My piece 3 Tips to Writing a Better Thesis Statement provides writers with some Renegade-style tips for opening paragraphs that will certainly help your written pieces stand out by challenging conventional methods and styles of writing.

But, what good is a powerful thesis statement and perfect opening paragraph if you struggle to bring the paper to its proper conclusion?

An insufficient concluding paragraph leaves the reader feeling unfulfilled — like a fireworks show on the Fourth of July, it’s as if over the course of your piece, paper or blog post, you’ve built up to a grand finally that disappointingly fizzles out. The thesis statement lures your readers in, and you need a killer conclusion to finish it off.

The concluding paragraph of your piece, paper, or blog post must not only tie your thesis and supporting evidence together, it must do so crisply and succinctly. Use some of my tips below to bring your writing to its killer conclusion.

1. Don’t Just Restate Your Thesis; Evolve It.

Your concluding paragraph must remind the reader of your thesis — the previously mentioned purpose or purposes for writing. But what good is simply copying and pasting the first sentence of your paper in the concluding paragraph?

Your introductory thesis statement should now embody a “more-educated,” evolved form. Having now written the entirety of your paper to support your thesis, you should slightly modify your thesis statement to be less rhetorical and more grounded in fact and evidence in your concluding paragraph. In other words, you need to inject the knowledge of what you and your reader learned into restating the thesis in the concluding paragraph. Here is an example from my piece, Origins of the European Union. First, take a look at the opening thesis statement that I used to convey what I sought to prove:

The primary contributing factor in the earliest stages of European Integration — and that would eventually lead to the creation of the modern European Union — was a universal interest in national security.

This thesis statement is what I sought to prove in the body that followed. After writing the body, I restated a more-educated, evolved thesis statement in the concluding paragraph that shows the reader that some process of learning and progression took place:

While security was the causal factor of early European Union, it has also hindered further attempts at European Integration.

As you can see, the restatement of my thesis in the concluding paragraph embodies an evolved, more-educated format: it further elaborates upon the thesis statement from the opening paragraph. In doing so, the writer not only refreshes the reader’s recollection (of his or her original reasons for reading the piece), but also shows the progressive development of learning that took place in the body of the paper.

2. Recap, but Recap Succinctly.

The concluding paragraph must recapitulate the major pieces of supporting evidence that you used in the body of your paper in order to prove your thesis statement. But, you also don’t want to ramble and purposelessly restate the evidence that you have already gone into length of providing and explaining.

• At your discretion and depending on the total length of the piece or paper, consider using between one sentence (in a short essay) to, at most, three sentences (in a lengthy term paper) to adequately summarize each major discussion point that you use in the body of your piece.

Restating your supporting evidence should be clean, clear, and crisp. Refresh the reader’s recollection of the evidence you provided in the body of your paper, and relate it directly to your thesis statement in order to connect it what you intended to prove when you began the paper.

3. Choose Your “Finishing Move”

The concluding sentence of your piece should embody a professional wrestler’s “finishing move,” a spectacular knockout blow that will make the reader say “Wow” as they finish your paper. The “finishing move” of the concluding paragraph can encompass:

• a powerful quote (or part of a quote) that substantiates your thesis
• a definitive, authoritative sentence that functions as a final “exclamation point”
• a rhetorical method that simply ends the paper in a definitive but appealing way

In college, I wrote a paper on German philosopher G.W.F. Hegel and one of his fundamental beliefs on historical progress, the human spirit, and freedom. For this particular paper, I integrated a mix of the above three suggested “finishing moves,” including a partial quote from Hegel himself and a rhetorical style of conveying the thesis statement:

“Hegel believes that the Spirit’s realization of its freedom is a slow and gradual progression. Hegel would contend that today, the Spirit is becoming ever more consciousness of its freedom. As history continues to progress, it will grow ever closer towards the ‘final goal of the world,’ however near or distant that may be.”

The concluding paragraph of your piece or paper should include an evolved restatement of your thesis, a succinct recapitulation of supporting evidence in the paper’s body, and a strong “finishing move” that wraps it all together. These three strategies will help you write a killer conclusion that leaves your readers informed, educated and — if not completely convinced of your argument — at the very least able to comprehend your intended thesis and viewpoints. After all, one of the most important and appealing aspects of the art of written word is the writer’s ability to formulate a bridge of understanding to his or her readers.