Finished your essay draft? Congratulations! Now the real work begins. It is common knowledge that the first draft of any work will be its worst. Everyone knows that revision is important; it is where brilliant but hastily written ideas are curated, refined, and perfected. Revision is the art of making your essay seem effortless. But that effortlessness, paradoxically, often requires more effort than the original draft. We know revision is key to success in writing, but how does one do it?
Here are three actionable pieces of advice to build your practice of revision:
1.) Take small bites
Often, once an essay is finally written, the prospect of going over the entire draft with the fine-toothed comb of revision seems daunting. You already wrote it, you already used spellcheck, why would you spend the time to reread it? You could be starting on the other three essays you need to write, working on your math homework, or simply taking a nap.
To avoid falling into the trap of submitting unrevised drafts, start small. Revise a paragraph at a time to prevent feeling overwhelmed. Every piece of revision makes the work better. You do not need to do it all at once.
2.) Revise vertically from the bottom up
Begin by revising the basic components of your essay, like sentences and paragraphs, before moving to the larger structure. Starting with the building blocks of your essay will help hone the precision with which you express your argument. Writing is a generative process and it is unlikely that the original structure of your paper perfectly matches your argument. Yet you need to know what you are saying before deciding to sort the larger blocks of thought into sections. Once you have revised each paragraph, then begin considering the overall structure of the essay. Could a paragraph be moved to make the argument flow more cohesively? Probably.
3.) Read your draft as many times as you can
The simplest advice there is: continue to revise. Each time you sit with your paper, your thoughts become clearer. You start to get a sense of your argument and the optimal structure that it must assume. You bring new ideas to the paper and can see more clearly the sentences that ought to be removed. The revision process is not a one-time affair; the persuasiveness of your writing will only grow as you continue to exercise your revision skills on any given draft.
Comments