They Say / I Say

"[T]o give writing the most important thing of all - namely, a point - a writer needs to indicate clearly not only what his or her thesis is, but also what larger conversation that thesis is responding to.
... Delaying this explanation for more than one or two paragraphs in a very short essay, three or four pages in a longer one, or more than ten or so pages in a book-length text reverses the order in which readers process material - and in which writers think and develop ideas.
... [R]emember that you are entering a conversation and therefore need to start with 'what others are saying,'...[21] and then introduce your own ideas as a response" (Gerald Graff and Cathy Birkenstein, They Say/I Say, 20-21).

"Whenever you enter into a conversation with others in your writing, then, it is extremely important that you go back to what those others have said, that you study it very closely, and that you not confuse it with something you already believe. A writer who fails to do this ends up essentially conversing with imaginary others who are really only the products of his or her own biases and preconceptions [in other words, a 'straw man']" (Ibid., 33).

"Although it's naturally tempting to ignore criticism of our ideas, doing so may in fact be a big mistake, since our writing improves when we not only listen to these objections but give them an explicit hearing [79] in our writing. Indeed, no single device more quickly improves a piece of writing than planting a naysayer in the text - saying, for example, that 'although some readers may object' to something in your argument, you 'would reply that ___________.'
... [W]riting well does not mean piling up uncontroversial truths in a vacuum; it means engaging others in a dialogue or debate - not only by opening your text with a summary of what others have said ... but also by imagining what others might say against your argument as it unfolds" (Ibid., 78-79).