My topic is that Twin Peaks is a popular show. But that's not really good enough to be a thesis statement. A thesis statement is, as I said previously, the spinal cord of your paper so must do much more than just state the topic of the paper in the plainest way.
So let's develop a thesis statement.
From it's premiere in 1990, Twin Peaks remains a popular show because it's challenging and original material both inspired a rabid and faithful fandom to continue to discuss it several decades later and influenced modern entertainment by being the "grandparent" of prestige television .
Now this sentence is a little long and poorly written, however, that's what the whole drafting process was about, it's just about getting your ideas on the paper, no matter how badly you write it. You can always edit, refine, and proofread later.
REMEMBER FOLKS, THIS IS A PROCESS AND IT TAKES A BIT!
You may also want to take a minute to write the first sentences that introduce your supporting topics.
For mine:
The challenging material is timeless allowing Twin Peaks to remain popular because viewers both feel a sense of nostalgia and feel provoked by compelling mysteries and popular, identifiable characters.
Twin Peaks started with a built-in fan base because co-creator David Lynch was an already popular director, but fans became tied into the drama because of the burgeoning online presence debating the show which grew into various fan events, a sense of protectiveness of the material. It should also be noted that various actors became fans of the drama themselves and feel just as tied to the material as the fan on the street.
Because of the challenging material and the rabid fan base, it survived in various platforms and was one of the many shows revived in the mid 2010s.
Not only is it popular among fans, but it sometimes becomes a critical darling which is also satirized and parodied but also able to be easily marketed because of the nostalgia inherent in the material.
These four points, which, even though they may be rewritten, will somehow appear signaling to the reader of your paper the change in topic. You will notice that none of the above four points are actually well written because you do not want to have perfect writing in your rough draft. Your rough draft is all about ideas not the polish of good prose. Wait till you’re near done to polish the prose.
Open the PDF below to find the rough draft of the paper. It's not perfected in anyway. I also made sure not to have great or even good paraphrasing, because you may have to tweak this along the way. So I know I've definitely have a few terrible almost plagiaristic paraphrases in them. That's what's so magical about writing, until you've turned it in to a publisher, an instructor or someone else for judgement, you always have time to edit and rewrite for perfection. So you can take the time and make sure that you're writing your paraphrases correctly.
The following tabs in this box will illustrate how I did different steps in the drafting process.
In any paper you have to write each sentence with these points in mind.
That's a lot to think about and pretty daunting as you write each sentence. So here is a bit about how I determined how each sentence would flow into the next.
This is probably the most subjective area as it really depends on what your paper needs and your own personal writing style. But you're saying, I'm just a student, I haven't written anything, I don't have a writing style. Trust me, everyone has a writing style.
For this same paper, you may want to do something a little different.
Let's sort of go a few sentences at a time. It may be helpful to have the draft of the paper right next to the guide so you can follow me.
I used this as a quote because it is quite perfect as is. If I decided to paraphrase this, I'd lose most of the quote's fidelity. It's best to keep the quote.
I wanted to both quote this because the last part has a nice ring to it and I would lose the nice wording if I hadn't directly quoted the material. However, I also wanted to simultaneously note the error in the quote. If I paraphrased it, I'd be afraid that I'd change the fidelity by changing the status of Laura Palmer to the more accurate status of Homecoming queen.
As I know the fan community quite well, and the sterling authors within it. Halskov is one of the fandom's great historians and theorists. So I wanted to respect his authority on the subject and made sure I quoted him perfectly. I also wanted to illustrate how to do an indirect quote too.
Again, I wanted to make sure the fidelity of the quote was kept just to show how analysts believe that the fandom got Twin Peaks back on the air.
First this is super long and I'd probably have to do something called a block quote if I were to keep it in tact. Since this is merely a section in my larger, theoretical paper, it's not really a good idea to have too many of these block quotes. I know that I'd probably want to reserve a block quote for something much worthier than this quote. So, I'll probably work on paraphrasing it in the next draft. Moreover, it's not something so precious as some of the above that I would hesitate to change it a bit.
In this draft, I have purposely added material that is badly paraphrased, and some that are well done. I'm not pulling out every paraphrase and doing determination on what's bad and what's good because there's too many of them. You should ideally have more paraphrases than quotes in your paper and since I did follow that rule of thumb, I didn't want to be so onerous in this box as to belabor too many points. So I only pulled three prime examples.
However, Lynch’s presence on the new series of Twin Peaks does not unproblematically offer fans a sense of security since his authorial brand connotes ambiguity, uncertainty and a sense of the ontologically secure (see Todd, 2012). Even in early fan discussion of the series in the early 1990s fans were aware of Lynch’s status as a ‘trickster” against whom they could ‘match...wits’ (Jenkins, 1995: 63) and this common view of Lynch endures to this day. (Williams, “No Lynch, No Peaks!,” 59)
When the show started, David Lynch’s fans knew that the show would have many similar characteristics to his films. His films trick viewers by encouraging them to wrestle with challenging material. (Jenkins 63, quoted in Williams, “No Lynch, No Peaks!” 59)
It's not clear that the paraphrase gets the entire jist of the quote. So I may be misconstruing it for my own terms. In the editing process, I may want to reword this significantly OR delete it entirely. Deleting it entirely won't harm the paragraph because it already does have material on the early fandom.
Helped in part by a letter-writing campaign dubbed COOP (Citizens Opposed to the Offing of Peaks), ABC agreed to air the remaining six episodes to finish out season two and ratings continued to drop to a low of 7.4 million for the penultimate episode (“The Path to the Black Lodge”) preceding the double-episode series finale (Ratings Archive April). (Weinstock, 6-7)
When ABC put the show on permanent hiatus right in the middle of season two, the most rabid fans formed a group called “COOP” an acronym both as a play on words of the nickname of the main character, Dale Cooper, and standing for Citizens Opposed to the Offing of Peaks which helped the series burn off its remaining episodes. (Weinstock, 6-7)
It does add new material, but keeps most of the important portions of this quote. It may add too much new material.
The @TwinPeaksPodcast offers an entry point for those unfamiliar with Twin Peaks. New fans are essential in maintaining fandom in the post-object era, but hearing the responses of newcomers can offer its own security, as well as encouraging existing fans to rewatch the series, a practice that can offer ‘reassuring, therapeutic, cheering session with familiar guides and confidants.” (Williams, “Ontological Security” 146)
One of which @TwinPeaksPodcast serves a dual purpose of introducing neophytes to the series while also keeping long-time fans involved by persuading them to do a rewatch. (Williams, “Ontological Security,” 146)
It keeps the gist of the quote while also restating it my own words. It also doesn't follow the style of the original quote and also shortens the original quote.
In the following paragraph, I did something that you may be less familiar with, synthesizing sources. It may be a bit beyond a writer somewhat inexperienced with the writing process, but it's useful to know anyway.
Here is the paragraph I wrote:
There were more ways for fans to interact during the interim years, which allowed the show to stay alive. Shortly around the time of the premiere of the prequel film, Fire Walk With Me, fans local to the North Bend, Washington area, (the place where some locations were used in the pilot and the film) began hosting fans from around the world for a fan festival which served as the Twin Peaks fan convention for decades, having events typical of its ilk: cosplay, tours, panels and screenings. (Morgan, 52) This was so popular that fans in the UK began to mimic the event for their own local fans in 2010. (Weinstock 16; Hills, 197) Other, more authorial and analytic fans, began publishing both digitally and physically, from Wrapped in Plastic, a physical magazine that ran from 1992-2005, to Damn Fine Coffee, the Twin Peaks Gazette, The Welcome to Twin Peaks website, to glastonberrygrove.net. (Weinstock, 15-16; O’Brien, 93, Luckhurst) Hills maintains that these allowed the show, airing in the 1990s, to be germane. (200) Fans had places to go and gather and they also had plenty of reading material both aided in their continued engagement with Twin Peaks.
Sometimes, you'll find several sources that have several pieces of similar material. So you'll want to combine the information together in a seamless way.
Moreover, this just shows how the sources are in conversation with each other.