Writing Your Body Paragraphs

Let me begin with a general observation about your thesis statements:

• If you are having trouble composing a thesis statement, you need to refer to your sources. You cannot write a valid thesis statement without knowledge about your three topics. Otherwise, you are simply guessing or making something up, and this will result in a weak or vague thesis that will not connect to the information presented in the body of your paper.

Here is a sample body section I composed on Dylan. I hope this helps.

I began by using two sources I found on Facts on File. Here is their citation information:

1. Morrison, Craig. "Dylan, Bob." Carlin, Richard, gen. ed. Rock and Roll, American Popular Music. New York: Facts On File, Inc., 2006. American History Online. Facts On File, Inc. http://www.fofweb.com/activelink2.asp?
   ItemID=WE52&iPin=APMRR0033&SingleRecord=True (accessed April 9, 2013).
2. Schwartz, Richard A. "Dylan, Bob." Cold War Culture: Media and the Arts, 1945–1990. New York: Facts On File, Inc., 2000. American History Online. Facts On File, Inc. http://www.fofweb.com/activelink2.asp?
   ItemID=WE52&iPin=CWC214&SingleRecord=True (accessed April 9, 2013).

Next, I read the shorter source of the two, the entry composed by Richard Schwartz. I find it is helpful to begin with a shorter source. I took approximately 8 notes from this source. Then, I read the second longer source composed by Craig Morrison. I gathered approximately 7 notes from this source.

Then, I arranged the notes chronologically and produced the following outline:

Outline

I.    Early life/introduction

     A. Birth/Brief Bio

     B. Anti-Semitism

II.  1960-1964: The Folk Years

     A. Woody Guthrie

     B. The Freewheelin’ album and   Suze Rotolo

     C. Joan Baez

III. 1965-1966

     A. Newport Folk Festival

     B. Albums

IV.  Evaluation: How did Dylan revolutionize the 60’s

     A. Sound

     B. Lyrics

     C. Politics

Then, I simply began writing, making sure to use an in-text citation whenever I used a fact from my notes. 

• Note: A properly formatted Works Cited page will help with in-text citations tremendously. With MLA, an in-text citation consists of either the last name of the author or, if an author is not listed, the title of the article in quotation marks, placed in parenthesis: (Last) or ("Title"). 
• Punctuation is placed after each citation.
• When in doubt, cite! It is better to have too many citations than not enough.

Here is three paragraphs of my sample essay:

Robert Allen Zimmerman was born in 1941 in Hibbing, Minnesota (Schwartz). The boy who would become the iconic folksinger, Bob Dylan, experienced anti-Semitism growing up (Schwartz). As a result, he felt alienated from mainstream America and society, and later in his career, he would use this feeling to write songs communicating the growing sense of alienation in the 1960’s (Schwartz). He became the voice of a generation during a period in which the counterculture and the mainstream were intersecting.

An avid music fan, Dylan decided to become a folksinger after reading the autobiography of Woody Guthrie, Bound for Glory (Schwartz). In 1961, he moved to New York City for two reasons: (1) to be involved with the Greenwich Village folk scene; and (2) to be near his idol, Woody Guthrie (Morrison). It was also in New York that he met another influential individual: his girlfriend, Suze Rotolo. She encouraged Bob to begin writing about the Civil Rights Movement. In 1963, Bob released his second album, The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan. The album contained songs about the Civil Rights Movement (“Blowing in the Wind”) and the Cold War (“A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall”) (Schwartz). By 1964, Bob Dylan and his then girlfriend, Joan Baez (a folksinger herself), were known as the “King and Queen of Folk Music” (Schwartz).

In 1965, Dylan’s career as folksinger began to change. In that same year, Dylan played the Newport Folk Festival backed by members of the Paul Butterfield Blues Band. The short, loud, electrified set did not go over well with folk music fans, and many felt that Bob had “betrayed the purity of acoustic folk and its ideals” (Morrison). Dylan had gone electric, and there was no turning back. In 1965, he released Bringing It All Back Home, a half acoustic, half electric album. It was followed by Highway 61 Revisited, an all-electric album. In 1966, he released Blonde on Blonde, an album marked by its rock and roll and rhythm and blues influences (Morrison).