There are multiple ways to formulate a thesis, and every writer has his or her personal favorite method. In the past, I've used two different methods to come to a specific idea.
When I write papers, I typically sit down and begin typing. I don't sit down and think out what I want to say beforehand in an outline - I simply begin formatting my argument, and edit as I go, and after I finish. Before I begin writing my paper, I take a good look at the question being asked, and think about how I want to approach it. For example, I might be writing about women's roles in Virginia Woolf's
To the Lighthouse as compared to those in E.M. Forster's
Howards End. I would then, after some contemplation on which characters I might want to focus on (in this example, I would automatically pull out Margaret and Helen Schlegel and Mrs. Wilcox from
Howards End and Lily Briscoe, Mrs. Ramsay, and Minta Rawley from
To the Lighthouse as characters to spend time writing on), and then begin writing. I typically write a working thesis for these papers, changing it as my argument changes. Most of the time, I might begin with a thesis that says something like, "While Forster appears to show that women's role is in the house as part of a marital partnership, Woolf's novel gives the appearance of women having a greater freedom in their choices." However, as I write, my thoughts might change, and by the end of my edits, my final thesis might say, "Although both Forster and Woolf portray marriages in their novels as womanly roles, Forster portrays it as a woman's only option due to societal influences, while Woolf portrays it as a conscious choice made by some women, and not an act forced upon them." The benefit of writing a paper with a fluid thesis is that, while I may have a general idea of what I want to talk about in my paper (in this example, I want to focus on the role of marriage in women's lives in the two novels), I might not have completely fleshed this idea out yet in my head. Writing everything out and then going back to fix my thesis allows me to write down the general idea of what I want to say first, and then go back and make it more specific later.
I would also like to add that I typically only do this with English papers, where I am working with novels whose general plots I am familiar with. I write history papers in a much different manner.
For a history term paper, such as the one I completed last semester for my class on Absolutism and Enlightenment, I began in a different manner. First, I wrote my topic down on a sticky note and stuck it on the wall in a place where I could see it as I wrote and did other class work. As I had ideas, I would add other sticky notes to the wall. Eventually, I focused on one topic that I found most interesting: the role of the
maîtresse-en-titre at the Versailles of Louis XIV. That led me to my research, where I began with general information about the court life of Versailles, and then more detailed research on the three main mistresses of Louis XIV. This in turn helped me to solidify my thesis: the
maîtresse-en-titre were able to influence aspects of life at Versailles by rising above etiquette. I was then able to format an outline and argument for the paper, focusing specifically on Madame de Montespan, Louis XIV's main mistress, and her role as the life of the court party, in contrast with his morganatic wife, Madame de Maintenon, whose religious faith put a damper on court life. Here, setting a thesis only works after research is completed, in order to not bias the information gathered. A fluid thesis, like the method I use for my English papers, doesn't really work here, mainly because once I know what I want to say, it can't change much, in case I go against my evidence. Rewording the thesis will always happen in the editing process - choosing better words is always a plus - but completely reformatting the thesis because I began arguing something else is probably a bad idea.
Overall, the main difference between my two thesis methods is the amount of research I do. For history papers: research, research, research. For English: pour my brain onto the page, and then edit, edit, edit.
