Some students skip working thesis saying “I’ll just write a draft and fix later.” A few people can do this—but if you question them closely, virtually all really have done brain teasing and thesis works in their heads beforehand. Most writers who skip thesis preparation start confidently for a sentence or two. Then the next paragraphs fumble into new ideas and repetition trying to tie things together without direction. Somewhere halfway through the paper, the writer realizes what the thesis might be, and the paper smoothens out a bit near the end. Revision this tangles is torture; the ideas smear together and the details are skimpy. It’s almost a sure route of getting a poor grade. In effect, the writer is using the draft to generate ideas, organize them, and find the right words to express them. It’s too much to ask of one sitting. And do not expect a high grade out of this.

You can free-write to generate ideas and structure, however, by looping. To loop, write freely for ten minutes, without censoring ideas, much as you do during a brain teaser, except that instead of listing, you write full sentences, letting one flow to the next. You then extract the key sentence or concept from this free-writing and copy it on another sheet of paper. You write for another ten minutes using the extracted sentence as a guide, then extract the best key sentence from that free-writing until you formulate a thesis. Looping works well for people who like writing connected sentences rather than the helter-shelter of brain teasers.

In either case, you should rethink your thesis at all stages of writing a paper, except when revising mechanics and grammar. A perfectly formulated thesis that never changes during draft and revision is a red flag. You may be grinding down the truth for the sake of the system. Slop around in the topic before settling on a working thesis. Fin out what’s there, pile up some building blocks and— with a working thesis—have a rough plan before constructing the essay. You should not limit yourself from thinking of possible angles of an essay. Keep in mind that “”nothing will come out of nothing.” All this work on theses has not led to just one sentence. It spades up new ideas and makes the glue that will hold every idea together! Start trying the looping now!