Text: (603) 967- 4441
Email: centerforwriting@keene.edu
Call the Center: (603) 358-2412
Chat via the Help & Chat button
FAQ Read our frequently asked questions
Follow us on Instagram and Facebook
Revising your Writing: Strategies to Help You Move from Draft to Draft
Composition scholar Toby Fulwiler has developed an approach to revision called Focused Revision. This approach encourages you to focus on a specific aspect of your draft in order to help you re-see the draft and consider what is needed for the next full revision. These techniques offer strategies to help you expand your understanding of your research questions as you move toward writing the final draft.
Below, you’ll find a summary of these focused revision techniques. Try one or all of them as you draft your next essay!
Limiting:
If your first draft feels like it is too general, has too large of a scope or covers a long period of time, you can focus the essay by limiting the time span, scope, or focus of the second draft to 1-2 key points that you develop more fully. Fulwiler recommends that you select a specific aspect of your essay to explore in this draft, and that, as a result of focusing on just 1-2 aspects of the argument, your language will become more specific and detailed as a result.
Adding:
If the first draft lacks evidence, the second draft can center on adding research, interview material and specific details that add credibility to the essay’s argument.
Switching:
If the first draft lacks multiple perspectives, Fulwiler recommends that you write a short draft that switches point of view or takes a position that conflicts with your own, in order to help you develop a clearer understanding of this alternate position and to offer a more developed treatment of that point of view in your fuller essay.
Transforming:
If the first draft lacks depth, you might try a creative second draft that transforms the essay into another genre, such as a newspaper article, letter, dialogue, report, brochure, blog entry, etc., as a way to develop a fresh understanding of the material you are trying to present and to consider what information a reader would need to know when reading in this new genre. Fulwiler notes that “some transformations are useful primarily to help you achieve a fresh perspective during the revision process” (The Blair Handbook, 4th edition, 190). While your next draft will return to the essay genre, the perspective you can sometimes gain from switching genres can help you to develop key points of your argument in the next draft.
--Adapted from Toby Fulwiler’s "Provocative Revision." The Writing Center Journal 12.2 (Spring 1992): 190-204.
Having a hard time integrating your viewpoint into the essay?
Finding the Writer’s Voice Amid Research: If your essay seems overwhelmed by your research, this revision exercise can help you to articulate your positions and thoughts about each source. Try these steps:
1. Go through the draft, looking for places where the draft is especially infused with external scholarly voices.
2. In the margins of the draft, write about your own position/thoughts/questions raised by each source that you cite.
3. Now, use those marginal reflections to include your perspective more fully into the next draft.
Facebook Twitter Instagram