Claim/Data/Commentary Mini-Lesson--Writing a Strong Argumentative Paragraph Claim What is a claim? A claim is the point you are trying to prove. When you are writing an essay, you make several claims. The first claim is the major one that you will make in your essay, and this claim appears in the introduction in the form of your thesis statement. In an essay on characterization and Heller's book, Catch-22 , the thesis statement might read, "Heller uses both direct and indirect characterization to develop the character of Yossarian, a character who is a lazy coward." You should be very familiar with this type of claim, the thesis statement that appears in your introduction. However, you are probably less familiar with the notion that each of your body paragraphs should ALSO start with a claim. This type of claim is more commonly known as a topic sentence. If you were continuing to write the same essay above, a topic sentence claim might read, "T
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