Research your topic to get a basic idea of the information available to you. Academic journals are great resources for peer-reviewed articles on a variety of topics. Gather sources that you find informative, interesting or unusual.
Organize your research based on commonalities and differences. For example, if your topic is hybrid vehicles, you might organize your sources into two camps: those praising hybrids and those questioning the effectiveness of hybrid vehicles.
Consider your research from many angles to formulate a rough thesis. Look for controversial or ambiguous ideas, ideas that connect with information you already know, ideas that you can argue against or changes that you can argue need to be made. You might decide to argue that hybrid vehicles should run on electricity and vegetable oil instead of electricity and gasoline.
Write your thesis statement in sentence form to organize your thoughts logically. Create a clear claim and introduce how you plan to support that claim. A sample thesis including a claim and two supporting points is: Automakers should consider creating vehicles that run on electricity and vegetable oil rather than hybrids that run on electricity and gasoline. Driving such vehicles could reduce emissions, and manufacturing such vehicles would create jobs.
Test your thesis to see whether it makes an interesting claim, has a scope that can be covered in the length of your paper and indicates the structure of your paper. A thesis with no argument, too broad a scope and no hint at upcoming structure might be: People all over the world drive cars.
Compose the rest of your paper, focusing on supporting the thesis. Discuss each supporting point fully, using your thesis as a guide. Structure your paper to mimic the order that you mentioned the supporting points in the thesis.
Rewrite your thesis after you finish the rest of your essay, if necessary. You may have introduced additional information or supporting points while writing your paper. If so, revise the thesis to address any additional information.