English 104: College Composition

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What exactly is your essay about? Writing great thesis statements and topic sentences that align with your main idea will help readers to understand the theme, ideas, and central focus of your essay.

Main Idea, Thesis Statement, Topic Sentences

Have you ever been really excited about a movie? I mean so excited you go to the theater, get popcorn and other snacks, and sit down waiting for an hour and a half of wonderful cinema bliss? Then it happens - it's an hour and a half later and you realize you have no idea what you just watched! Even when you try to explain it to people, the words escape you. The most you can say is that it had no plot and it made no sense. It's a terrible experience when you watch a movie with no plot, and reading an essay with no main idea, no thesis, and no cohesive points tying it all together is no less aggravating of an experience. The best way to avoid such a tragedy in your own writing is to get great at setting the stage for your writing.

Main Idea

The first place to start is with your main idea. The main idea is the key concept being expressed or examined. Putting this in our movie frame of reference, the main idea would be the broad context on what the movie is about, or the genre in which the movie will be viewed. Is it a romantic comedy about high school sweethearts? Maybe it's a historical drama about the Battle of Waterloo or the sinking of the Titanic. The main idea is the overall gist of what the piece will be dealing with as a whole.

Thesis Statements

Okay, so now that we have the main idea, we need to prepare ourselves to clearly explain it to our audience, the reader. What we need is a thesis statement! A thesis statement is a one- or two-sentence condensation of your argument or analysis that will follow in your writing. The thesis statement is our narrowing of our overall main idea.

Moving along with our movie idea, let's say our main idea is a romantic comedy about two high school sweethearts. While that helps narrow things a bit from the entire genre of romantic comedy, it doesn't really help give us the detail we need to truly understand what is unique about our movie. However, I can add the thesis statement of Two high school sweethearts ready to embark on the wonderful world of college. Will they follow their dreams and end up at separate colleges, or follow their heart to the same school? Now we can better understand what this movie is about!

Topic Sentence

Of course, there is a bit more narrowing that can be done in this process. Sometimes space does not allow us to give a longer explanation. Sometimes people really need us to get to the point quickly. This is where our topic sentence comes into play. A topic sentence is generally at the beginning of the opening paragraph and gives a one-sentence summary of the main point. Think of the topic sentence as our movie blurb that everyone grabs a hold of. It's that bit of information the producers want us to hold onto that will allow us to build excitement for the movie and remember with ease the main point of the film.

In our fictional romantic comedy, our topic sentence might be Jordan and Willow must decide if their high school love is big enough to span not just one college, but two. In this sentence I now clearly see that this movie is about two high school students named Jordan and Willow. They are about to go to college, and they may even end up at two different colleges. They will be analyzing if their love really is big and broad enough to move from being a high school romance to an adult, long-distance relationship. In one sentence I have given a summary of the film - without giving away the neat surprises viewers may find along the way. The hope is that it generates interest and leaves the person wanting more. The same is true with the topic sentence. People are much happier reading an essay when they understand what it is supposed to be about. They can grab a hold of the context and read with purpose, thereby allowing a much easier and memorable reading experience.

Lesson Summary

So let's wrap up what we've covered in this video. We found that the main idea of a piece is the overall gist of what the piece will be dealing with as a whole. We look at this as the overall genre and plot of our essay. Next we saw that the thesis statement is a one- or two-sentence summary of your essay. We can look at the thesis as a more developed plot statement that allows us to bring some context to our piece. Finally, we moved to topic sentences - the one-sentence summary of the main point. While the thesis statement summarizes the genre and overall plot, the topic sentence summarizes the overall specifics in your piece itself.

Remembering our movie example, we went from our main idea of a romantic comedy to a thesis statement of two high school sweethearts trying to figure out if they would go to different colleges to pursue their careers or the same college to focus on their relationship. We finally moved to the topic sentence, where we were introduced to Jordan and Willow, who would decide if their high school love was strong enough to span not just one college, but two. This process allows for a narrowing of our topic for the reader to get a proper introduction to the context through which our writing should be examined.

Now you have the tools necessary to utilize main idea development, thesis statements, and topic sentences in your own writing as well.