this one weird trick will 5x the quality of your writing

introducing the Magic Thesis Statement, and why it works

I never figured out college writing. I did the readings, had interesting ideas, said insightful things in section, and wrote decent, workmanlike prose. Yet in an inversion of the regular trope, my humanities grades weighed down a GPA held up by strong STEM performance.

Being the self-improvement junkie that I was, I looked around for advice — and quickly noticed one trend: my friends who went to fancy boarding schools consistently scored As.

So I asked them what their secret was. The kindly answers were boring in retrospect. They were more careful than I was. They didn’t write their essays in a crazy all-nighter one day before it was due. They printed their essays and read each sentence backwards to edit. Their writing and grades were the result of hard, careful work — work I wasn’t doing.

And also — I learned — there was one hack. It was called the Magic Thesis Statement. It’s a surprisingly banal template:

By looking at X, we see Y, which most people don’t see… this is important because Z.

But once I knew it, I could see how many good essays follow this structure. To this day, much of my best writing follows this format.

So in this post, I’ll show you how my writing follows the MTS – and, through that, why it works. Hopefully, it’ll help you improve your writing, or at least provide some rope to lift yourself out of your next rut.

I owe the MTS to Erik Simpson, who introduces it by reference to The Princess Bride.

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One of my most popular blog posts is “What are you getting paid in?” In it, I look at how Taylor Swift makes far less money than Ken Griffin, but is objectively way cooler. I use this example to explain how there are ways to get ‘paid’ that aren’t just money – for instance, status or happiness. And I conclude by explaining how it can inform your thinking about your career and what you want to get out of it.

Or, in other words:

By looking at [X = how Taylor Swift is cooler than Ken Griffin], we see [Y = that there are ways other than money to get paid], which most people don’t see… this is important because [Z = it affects how you should think about *your* career choices!]

A perfect MTS essay.

Why does it work? A professional writer might complain that the MTS is overly prescriptive.

Perhaps, but for the average writer, I think it’s often a useful way to turn a vague idea into a compelling essay. Each of the three parts of the MTS matters. Let’s look at it again:

By looking at X, we see Y, which most people don’t see… this is important because Z.

When I’m writing an essay, I often start with some combination of ‘X’ and ‘Y’. ‘Y’ is often why I’m bothering to write the essay at all. But it’s usually elucidated by ‘X’, which is some specific use-case or story I’m trying to tell. For me, the ‘X’ is often the best part of an essay – it draws the most on fun stories or life experience, so it’s what gives the essay vim.

An argument (‘Y’) on its own often sounds banal. Take the core argument of The Baked Goods Theory of Social Interaction: ‘You should go to a social event every week.’ Okey-dokey.

A story (‘X’) on its own seems irrelevant. The core story of Baked Goods Theory is that I went to a weekly choir rehearsal, and someone brought in brownies once. On its own, this is about as interesting as a bingo game at a senior home. Lovely, joyous, not essay-worthy.

But combine the two, and you get something more interesting: the claim that once a week, you should go to a social event that someone could bring brownies to. And the story is that I once went to choir and had some brownies — and through that, realized I had been in a state of crisis. The combination adds a new dimension to both the argument and the story.

But this still isn’t enough — and this is where ‘Z’ comes in. ‘Z’ is what prompts you to think about the reader, and why they’re reading an essay.

Before I lived through the experiences that would lead to Baked Goods Theory, I thought I was okay. I lived in the suburbs with my partner and worked remotely. We had friends and went to the occasional party.

But it wasn’t until I went to choir that I realized what was wrong. I had an unsustainable social life, and I didn’t realize it. And I saw how easy it was to fall into this trap.

We all know about the loneliness epidemic: that many are slowly, inexplicably ending up isolated. I saw it happening to many of my college friends, as we spread across the country for jobs and family. By writing Baked Goods Theory, I could tell them what was happening, why, and what to do about it.

‘Z’ is the most important part of an essay. I once thought that writing essays was about crystallizing a good idea. I realize now that it’s actually about making a point to a specific audience. No creative work matters without its consumers; the best essayists start from who their readers are, and what they want.

In high school and college, it’s hard to really get this, because we’re playing the academic game — doing things like ‘situating a thesis within an existing body of work’. But in most other writing, we’re actually trying to achieve something. In the workplace, you might be trying to influence your team or manager; getting a memo right matters, and so you have to appeal to whatever the company values most.

And if you’re writing on the internet like me? This writing is the most fascinating. On our browsers, we’re all primal; to keep someone’s attention, you must provoke fear, or create entertainment, or tell them how they can become a better version of themself. We’re just here for the dopamine hit. Can you deliver it?

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An astute reader might notice that this essay itself is a straightforward application of the Magic Thesis Statement. By looking at how my writing applies the Magic Thesis Statement, we see that it’s an effective tool for framing essays, which most people don’t see – and this is important because it tells you how you can communicate your ideas more clearly and become more influential!

Of course, like all rules, the MTS is meant to be broken – and the very best writers throw it out the window. But the next time you find yourself struggling to put an idea into essay form, I suggest you think about the MTS. What are you trying to say? What non-obvious example or story are you using to demonstrate your point? And why should your reader care about it?