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Strategies for Critical Revision
There are three operations in revising: adding, deleting, and moving. Effective revision involves all three; experienced writers employ all three in combination.
Critical revision involves reworking your original with smaller and larger changes so that each section of your original essay is improved in some way. Through all of this, adding, deleting, and moving words means refining your ideas—and refining your understanding of what your essay addresses.
There is no single right way to revise. You must find your way by thinking seriously about what your words actually say to your reader. Here are some strategies to help you:
1. Make a paragraph outline. An effective outline will show you the skeleton of your paper so that you can easily see the progression of thought from beginning to end. A paragraph outline helps you to see whether your paper is logically developed within each paragraph unit.
Outlines of an early draft usually show an author that an essay is not well organized, that ideas are not linked coherently, and that discussion sometimes drifts or is redundant. Discovering this is good! Use what you discover to help you make decisions about what to add, what to delete, and what to move in your essay.
As your revision leads to later drafts of your essay, make new outlines in these later stages to further the writing/revision process.
There are different ways to outline. Here's one suggestion:
Divide a piece of paper into two columns. On the left, write the heading, "What am I saying?" On the right, write the heading, "What am I doing? Read each paragraph, and write in the left column a sentence that expresses the main idea of the paragraph. Then in the right column, tell what you are doing in that paragraph (introducing a main idea, developing one major point, describing the climax of a story, etc.)
2. Color-code your paper. Use a scheme of pens or highlighters of different colors. Read your paper with care, using these markers to trace themes and ideas as they are introduced and threaded through your discussion—use a distinct color for each theme, idea, or concept, etc., that you have identified. This kind of work can help you to better see what you address, where you address it, and how you address it. This can also help you to recognize potentials you had not seen before and to refine your thesis. What you discover with this analysis can help you to make effective decisions about what to add, what to delete, and what to move in your essay.
3. Take measurements. Sketch the relative size of the paragraphs. How large is your introductory paragraph? How large are the other paragraphs? Are some paragraphs much longer than others? Does the size of the paragraph match the importance of the contents? Similarly, sketch the relative size of the sentences within your paragraphs. Effective writing has sentences of varied sizes—including some short, direct statements. This kind of analysis helps you to make effective decisions about what to add, what to delete, and what to move in your essay.
4. Compare your introduction and conclusion. Analyze the two side-by-side. What do you notice? Might your conclusion in fact make a better introduction than your current opening paragraph? Is your thesis expressed more clearly in the conclusion than in the introduction? This kind of analysis helps you to make effective decisions about what to add, what to delete, and what to move in your essay.
5. Ignore quotations as you read your paper. Read your paper but skip over each quotation. Your own writing should carry your reader forward, so that s/he understands what you explain without actually reading the quotations that you employ (these quotations, of course, are very important!). Whatever you discover when you do this will help you to make effective decisions about what to add, what to delete, and what to move in your essay.
6. Blow up a balloon. If an important idea is mentioned but not explained, decide if it needs to be discussed further. Develop that idea by producing facts, quotations, examples, or otherwise clarifying. Then made decisions whether to add some or all of your "balloon" to your paper.
7. Talk about your paper. Ask someone to listen to you, then talk about your paper without looking at it. Listen to what you say. What ideas do you emphasize? Do any new ideas or words or phrases come out when you talk about your work? If you are unable to or don't want to talk to anyone, talk to yourself. Pretend you are an author being interviewed about your work on a TV program. Try to talk for at least five minutes. If you have a tape recorder, tape yourself and then play it back. Compare what you emphasize while speaking with what you have addressed in writing.
7. Get feedback. Have others read your paper critically. Listen to their questions about what is clear, and about what is not. Ask them specific questions about what you convey in the essay—their answers can lead you to identify sections that need to be clarified.
8. Read your paper out loud. Listen to your words and sentences, and note where you stumble as you read. Mark these places, as well as any errors or problems that come to your attention.
