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Finding the Focusing Line

Learn how to find tension in your prewriting and use it to develop a strong thesis statement. Discover the benefits of a focusing line, such as guiding your research, reflection, description, limitation, voice, opinion, and structure.

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Finding the Focusing Line

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  1. Finding the Focusing Line Another way to think about thesis statements

  2. Look for tension in your prewriting. • I hoped I was adopted. • When we were first parents, we knew nothing. Now we have become grandparents and we know everything. • I always listened from the other room, learned the language of the walls. • As I look back on my life, I visit the geographies that contained my world.

  3. What your focusing line or thesis can do for you. • Possible direction – You’ll have a good idea of where you might travel in a draft from your focusing line. • Research – You should know from your focusing line what you have to spend more time exploring and learning about. • Reflection – You’ll be provoked into thinking about some abstract idea and coming to grips with it. How does it impress you? How do you want it to impress the reader?

  4. What a focusing line gives you. • Description – From your focusing line, you should get an indication of the important people and places you’ll need to describe. • Limitation – You’ll know what not to write about. • Voice – It will tell you how to say what you want to say – dialogue, monologue, sarcasm, irony, humor?

  5. The focusing line provides you with . . . • Point of view • Angle of vision – Your focusing line will help you to decide where the camera is, or where you’re going to stand to observe and record the events. Will you be involved? On the periphery? Will it be I, you, or he/she? • Opinion – What do you think of the subject? How will you express your opinion in your presentation? How does your opinion match/clash with your reader’s possible opinions?

  6. A focusing line gives you . . . • Structure – Or, organization. Are you going to answer a question? Are you going to describe a place? Where will you start? Left to right? Bottom to top? Story? Comparison and Contrast? Sequence – A leading to B, leading to C? • An opening – Your focusing line may tell you how to begin or give you a lead.

  7. Other ways to focus besides the focusing line. • The Steinbeck Statement. • Begin by ending. • Find a controlling image. • Anticipate your reader’s need. • Move the angle of vision. • Adjust the distance.

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