Let's "SEE" It Again
created by The Writing
Center at UNC-Chapel Hill
Rewriting is the essence of writing well—where the game is won or lost.
—William Zinsser
Revising Drafts
What this handout is about
This
handout will motivate you to revise your drafts and give you strategies to
revise effectively.
What does
it mean to revise?
Revision
literally means to “see again,” to look at something from a fresh, critical
perspective. It is an ongoing process of rethinking the paper: reconsidering
your arguments, reviewing your evidence, refining your purpose, reorganizing
your presentation, reviving stale prose.
But I thought revision was
just fixing the commas and spelling.
Nope.
That’s called proofreading. It’s an important step before turning your paper
in, but if your ideas are predictable, your thesis is weak, and your
organization is a mess, then proofreading will just be putting a band-aid on a
bullet wound. When you finish revising, that’s the time to proofread. For more
information on the subject, see our handout on proofreading.
How about if I just reword
things: look for better words, avoid repetition, etc.? Is that revision?
Well,
that’s a part of revision called editing. It’s another important final step in
polishing your work. But if you haven’t thought through your ideas, then
rephrasing them won’t make any difference.
Why is
revision important?
Writing
is a process of discovery, and you don’t always produce your best stuff when
you first get started. So revision is a chance for you to look critically at
what you have written to see
·
if it’s really worth
saying,
·
if it says what you wanted
to say, and
·
if a reader will
understand what you’re saying.
The
process
What steps should I use
when I begin to revise?
Here
are several things to do. But don’t try them all at one time. Instead, focus on
two or three main areas during each revision session.
·
Wait awhile after you’ve
finished a draft before looking at it again. The Roman poet Horace thought one
should wait nine years, but that’s a bit much. A day—a few hours even—will
work. When you do return to the draft, be honest with yourself, and don’t be
lazy. Ask yourself what you really think about the paper.
·
As The
Scott, Foresman Handbook for Writers puts it,
“THINK BIG, don’t tinker” (61). At this stage, you should be concerned with the
large issues in the paper, not the commas.
·
Check the focus of the
paper: Is it appropriate to the assignment? Is the topic too big or too narrow?
Do you stay on track through the entire paper?
·
Think honestly about your
thesis: Do you still agree with it? Should it be modified in light of something
you discovered as you wrote the paper? Does it make a sophisticated,
provocative point, or does it just say what anyone could say if given the same
topic? Does your thesis generalize instead of taking a specific position?
Should it be changed altogether? For more information visit our handout on thesis
statements.
·
Think about your purpose
in writing: Does your introduction state clearly what you intend to do? Will
your aims be clear to your readers?
What are some other steps
I should consider in later stages of the revision process?
·
Examine the balance within
your paper: Are some parts out of proportion with others? Do you spend too much
time on one trivial point and neglect a more important point? Do you give lots
of detail early on and then let your points get thinner by the end?
·
Check that you have kept
your promises to your readers: Does your paper follow through on what the
thesis promises? Do you support all the claims in your thesis? Are the tone and
formality of the language appropriate for your audience?
·
Check the organization:
Does your paper follow a pattern that makes sense? Do the transitions move your
readers smoothly from one point to the next? Do the topic sentences of each
paragraph appropriately introduce what that paragraph is about? Would your
paper work better if you moved some things around? For more information visit
our handout on reorganizing drafts.
·
Check your information:
Are all your facts accurate? Are any of your statements misleading? Have you
provided enough detail to satisfy readers’ curiosity? Have you cited all your
information appropriately?
·
Check your conclusion:
Does the last paragraph tie the paper together smoothly and end on a
stimulating note, or does the paper just die a slow, redundant, lame, or abrupt
death?
Whoa! I thought I could
just revise in a few minutes.
Sorry.
You may want to start working on your next paper early so that you have plenty
of time for revising. That way you can give yourself some time to come back to
look at what you’ve written with a fresh pair of eyes. It’s amazing how
something that sounded brilliant the moment you wrote it can prove to be
less-than-brilliant when you give it a chance to incubate.
But I don’t want to
rewrite my whole paper!
Revision
doesn’t necessarily mean rewriting the whole paper. Sometimes it means revising
the thesis to match what you’ve discovered while writing. Sometimes it means
coming up with stronger arguments to defend your position, or coming up with
more vivid examples to illustrate your points. Sometimes it means shifting the
order of your paper to help the reader follow your argument, or to change the
emphasis of your points. Sometimes it means adding or deleting material for
balance or emphasis. And then, sadly, sometimes revision does mean trashing
your first draft and starting from scratch. Better that than having the teacher
trash your final paper.
But I work so hard on what
I write that I can’t afford to throw any of it away.
If
you want to be a polished writer, then you will eventually find out that you
can’t afford NOT to throw stuff away. As writers, we often produce lots of
material that needs to be tossed. The idea or metaphor or paragraph that I
think is most wonderful and brilliant is often the very thing that confuses my
reader or ruins the tone of my piece or interrupts the flow of my
argument.Writers must be willing to sacrifice their favorite bits of writing
for the good of the piece as a whole. In order to trim things down, though, you
first have to have plenty of material on the page. One trick is not to hinder
yourself while you are composing the first draft because the more you produce,
the more you will have to work with when cutting time comes.
But sometimes I revise as
I go.
That’s
OK. Since writing is a circular process, you don’t do everything in some
specific order. Sometimes you write something and then tinker with it before
moving on. But be warned: there are two potential problems with revising as you
go. One is that if you revise only as you go along, you never get to think of
the big picture. The key is still to give yourself enough time to look at the
essay as a whole once you’ve finished. Another danger to revising as you go is
that you may short-circuit your creativity. If you spend too much time
tinkering with what is on the page, you may lose some of what hasn’t yet made
it to the page. Here’s a tip: Don’t proofread as you go. You may waste time
correcting the commas in a sentence that may end up being cut anyway.
How do I go about the
process of revising? Any tips?
·
Work from a printed copy;
it’s easier on the eyes. Also, problems that seem invisible on the screen
somehow tend to show up better on paper.
·
Another tip is to read the
paper out loud. That’s one way to see how well things flow.
·
Remember all those
questions listed above? Don’t try to tackle all of them in one draft. Pick a
few “agendas” for each draft so that you won’t go mad trying to see, all at
once, if you’ve done everything.
·
Ask lots of questions and
don’t flinch from answering them truthfully. For example, ask if there are
opposing viewpoints that you haven’t considered yet.
Concerns
Whenever I revise, I just
make things worse. I do my best work without revising.
That’s
a common misconception that sometimes arises from fear, sometimes from
laziness. The truth is, though, that except for those rare moments of
inspiration or genius when the perfect ideas expressed in the perfect words in
the perfect order flow gracefully and effortlessly from the mind, all
experienced writers revise their work. I wrote six drafts of this handout.
Hemingway rewrote the last page of A Farewell to Arms thirty-nine times. If you’re still not
convinced, re-read some of your old papers. How do they sound now? What would
you revise if you had a chance?
What can get in the way of
good revision strategies?
Don’t
fall in love with what you have written. If you do, you will be hesitant to
change it even if you know it’s not great. Start out with a working thesis, and
don’t act like you’re married to it. Instead, act like you’re dating it, seeing
if you’re compatible, finding out what it’s like from day to day. If a better
thesis comes along, let go of the old one. Also, don’t think of revision as
just rewording. It is a chance to look at the entire paper, not just isolated
words and sentences.
What happens if I find
that I no longer agree with my own point?
If
you take revision seriously, sometimes the process will lead you to questions
you cannot answer, objections or exceptions to your thesis, cases that don’t
fit, loose ends or contradictions that just won’t go away. If this happens (and
it will if you think long enough), then you have several choices. You could
choose to ignore the loose ends and hope your reader doesn’t notice them, but
that’s risky. You could change your thesis completely to fit your new
understanding of the issue, or you could adjust your thesis slightly to
accommodate the new ideas. Or you could simply acknowledge the contradictions
and show why your main point still holds up in spite of them. Most readers know
there are no easy answers, so they may be annoyed if you give them a thesis and
try to claim that it is always true with no exceptions no matter what.
How do I get really good
at revising?
The
same way you get really good at golf, piano, or a video game—do it often. Take
revision seriously, be disciplined, and set high standards for yourself. Here
are three more tips:
·
The more you produce, the
more you can cut.
·
The more you can imagine
yourself as a reader looking at this for the first time, the easier it will be
to spot potential problems.
·
The more you demand of
yourself in terms of clarity and elegance, the more clear and elegant your
writing will be.
How do I revise at the
sentence level?
Read
your paper out loud, sentence by sentence, and follow Peter Elbow’s advice:
“Look for places where you stumble or get lost in the middle of a sentence.
These are obvious awkwardness’s that need fixing. Look for places where you get
distracted or even bored—where you cannot concentrate. These are places where
you probably lost focus or concentration in your writing. Cut through the extra
words or vagueness or digression; get back to the energy. Listen even for the
tiniest jerk or stumble in your reading, the tiniest lessening of your energy
or focus or concentration as you say the words . . . A sentence should be
alive” (Writing with Power 135).Practical advice for ensuring that your sentences are alive:
·
Use forceful verbs—replace
long verb phrases with a more specific verb. For example, replace “She argues
for the importance of the idea” with “She defends the idea.”
·
Look for places where
you’ve used the same word or phrase twice or more in consecutive sentences and
look for alternative ways to say the same thing OR for ways to combine the two
sentences.
·
Cut as many prepositional
phrases as you can without losing your meaning. For instance, the following
sentence, “There are several examples of the issue of integrity in Huck Finn,”
would be much better this way, “Huck Finn repeatedly addresses the issue of
integrity.”
·
Check your sentence
variety. If more than two sentences in a row start the same way (with a subject
followed by a verb, for example), then try using a different sentence pattern.
·
Aim for precision in word
choice. Don’t settle for the best word you can think of at the moment—use a
thesaurus (along with a dictionary) to search for the word that says exactly
what you want to say.
·
Look for sentences that
start with “It is” or “There are” and see if you can revise them to be more
active and engaging.
Works
consulted/additional resources
We
consulted these works while writing the original version of this handout. This
is not a comprehensive list of resources on the handout’s topic, and we
encourage you to do your own research to find the latest publications on this
topic. Please do not use this list as a model for the format of your own reference
list, as it may not match the citation style you are using. For guidance on
formatting citations, please see the UNC Libraries citation tutorial.
Anson, Chris and Robert Schwegler. The Longman
Handbook for Writers and Readers, 2nd
edition. New York: Longman, 2000. See part II, “Drafting and Revising.”
Elbow, Peter. Writing With Power. New York: Oxford UP, 1998.
See especially Part III, “More Ways to Revise.”
Hairston, Maxine, John Ruszkiewicz and Christy Friend. The Scott,
Foresman Handbook for Writers. 6th ed. New York: Longman, 2002. See
Chapter 5, “How do you Revise, Edit, and Proofread?
Lanham, Richard. Revising Prose. 4th ed. Boston: Allyn and Bacon,
2000. This book is primarily concerned with stylistic revisions, making your
prose forceful and elegant.
Lunsford, Andrea and Robert Connors. The New St.
Martin’s Handbook, 5th edition. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2003.
See Chapter 4, “Revising and Editing.”
Zinsser, William. On Writing Well. 6th ed. New York: HarperCollins, 2001.
See Chapter 17, “Rewriting and Word Processing.”
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 License.
You may reproduce it for non-commercial use if you use the entire handout (just click print) and attribute the source: The Writing Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
You may reproduce it for non-commercial use if you use the entire handout (just click print) and attribute the source: The Writing Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
This
work is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 License.
You may reproduce it for non-commercial use if you use the entire handout (just click print) and attribute the source: The Writing Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
You may reproduce it for non-commercial use if you use the entire handout (just click print) and attribute the source: The Writing Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
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© 2010-2014 by The Writing Center at UNC Chapel Hill.
Content of this posting create by UNC-CH Writing Center and it is available at http://writingcenter.unc.edu/handouts/revising-drafts/
phone: (919) 962-7710 • email: writing_center@unc.edu
IF IT'S TIME-SENSITIVE, DON'T EMAIL. CALL US!
© 2010-2014 by The Writing Center at UNC Chapel Hill.
Content of this posting create by UNC-CH Writing Center and it is available at http://writingcenter.unc.edu/handouts/revising-drafts/
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