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for additional information.Revising Practices
By Alice L. Trupe
Along with prewriting, revising is the part of the process that has received most attention in contemporary writing pedagogy. Indeed, the concept of revising may be considered to be at the heart of process pedagogy, as it's practiced in schools with a multiple-draft requirement. We all tend to feel, once a writing task is accomplished, "Well, that's that. I'll run the spellchecker and turn it in." Running the spellchecker is editing, not revising. Many of us have received instructor feedback on texts that was comprised almost wholly of editing advice. Any time an instructor or peer crosses out a word or phrase and substitutes his own, that reader is editing the text. When a student is required to recopy her own text, incorporating someone else's editing, she is learning little about the revising process. Revising requires a fresh look at a draft, starting with major issues like the main idea, content, and organization of a text (global or whole-text issues) and, once those aspects are satisfactory, focusing on word choice, grammatical correctness, punctuation, and spelling (local issues).
Professional writers testify to extensive, painstaking revision. It is instructive
to look at drafts of famous literary texts to see how they evolved under the revising
hand of the author, whose revisions often include substantial cuts and reorganization.
Short story writer Raymond Carver said,
This image of the solitary writer striving for perfection is reinforced daily in public life. Documents produced in government, the corporate world, higher education undergo revision at the hands of multiple authors before being published to the world.
Yet the young writer often produces one draft of a text and then has difficulty making any but the most obvious proofreading changes. Research shows that writers need explicit instruction in revising. This is the strongest argument for process-oriented writing instruction. When classroom requirements reproduce the processes of experienced writers, the young writer learns how to separate the phase of generating text from the phase of looking critically at it, and he learns to expect and value feedback that encourages rethinking. As he internalizes the feedback, he becomes a better critic of his own writing, and progressively incorporates those critical insights into his own drafting and revising processes when writing outside of the classroom.
Activity: Reflect on your own revising process. What do you look at when you revise a paper for a class?
In reviewing first drafts, the highest priorities are global concerns, often referred to as "higher order concerns" or "HOCs." There is little point in adding commas to a text in need of major rethinking. In the early part of the drafting-and- revising process, it is important to look at the overall focus, organization, and development of the text. If you yourself are in the habit of reading texts with an editor's eye, fixing minor errors as you go, you will need to retrain yourself to read holistically. Read the entire text quickly, to get a sense of what it says. Then consider it as an argument: identify the writer's thesis, main supporting points, and evidence for those points. Is there enough evidence? Is it organized to lead the reader convincingly to the writer's conclusion? Does the introduction prepare the reader for what will follow? Does the conclusion grow logically out of the text as a whole? Your own ability to see a text in terms of these global issues will help you teach the revising process.
Many of these questions can be used in evaluating fiction or poetry as well. Is there an important idea or theme that the reader can take away from reading this text? Are the ideas or parts of the text clearly related to each other? Are there enough details? Does the introduction make the reader want to keep reading? Does the ending seem logically consistent with the rest of the text?
Activity: Read several student texts holistically--yours, a friend's, samples supplied by your instructor. If you were recommending global revision, where would you recommend the writer start--with thesis, organization, development?
To help students become good revisers, ask them to look first at the focus of their text. Ask them to summarize the entire paper in a single sentence--not a sentence that begins, "This paper is about," but one that identifies the topic of the paper and the overarching point they make about the topic. Another way to determine that overarching point is to consider purpose, by asking themselves, "What do I want my paper to accomplish? What do I want my reader to think about the topic after she's read my paper?" Another way of putting this is, "What is the paper about, in a nutshell?" This core idea is the thesis of the paper. Does the text include a sentence that clearly articulates the thesis; that is, does it include a thesis sentence? In some cases, it may be appropriate for the thesis to be implied, rather than explicitly stated, within the text. (Consider the ironic argument made in Jonathan Swift's "A Modest Proposal," for example.) Yet the reader--whether a peer, an instructor, or the writer himself as he reconsiders his text--should be able to state the thesis of the paper succinctly after reading it.
Sometimes the writer's thesis changes in the course of writing a paper. We have seen students' preconceived opinions change as they research a controversial topic, leading them to change their point of view by the time they write the paper. But a shift in the writer's attitude toward the topic can happen easily as he drafts even a short paper. He may find that he has different things to say about the topic than he planned to say, because putting ideas into words is itself a great aid to thinking through ideas. The writer may not notice that his paper has diverged from his original thesis until reviewing his draft. One way to check for this is to compare the introduction with the conclusion. If there is a mismatch, he may have changed his thesis while writing. When this happens, he may find that he prefers to revise the thesis rather than rewrite the rest of the paper to match the original thesis because his thinking on the subject has changed.
In some cases, a thesis may be articulated in introduction and conclusion, but a much more interesting idea has emerged during the writer's drafting process in the middle or the second half of the paper, perhaps a more sophisticated analysis of the topic than the writer originally envisioned. The writer may, however, have felt bound by her original thesis, as stated in the introduction, so she ignored the potentially better thesis in the middle of the paper when drafting her conclusion. In this case, the writer needs to consider whether her thesis would be improved by incorporating the more interesting or sophisticated idea into her introduction and conclusion.
Activity: Review several of your own papers. Can you clearly identify the thesis of each? Does each paper have a thesis sentence? Where is it placed?
When a thesis has been clearly identified, it is time for the writer to consider whether everything in the text relates to that thesis in some way. Is it clear how each paragraph supports the thesis? Are there extraneous or irrelevant ideas? In considering these questions, it is also important to consider the evidence that supports each point. Is there enough evidence? If not, the writer may need to expand her draft before she can do much more with it. If there is enough evidence, she may ask herself whether it is clearly related to the point being made. Is a familiar rhetorical pattern (definition, comparison/contrast, division/classification, cause-and-effect analysis, etc.) being followed? Is the evidence ordered in some other recognizable pattern, say, from general to specific or in climactic order (from least to most convincing or significant)? The conscious examination of her text for these familiar patterns can help the writer analyze how each part of her text functions to serve her overall purpose and support her thesis.
The writer may also find it helpful to look for the links and bridges (transitions) between ideas. Transitional wording provides cues to the organization of the paper. If the text lacks such transitions, the writer will find that adding them helps to clarify organization. Words and phrases like but, however, in contrast, and on the other hand indicate exceptions to the point being made. For instance and for example indicate a general point is being illustrated with a specific example. Additionally and furthermore indicate that additional evidence is being advanced for the point being made, or that the implications of a point are being extended. Enumerating points (using the number words first, second, third, etc.) helps a reader stay oriented and may be particularly useful when, say, three reasons are being advanced for a claim, with each reason elaborated in several sentences before the writer proceeds to the next sentence. The selective use of repetition in successive sentences or paragraphs is another useful transitional device, keeping the reader's attention focused on how successive points combine to clarify the concept that is being renamed. Transitional wording, thus, is not simply ornamental, inc luded to make the text "flow" more smoothly but gives structure to the text.
Activity: Analyze one or more published texts for the use of transitional wording. If analyzing several texts by one author, say, a newspaper columnist, look for patterns: does that author tend to use the same transitional devices in various texts? Is the writer's use of transitional wording helpful to you as a reader?
Activity: Revisit a text you have written recently. Highlight the transitional wording you find in your own text. Can you see places where you could have used more transitions or where the transitions you used were misleading or intrusive?
A change in thesis can lead to reorganization as well. If the writer changes his thesis, some details, points, examples--even whole paragraphs--may become irrelevant, or the writer may need to rethink or add connections between the ideas. (This is why an examination of the thesis or focus is generally considered the highest priority in evaluating a text or revising it.) In applying this principle to a work of fiction or poem, consider whether all the incidents, details, and dialogue work to advance the central idea of the text. Fiction writers, in particular, tell us that the characters or the narrative may take on a life of its own. When this happens, a narrative can take a sharp bend in a new direction. Careful rereading, rethinking, and revising examine whether some of the information in the early part of the text needs to be deleted from later drafts.
Outlining the paper's content may be more useful as a revising technique than as a planning technique for many writers. The student who outlines what his paper actually says necessarily is taking a close look at the organization and focus of his text. Writing an outline can be a great aid to detecting inconsistencies, irrelevancies, and illogical ordering of ideas.
Activity: Reexamine a text you have written for a class. Outline it. Are you surprised by what you find? Did you say what you thought you said? Would you organize it any differently, in light of what you've discovered by outlining it?
Paragraph structure should be considered as well. Does each paragraph develop one topic? If the paragraph treats two or more topics, splitting it into shorter units may reveal a need for more evidence to support each point. Examining the paragraph for focus may also reveal the presence of irrelevant sentences or details. Does each paragraph have a topic sentence that unifies its content? Sometimes the apparent presence of two topics simply signals a need for a more general sentence that draws the two topics together. Is it clear how the paragraph relates to the thesis of the paper? Is it clear how the paragraph relates to the preceding paragraph?
The introduction and conclusion may be looked at in different ways because they serve different functions in the paper from the function of the body paragraphs. An introductory paragraph needs to identify the subject of the paper and give the reader some idea what will be discussed in the paper. It should also give the reader some reason to read on--should interest the reader or discuss the importance of the topic.
In a work of fiction, the beginning needs to draw the reader in with:
Works Cited
Cormier, Robert. The Chocolate War. 1974; rpt. New York: Laureleaf, 1991.
Kerr, M. E. Night Kites. New York: Harper Collins, 1986.
Murray, Donald. Shoptalk. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 1991.
Rapp, Adam. The Buffalo Tree. New York: Harper Collins, 1997.
Rodowsky, Colby. Remembering Mog. New York: Avon, 1996.
Conclusions
Stylistic considerations
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By Alice L. Trupe, posted Sept. 21, 2001