Holding Your Ground:

Your Thesis as Intellectual Property vs. Primary and Secondary Source Summary

        Resist the urge to summarize sources for more than a sentence or two in your paper.  Summarize in your notes, and write your draft by thinking about what you summarized.  If you fall into summary while you are writing, just stop, shift to the notes, and when you are ready to reason again, start writing the draft where you left off.  Use secondary sources to solve problems, not to tell you what to think.  Resist their authority by having line of reasoning you invented, your own intellectual property, before you contact secondary sources.

1)  In your introduction, foreground your original contribution to your readers' understanding of the topic, your "NEWS," against the background of what you borrow from the primary or secondary sources.

2)  Keep your body paragraphs focused on your thesis and your reasoning rather than primary or secondary source summary.  Always make sure your paragraph order and paragraph transition are motivated by the logical steps necessary to bring your readers from what they believed before reading your paper to what you want them to believe after reading.  Before revising your rough draft, outline your main points to make sure your paragraphs construct a complete and logically ordered pathway for the readers to follow

3)  Use the conclusion to re-emphasize the importance of your distinct, original addition to our knowledge about the topic, your "NEWS," and be alert to other possible consequences if your conclusions are correct.  If a theme or technique affects one part of a work of art, it probably is related to other themes and techniques, or to other effects.  If your thesis helps point us toward a more complete view of these patterns, you have done your readers a favor.