Good essay starts with a good thesis statement. This is the starting point of your writing journey. Quite puzzlingly, thesis statement often is the most challenging part for many students – to the point where they need paper writings support to cope with this issue. In this short piece, I will try to dispel any difficulties you might have had with it.

What is thesis statement?

Thesis statement is usually one sentence that summarizes your position in the argument and appears near the beginning of your essay. When you write an essay, you exercise in academic argument – a specific kind of persuasion, but persuasion nonetheless. You need to convince your readers in your point of view. This point of view should be crystallized in one or two sentences, which actually are the sacramental statement.

Why you need a thesis statement?

That’s pretty intuitive. You need it to construct your argument. What are you arguing for/against? You cannot proceed further without this. There is a trick to battle writer’s block that I’ve seen often in many guides to writing a good essay – and that is to start right from the middle and leave introduction and conclusion for the later. That makes sense; however, the thesis statement is vital. You should at least have some working version of it outlined before you start writing.
However, it isn’t something that you come up with right after you have read the assignment. You need to do the research, collect and organize facts, look for connections between them. As a result of this thinking process, you will have an idea that you will be able to support with facts.

How do you come up with thesis statement?

To come up with a relevant thesis statement you can answer the question that was asked in the prompt. For example, "Did Internet kill the romance?" or "Is privacy more important than security?"
If there is no clear question and you were invited to take a stance or make a claim about the subject provided, then you should give your interpretation that others may dispute. If you state facts that no one would or possibly could disagree with, this is not a thesis statement but background information.
To check if your thesis statement is in any way disputable, apply the "so what?" test. If after reading your thesis statement a reader might ask themselves "So what?", you need to elaborate your statement further, clarify it or add some connections to a larger issue.

Step-by-step

For example, your assignment asks you to write an analysis of some aspect of Margaret Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind and you think: "Great! I loved the novel and I can write a ton about it!" Then you sit down and write your thesis statement:
Gone with the Wind is a great novel about crucial changes in American history.
Is this a good one? Not really. The essay following such thesis is probably going to be a lengthy detailed summary of the novel. However, you were asked to analyze it. Furthermore, you must analyze some particular aspect. Think further and try to pick one theme or symbol that is important to the novel’s structure or meaning. For example, the contrast between characters: Rhett vs. Ashley, Scarlett vs. Melanie? How are they different? What key characteristics are contrasting? Maybe, unyielding principles vs. adaptability? Then you might come up with something like the following:
In the Gone with the Wind Margaret Mitchell shows how different characters demonstrate contrasting attitudes towards great changes.
That is already better. This can be a starting point for your analysis, so this thesis will do as a working one. As you work further, you see what those contrasts tell us about life, about American history, about social changes. Once you’ve explored those meanings, you can deepen you thesis statement:
Through contrasting characters Margaret Mitchell shows the decline of tradition in the post-civil war South and its struggle to adapt to the new way of life.
Now that’s a thesis statement that complies with the assignment prompt and promises some in-depth analysis following it.