have you thought about how to structure your essay?               
10. What makes for a good conclusion? Is your conclusion effective?                 
11. Did you include at least two sources using MLA citation? Did you cite them parenthetically inside the text?  Did you include a Works Cited page?               

Evaluation in a comparison/contrast involves three things:

1. Judgment: Something is good or bad, useful or not useful, relevant or not relevant, convincing or not convincing, worth doing or not worth doing or perhaps shades in between.
2. Criteria. These form the basis by which we judge whether something is good or bad.  Often our criteria are implicit, that is we aren’t even consciously aware of the criteria that informs judgments.  The more familiar we are with the thing—say cars, movies, or mystery novels—the more elaborate and sophisticated the criteria become.
3. Evidence. Criteria provide the principles for making a judgment, but evidence—specific details, observations, or facts about the thing itself—is what makes an evaluation persuasive.

Evaluative writing helps work from feeling outward toward reason, which will make your judgment persuasive to others and help shape your future judgments about other things.  We are surrounded by reviews

In a good review the writer blends judgments, criteria, and evidence seamlessly throughout.  Other tips:

• An essay is usually clear about categories. It’s easier to come up with convincing criteria to judge a narrower category than a broad general one (Instead of movies—films about space travel—narrowing down to two particular films—Aliens versus Firefly.)
• Reviews usually describe the thing they evaluate. Summarizing and showing may be invaluable, depending on how much knowledge your reader may have.
• Evaluation criteria are matched to purpose, category, and audience.
• In these essays, feelings often lead to judgments but they are never enough. The challenge of persuasive evaluation is to introduce reason into the process.
• Judgments range from an overall assessment (it was good or bad, helpful or useless) to more specific commentary on particular evidence or aspects of the thing.
• You should frequently attempt to offer a balanced assessment.
• Criteria may be stated or unstated.
• Relevant comparisons may form the backbone of a good essay.

Ethos—the character of the speaker/writer!

REVISING THE COMPARE AND CONTRAST ESSAY

Rough drafts have some fairly typical problems, most of which can be addressed by repeating some of the steps we’ve covered—

Main Problems from Spring 2020:

1. Thesis does not make a claim. Remember that a review is often subtly persuasive. How can you make your claim more specific?
2. The subject was too broad. An overly general introduction leads to a thesis that does not make a claim.
3. Lack of specific details.
4. One of the categories/criteria (usually you have three to five categories for compare and contrast) doesn’t really help the reader understand the subject.
5. Still needs research—two sources, correctly cited.
6. The research is in there, but there are no citations.
7. Lacks a conclusion.

Gathering more information:

Re-Experience.  Probably the single most useful thing you can do to prepare for the next draft is to collect more observations of your subject.  Why?  You’re much more focused now on what you think, what criteria most influence your judgment, and what particular evidence you were lacking in the rough draft that will make your review more convincing.

Interview.  If you opted not to spend too much time talking to people, you should strongly consider collecting the comments, opinions, and observations of others about the subject of your interview.  If you reviewed a concert or other event, find others and get their opinion.  Also, consider interviewing someone who is an expert on the thing you’re reviewing.

Read and Research.  Go to the library and search for information.  How was it designed or made?  Find other reviews of your subject by professionals.  Has anyone else written about your subject? Could you possibly use research to open up some unique insights into your topic?  When did it begin?  How was it invented?  What inspired the creator? Do you provide enough background on your subject for readers who aren’t as familiar with it as you?   Find at least two sources between this rough and the final.

Question to Answer.  One of the most straightforward methods for structuring a comparison is framing the issue around a question and then setting out to answer that question through exploration.  How well does your object measure up?

COMPARE AND CONTRAST ESSAY RUBRIC

Content Level:

Introduction establishes importance; thesis makes clear claim.                                   (10)

Writer demonstrates ethos with a balanced, persuasive contrast.                             (15)

Writer develops subject with background material/relevant comparisons              (15)

Essay is supported by evidence/criterion/ examples to prove judgment                (20)

Writer goes beyond simple assessment, offers range of commentary.                      (10)

Essay clearly organized with strong lead, focused paragraphs, conclusion              (10)

Citation:

Contains at least two relevant sources that add layers/context.                                  (15)

Citations and Works Cited page correctly formatted using MLA.                                (15)

Grammar/Sentence Level:

Writing shows few sentence level mistakes, run-ons/fragments, tense shifts           (10)

Writing displays clarity, thoughtfulness, and care with language.                                (10)

Total Points:  130                        Teacher Comments:

Thomas Maltman

10-05-19

Review Rough Draft

1101-48

Does Exercise Matter for the Working Writer?

The Problem:  Old Introduction

I expected to love Haruki Murakami’s What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, since it features two of my favorites subjects, jogging and the craft of writing.  Throw in a dash of memoir and you have what should have been an inspirational read.  I hoped the book would jumpstart my exercise program and fuel my progress through the final revision of my second novel.

To those ends, the book disappoints, but I was still glad I read it. Maybe I was expecting too much from one of the world’s premier authors, but this thin memoir doesn’t measure up to classics like Stephen King’s On Writing or Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird. If you don’t already love running or writing, Murakami’s memoir won’t do much for you.

Why?  Let’s get the bad out of the way first and then discuss what the book does right.  Murakami’s descriptions of running feature some of the most flaccid prose I’ve encountered this year.  He even resorts to cliché, complaining of it “raining cats and dogs” during a training session for the New York Marathon.  Consider this passage about his run between Marathon, Greece and Athens:

The road within the Athen’s city limit is very hard to run on.  It’s about three miles from the stadium to the highway and entrance and there are lots of stoplights, which messes up my pace.  There are also a lot of places where construction and double-parked cars block the road, and I have to step out in the middle of the street.  What with cars zooming around early in the morning, running here can be dangerous.  (Murakami 61)

What’s Wrong Here:

The Solution: Through research I honed in on the key idea—a larger question that goes beyond Murukami’s book and addresses the relationship between writing and exercise.  Now, you don’t need a “larger” question to make an essay work, but it helps you to prove to your reader just why they should keep reading.  It helps answer that “So What?” question.

New Introduction:

“If I could not walk far and fast,” Dickens confided, “I think I should just explode and perish” (qtd. in Noden 1).  We might expect that Charles Dickens, author of such classics as Great Expectations and Oliver Twist, approached his writing desk with delight, but the truth was that writing was difficult for Dickens, and the contemplation of his heavy subjects cost him both psychically and physically.  To survive, Dickens walked, late at night, often as much twenty miles through the streets of London, composing his epic novels to the cadence of his own boots on cobblestones.  The writing was his breath, but it was the walking that saved him (Noden 1).

Does exercise matter for the working novelist?  When things get hectic in my own writing life–papers piling up, children getting sick–my exercise program is often the first thing I cut, but after reading Haruki Murkami’s What I Talk About When I Talk about Running, I’ve begun to rethink the wisdom of my actions.  Murkami’s slim book wraps two of my favorite subjects in one, writing and running, while also promising a small serving of memoir from one of our time’s great authors.  If only the book fails in delivering on all these offerings, at least it still has the power to confront an age-old question for writers…

Additional Quote:

I wasn’t the only one who noted the book’s flaccid prose and weak-kneed descriptions.  Writing for the New York Times, author Geoff Dyer took issue with book’s boring prose, comparing it to the music of “Eric Clapton” (3).  He catalogues every instance the writer uses the phrase “as I said earlier” and the graveyard of “kind ofs” and “sorts of” that litter the pages.  “It’s not bad,” he concludes, “but it’s sort of ordinary and doesn’t amount to much” (3).   I believe all these things are true, but find Dyer’s assessment…