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Chapter 3 describes the kinds of problems you must solve as you move beyond exploratory writing toward more finished academic essays. You will need to think rhetorically about your subject matter, and you will attempt to answer your question with your thesis and support your answer with evidence. Your goals should include deepening your inquiry, engaging your audience, and creating surprise with your thesis. Your essay must adopt an "angle of vision," and you can change your reader's view of a topic with images as well as words. By the end of the chapter, you should understand the following: 1. An effective thesis will surprise and change the readers, either by telling them something new or by restructuring their whole view of a subject. 2. An effective thesis often includes tension from the pull of two or more opposing ideas, and writers can use several specific strategies to impart such tension. 3. The relationship of points and particulars is what transforms information into meaning, and the relative position of a sentence along a scale of abstraction is what determines whether it represents a point or a particular in a given essay. 4. Different kinds of academic writing employ varying levels of abstraction. 5. The writer's perspective is an important rhetorical concept that is described using various visual metaphors, including an "angle of vision," a "lens," or a "filter" that colors the topic in a certain way.
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