What is the Main Point?

Developing a Thesis Statement

1. Discover your main point.

   Often, you will not know what the point of your story is until after you have written the first draft. Just like most Hollywood films or weekly TV series, your digital story is, first and foremost, a narrative. That narrative usually depicts an experience for a central purpose: to reveal an insight about the action or people involved.

   Finding the central point of your story takes work. Once you write the first draft, re-read it and ask yourself what the experience has meant to you. Read it to a friend and ask what he or she thinks the point is. Then revise your essay to make sure the main point is clear.

   Consider the following examples from student stories. Each author discovered the main point of the story after completing the first draft.

   • Example 1: Indian Earthquake
     • Topic: One student wrote about sitting in her mother's third-floor apartment in India when an earthquake struck. She sent her young son down the stairs ahead of her, while she stayed behind to help her arthritic mother down the stairs.
     • Main Point: When the author wrote the first draft, she thought the story was about the earthquake. After she re-read the story and shared it with her classmates, she realized that the story was about herself as a daughter and the duty and love she felt toward her mother.
   • Example 2: Two Outs in the Ninth
     • Topic: Another student wrote about striking out with two outs in the bottom of the 9th inning of his high school state championship game.
     • Main point: When he wrote the first draft, he thought it was about his most embarrassing moment. After re-reading it and sharing it with his parents, he realized that this difficult moment and the weeks following showed him how much he loved the game of baseball. Instead of defeating him, the experience gave him the courage to play in college.
   • Example 3: Who Am I?
     • Topic: A third student wrote about the day her youngest child moved out of the house.
     • Main Point: At first, the author thought the story was about her daughter. Through the draft process, she realized the story was about the author's own need to re-shape her identity because, for the first time in 28 years, she was not known as somebody's mom.
   • Example 4: Not So Different
     • Topic: Another student wrote about moving from France to Boston as a teenager and learning English by watching Sesame Street.
     • Main Point: The narrative moved from centering on the author's being grateful for Sesame Street to how her abrupt move to a new culture has allowed her to understand more clearly the emotional struggles her clients were going through at the international relief agency she volunteered for.
2. Develop a thesis statement.

   Once you have discovered your main point, you need to turn it into a clear thesis statement on which the whole narrative depends. The thesis statement conveys the main point of the essay. To develop your thesis statement, write what you believe your main point to be and see if you can place "I want to prove that . . ." before the statement. If the sentence follows logically from that prompt, and the statement can be proven within the confines of 1.5 to 2 pages, then you have a workable thesis statement.

   Thesis Statement Samples

   Each these statements, written by published authors and college students, conveys clearly the point of the essay.

   • "What I took away from the course, however, went much further than that. These stories inspired and changed the way that I approach teaching, and even changed my roles as husband, father and citizen."
     - Ernest Patterson, from "The Power of Narrative"
   • "It seems to be a rule of life that you can't advance without getting that old, familiar, jittery feeling."
     - James Lincoln Collier, from "Anxiety: Challenge by Another Name"
   • "The most unlikely events, even freak accidents, sometimes teach valuable lessons. One crazed cat was certainly about to teach me one."
     - Melissa Flippin, from "An Unlikely Crisis"