rev 44 Drafting and revising Instructor's Annotated Edition Previous attempts to start a pro soccer league failed, TV contracts almost matter more than live audiences. Failure of the US Football League was costly. Baseball, football, hockey, and basketball seasons already overlap. Soccer fans couldn't fill huge stadiums. American soccer fans are too few for TV interest. EXERCISE 2.10 Creating a formal outline Use your arrangement of general ideas and specific points from Exercise 2.9 as the basis for a formal topic or sentence outline. Follow the principles given on pages 36-38. (If you completed Exercise 2.9 online, you can use that file to create this outline.) ANSWERS: EXERCISE 2.11 Individual response. EXERCISE 2.11 Considering your past work: Organizing ideas What has been your experience with organizing your writing? Many writers find it difficult. If you do, too, can you say why? What kinds of outlines or other organizing tools have you used? Which have been helpful and which have not? ANSWERS: EXERCISE 2.12 Individual response. EXERCISE 2.12 Organizing your own essay Continuing from Exercise 2.8 (p. 32), choose an appropriate organization for your essay-in-progress. Then experiment with organizing tools by preparing a tree diagram or other visual map or a scratch, informal, or formal outline. mycompla&qf Please visit MyCompLab at www.mycompUtb.COM for more on [he writing process. HIGHLIGHTS This chapter continues the exploration, begun in Chapters 1 and 2, of writing as a flexible process and looks in detail at strategies for drafting, revising, editing, and proofreading. The journey from initial draft to finished essav may involve many decisions and changes of direction for which there are no firm rules. To alert student writers to the options available to them, the chapter provides lists of strategies for drafting an essay and check- COMPANION WEB SITE See page JAE-5I for companion Web site content description. CHÁPTE Drafting and Revising The separation of drafting and revising from the planning and development discussed in Chapters 1 and 2 is somewhat artificial because the stages almost always overlap during the writing process. Indeed, if you compose on a computer, you may not experience http://www.ablongman.com/littlebrown V visit the companion Web site for more help with drafting, revising, collaborating, and preparing a writing portfolio. Instructor's Annotated Edition rev First draft 3a 45 any boundaries between stages at all. Still, your primary goal during the writing process will usually shift from gathering and shaping information to forming connected sentences and paragraphs in a draft and then restructuring and rewriting the draft. 3 a Writing the first draft The only correct drafting style is the one that works for you. Generally, though, the freer and more fluid you are, the better. Some writers draft and revise at the same time, but most let themselves go during drafting and especially do not worry about errors. Drafting is the occasion to find and convey meaning through the act of writing. If you fear making mistakes while drafting, that fear will choke your ideas. You draft only for yourself, so errors do not matter. Write freely until you have worked out what you want to say; then focus on any mistakes you may have made. Starling to draft sometimes takes courage, even for seasoned professionals. Students and pros alike find elaborate ways to procrastinate—rearranging shelves, napping, lunching with friends. Such procrastination may actually help you if you let ideas for writing simmer at the same time. At some point, though, enough is enough: the deadline looms; you've got to get started. If the blank-ness still stares back at you, then try one of the following techniques for unblocking. Ways to start drafting ■ Read over what you've already written—notes, outlines, and so on. Immediately start your draft with whatever comes to mind. ■ Freewrite (see p. 20). ■ Write scribbles or type nonsense until words you can use start coming. ■ Pretend you're writing to a friend about your subject. ■ Describe an image that represents your subject—a physical object, a facial expression, two people arguing over something, a giant machine gouging the earth for a mine, whatever. ■ Write a paragraph. Explain what you think your essay will be about when you finish it, ■ Skip the opening and start in the middle. Or write the conclusion. ■ Start writing the part that you understand best or feel most strongly about. Using your outline, divide your essay into chunks— say, one for the introduction, another for the first point, and so on. One of these chunks may call out to be written. lists for revising (p. 51) and editing (p. 58). It also provides concrete advice For the stages of composing that many writers find ihe moat difficult: gel-ting slatted and completing the initial draft. Students who view revision as an expendable-stage in the writing process may benefit from following, draft by draft, the development of Sara Ling's essay (begun in Chapter 2) on Internet communication. Like most initial efforts. Ling's early draft can benefit from revisions in organization, content, tone, and approach to clarify the essay's purpose and the relationships among its ideas and also to make it easier for readers to share Ling's perspective. The revised draft, in turn, needs editing for clarity, style, and correction of errors in grammar, usage, punctuation, and spelling—changes that appear in the final version of the essay. Ling's paper can provide material for small-group discussion and evaluation, and the section on benefiting from criticism (3g) can help students learn to work effectively in peer critique groups. "Commenting on others' writing" and "Benefiting from comments on your writing" on pages 67 and 68 clarify peer review1 in a helpful list format, TRANSPARENCY MASTER 3.1 A WRITER'S PERSPECTIVE _ I've never thought of myself as a good writer; anyone who wants reassurance oj that should read one of my first drafts. But I'm one of the world's great rewriters. —Jambs Michener How can I know what I think until I see what I say? —E. M. Forster rev 46 33 Drafting and revising Instructor's Annotated Edition OVERCOMING WRITING BLOCKS Many students have a hard time writing first drafts because they try to get everything right the first time. They end up writing sentences and then crossing out what they have written so often that they have no time left to revise their thoughts in a second draft. Sometimes the pressure of perfection is so great that students become blocked writer, unable to finish even a single draft before the deadline. Here are four ways to help students get started and to help them develop flexibility and self-confidence in their approach to the task: 1. Show them copies of your own first and final drafts to indicate that you were not afraid to make mistakes in the initial draft because you had a chance to correct them in the later versions. 2. Give students a time limit for the first draft, perhaps an hour and a half or two hours, depending on the length of the assignment. Require them to hand in the draft with the final paper so that you can see how they approached the task of writing. 3. Have students start writing in class, where you can encourage them to get ideas down on paper before they try to perfect the wording. 4. Require students to spend some time either jotting down ideas and phrases or freewriting so that they will be loosened up before tackling the initial draft. COMPUTER ACTIVITY KEEPING TRACK OF IDEAS Writers can often become anxious about adding in or losing track of ideas that don't seem to fit as they write out a rough draft. Students who are composing on the computer might keep a notebook nearby to scrawl down extra ideas that occur as they write. If your students' computer programs have a Versions feature, you can also encourage students to shift quickly to a second document to note ideas that don't seem to fit into the document they're composing. You should find some momentum once you've started writing. If not, however, or if your energy flags, try one or more of the following techniques to keep moving ahead. Ways to keep drafting ■ Set aside enough time for yourself. For a brief essay, a first draft is likely to take at least an hour or two. ■ Work in a quiet place. ■ Make yourself comfortable. ■ If you must stop working, write down what you expect to do next. Then you can pick up where you stopped with minimal disruption. ■ Be as fluid as possible, and don't worry about mistakes. Spontaneity will allow your attitudes toward your subject to surface naturally in your sentences, and it will also make you receptive to ideas and relations you haven't seen before. Mistakes will be easier to find and correct later, when you're not also trying to create. a Keep going. Skip over sticky spots; leave a blank if you can't find the right word; put alternative ideas or phrasings in brackets so that you can consider them later without bogging down. If an idea pops out of nowhere but doesn't seem to fit in, quickly jot it down on a separate sheet, or write it into the draft and bracket or boldface it for later attention. You can use an asterisk (*) or some other symbol to mark places where you feel blocked or uncertain. (With a word processor, you can later return to these places by using the Find command to locate the symbol.) ■ Resist self-criticism. Don't worry about your style, grammar, spelling, punctuation, and the like. Don't worry about what your readers will think. These are very important matters, but save them for revision. On a word processor, help yourself resist self-criticism by turning off automatic spelling- or grammar-checking functions or by trying invisible writing (p. 20). ■ Use your thesis statement and outline to remind you of your planned purpose, organization, and content. ■ But don't feel constrained by your thesis and outline. If your writing leads you in a more interesting direction, Follow. If you write on a computer, frequently save the text you're drafting—at least every five or ten minutes and every time you leave the computer. See pages 52-53 for tips on saving documents. Whether you compose on paper or on a computer, you may find it difficult to tell whether a first draft is finished. The distinction between drafts can be significant because creating text is different from rethinking it and because your instructor may ask you and your classmates to submit your drafts, either on paper or over a Instructor's Annotated Edition rev First draft 3a 47 computer network, so that others can give you feedback on them. For your own revision or others' feedback, you might consider a draft finished for any number of reasons: perhaps you've readied the assigned length and have run out of ideas; perhaps you find yourself writing the conclusion; perhaps you've stopped adding content and are just tinkering with words. Sample first draft Sara Ling's first draft on Internet communication appears below. As you read the draft, mark the thesis statement and each key idea developing the thesis. Note places where you think the ideas could be clearer or better supported. Title? In "Welcome to Cyberbia," written in 1995, M. Kadi predicts that the Internet will lead to more fragmentation in society because people just seek out others like themselves. But Kadi fails to foresee how the unique anonymity of Internet communication could actually build diversity into community by lowering the barriers of physical appearance. Anonymity on the Internet. It's one of the best things about technology. Most people who communicate online use an invented screen name to avoid reveaL-ing personal details such as age, gender, and ethnic background. No one knows whether you're fat or thin or neat or sloppy. What kind of clothes you wear. (Maybe you're not wearing clothes at all). People who know you personally don't even know who you are with an invented screen name. We can make ourselves known without first being prejudged because of our physical attributes. For example, I participate in a snowboarding forum that has mostly men. I didn't realize what I was getting into when I used my full name as my screen name. Before long, I had received unfriendly responses such as "What does a girl know?" and "Why don't you go back to knitting?" I guess I had run into a male prejudice against female snowboarders. However, another woman on the forum had no such problems. At first she signed on with a screen name that did not reveal her gender, and no one responded negatively to her messages. When she had contributed for a while, she earned respect from the other snowboarders. When she revealed that she was a woman at that point, no one responded negatively in the way I had experienced. She posed at first as someone different from who she really was and could make herself heard. We also cannot prejudge others because of their appearance. Often in face-to-face interaction we assume we know things about people just because of the way they look. Assumptions prevent people from discovering their shared interests and concerns, and this is particularly true where race is concerned. The anonymity of MODELS OF STUDENT WRITING Sara Ling essay Sara Ling's essay is the first of several models of student writing that appear' throughout The Little, Brown Handbook. Reading I host examples of student writing may give your students a better idea ol what you expect from their writing. Even when your students are not yet able to produce papers as strong as these sample papers, they may find it helpful to have concrete examples to emulate. The inclusion of multiple drafts of Sara Ling's essay is intended to help students understand the process by which a paper is formulated, developed, and polished. Several of this chapter's exercises ask students to evaluate drafts of the paper: you might want to supplement these exercises by asking your students what they think about the final draft. IT your students are well versed in the five-paragraph essay, they may be particularly interested to see how Ling's essay departs from that structure while still maintaining a coherent organization and a measure ol fluidity. You may also find the topic ol' this essay and its argument about the Internet to be very interesting to students. The essay might be a springboard for class debate on the topic; you could ask students to compose a rebuttal to Ling's essay, or you could allow them to use it to begin to formulate their own research projects. RESOURCES AND IDEAS On writer's block Bartholomae. David. "Inventing the University." In When a Writer Can't Write: Studies in Writer's Block and Other Composing Process Problems. Ed. Mike Rose. New York: Guilford, 1985. 134-65. Bartholomae points out that one of the factors causing blocks or writing anxiety may be an unfamiliarity with the community lor which the writer is writing, and he suggests ways to familiarize writers with the discourse expectations of academic writing. Bloom, Lynn Z. "Research on Writing Blocks, Writing Anxiety, and Writing Apprehension." In Research in Composition and Rhetoric. Ed. Michael G. Moran and Ronald F. Lunsl'ord. Westport: Greenwood, 1984. 71-91. Bloom surveys research on the fears and blocks that many writers encounter and examines strategies, similar to those presented in this chapter, for overcoming the difficulties. rev 48 3b Drafting and revising Instructor's Annotated Edition Rose, Mike. Writer's Block: The Cognitive Dimension. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 1984. The case studies of student writers lhal Rose discusses demonstrate that blocked writers often follow rigid, absolute rules about the forms and process of writing, whereas fluent writers use flexible, enabling strategies. ---. "Writing Around Rules." Patterns in Action, 2nd ed. Ed. Robert A. Schwegler. Glenview: Scott, 1988. 473-80. As an frustration of the kinds of rules that block writing and the kinds of strategies that enable it, Rose tells of the difficulties he encountered in titling a poem. the Internet makes physfcal barriers irrelevant, and only people's minds meet. Because of this, the Internet could create a world free of physical bias. Logged on to the Internet we can become more tolerant of others. We can become a community. EXERCISE 3.1 Analyzing a first draft Compare Ling's draft with the previous step in her planning (her formal outline) on page 36. List the places in the draft where the act of drafting led Ling to rearrange her information, add or delete material, or explore new ideas. (You can do this exercise online at ablongman.com/ littlebrown.) ANSWERS: EXERCISE 3.1 Possible answers Some significant differences between Ling's outline and her first draft: ■In paragraph I, Ling explicitly addressed the essay by M. Kadi. ■ In paragraph 2, she added an explanation of how the Internet allows anonymity. ■ In paragraph 3. she added a long example from her experience. ■ In paragraph 4, she omitted planned examples and focused on working out her larger ideas. (Her readers objected to the lack of examples. See page 54 in the handbook.) ANSWERS: EXERCISE 3.2 Individual response. ANSWERS: EXERCISE 3.3 Individual response. COLLABORATIVE LEARNING Ask students to work in groups to complete Exercise 3.1 and to use that exercise as the occasion to discuss their own drafting processes (Exercise 3.2). Students can benefit a great deal both from articulating their habits, choices, and difficulties throughout the writing process and hearing how other writers work. EXERCI5E 3.2 Considering your past work: Drafting Think back over a recent writing experience. At what point in the writing process did you begin drafting? How did drafting go—smoothly, haltingly, painfully, painlessly? If you had difficulties, what were they? If you didn't, why do you think not? EXERCISE 3.3 Drafting your essay Prepare a draft of the essay you began in Chapters 1 and 2. Use your thesis statement and your outline as guides, but don't be unduly constrained by them. Concentrate on opening up options, not on closing them down. Do not, above all, worry about mistakes. 3b Revising the first draft Revision literally means "re-seeing"—looking anew at ideas and details, their relationships and aiTangement, the degree to which they work or don't work for the thesis. While drafting, you focus inwardly, concentrating on pulling your topic out of yourself. In revising, you look out to your readers, trying to anticipate how they will see your work. You adopt a critical perspective toward your work (see Chapter 8), examining your draft as a pole-vaulter or dancer would examine a videotape of his or her performance. (Writing teachers often ask students to read each other's drafts partly to train the students in using and benefiting from this critical perspective. See p. 66 for more on such collaboration.) 1 Gaining distance from your work Reading your own work critically requires that you create some distance between it and yourself—not always an easy task. The following techniques may help. Instructor's Annotated Edition rev Revising 3 b 49 Ways tc gain distance from your work ■ Take a break after finishing the draft. A few hours may be enough; a whole night or day is preferable. The break will clear your mind, relax you, and give you some objectivity. ■ Ask someone to read and react to your draft. Many writing instructors ask their students to submit their first drafts so that the instructor and, often, the other members of the class can serve as an actual audience to help guide revision. (See also pp. 68-69 on receiving and benefiting from comments.) ■ Type a handwritten draft. The act of transcription can reveal gaps in content or problems in structure. ■ Print out a word-processed draft. You'll be able to view all pages of the draft at once, and the different medium can revea! weaknesses you didn't see on screen. ■ Outline your draft. Highlight the main points supporting the thesis, and write these sentences down separately in outline form. (If you're working on a word processor, you can copy and paste these sentences.) Then examine the outline you've made for logical order, gaps, and digressions. A formal outline can be especially illuminating because of its careful structure. (See pp. 33-38 for a discussion of outlining.) ■ Listen to your draft. Read the draft out loud to yourself or a friend or classmate, read it into a tape recorder and play the tape, or have someone read the draft to you. Experiencing your words with ears instead of eyes can alter your perceptions. ■ Ease the pressure. Don't try to re-see everything in your draft at once. Use a checklist like the one on p. 51, making a separate pass through the draft for each item. 2 Revising, then editing Strictly speaking, revision includes editing—refining the manner of expression to improve clarity or style or to correct errors. In this chapter, though, revision and editing are treated separately to stress their differences: in revision you deal with the underlying meaning and structure of your essay; in editing you deal with its surface. By making separate draffs beyond the first—a revised one and then an edited one—you'll be less likely to waste time tinkering with sentences that you end up cutting, and you'll avoid the temptation to substitute editing for more substantial revision. The temptation to edit while revising can be especially attractive on a word processor because it's easy to alter copy. Indeed, writers sometimes find themselves editing compulsively, spinning their wheels with changes that cease to have any marked effect on meaning or clarity and that may in fact sap the writing of energy. Planning to revise and then to edit encourages you to look beyond TRANSPARENCY MASTER 3.2 REVISION ACTIVITIES Here are a few revision activities lor students working on their own or in groups: Making out an inventory. After students have written an initial draft, ask them to complete a brief version of the audience inventory described in Chapter 1 (p. 11). Their completed inventory can help guide the choices they make during revision. Students may wish to share drafts and inventories with other students. Using dialog. For narrative writing, ask students to drele every use of "He said that" and "She thought that" or similar phrases in their own or someone else's paper. Then ask them to consider replacing the indirect discourse with dialogue and direct quotations lo make the writing more vivid and realistic. Using the senses. For narrative and descriptive writing, ask students to check how many of the senses they have drawn on: then ask them to consider making use of the other senses. Adding other arguments. For argumentative essays, have students list all the arguments they could use but have not yet included in the paper; they may wish to turn to other students for advice about including these arguments. Soliciting class suggestions. For argument essays, ask students to summarize their theses and supporting arguments for their classmates. Then ask the other students to suggest more supporting arguments and opposing arguments the writer might consider during revision. Answering more questions. For expository essays, ask students to answer these questions lor their own or someone else's paper: What five things do you know about this topic that are not included in the draft? Which ones could be put into the essay without harming its unity or coherence? What three things are readers most likely to find interesting, useful, or surprising about this topic? Could these three things be given more emphasis without dismpting ihe organization or clarity of the essay? rev 54 3C Drafting and revising Instructor's Annotated Edition On independent revision Even though you encourage students to revise and offer them detailed advice about what and when to revise, you may still find that their revisions are limited to superficial changes. Fart of the problem may be that students have not yet become good enough readers of their own texts to identify features that might be altered or dropped and to identify places where something might be added. Here are some resources for helping students to become active readers and writers, aware of what they have written and how it might be changed: Beck, James P. "Asking Students to Annotate Their Own Papers." College Composition and Communication 33 (1982): 322-26. Beck asks students to identify specific techniques they have used in their writing (including features of structure, detail, argument, and style) and to evaluate how well they have used those techniques. Sommers, Jeffrey. "The Effects of Tape-Recorded Commentary on Student Revision: A Case Study," Journal of Teaching Writing 8 (1989): 49-75. Sommers argues that students can misunderstand instructor response to their writing and demonstrates how tape-recorded responses led one student through a series of successive revisions. Strauh, Richard. "The Concept of Control in Teacher Response: Defining the Varieties of 'Directive' and 'Facilitativc' Commentary." College Composition and Communication 47 (1996): 223-51. Slraub reviews the influential studies on teacher response in an effort to identify the kinds of comments thai encourage students to produce effective independent revisions. Use Save As from the File menu to copy and rename the original document. Here, 02 indicates the second draft. Deleted copy is crossed out. Added copy appears in blue. Track Changes function rsi_5ara.NetcamD2.doc—Microsoft Word In her 1995 essay "Welcome to Cyberbia," M. Kadi argues that they are not. Instead, sheln "Welcome to Cyberbia," written \n •1995, M—Kadr predicts that the Internet will lead to more fragmentation, not community, in society because users merely people-just-seek out others like-ttiemsefves- with the same ■•biases, needs, and concerns as their own. The point is an added punctuation, and the like), then you might consider whether and where to read more deeply for more fundamenlal changes. Examining a sample revision In revising her first draft, Sara Ling had the help ol her instructor and several of her classmates, to whom she showed the draft as part oF her assignment. Based on the revision checklist, she thought that she wanted to stick with her initial purpose and thesis statement and that they had held up well in ihe draft. But she also knew without being told that her introduction and conclusion were loo hurried, I hat I he movement between paragraphs was too abrupt, that the example of the snowboarding forum went on too long, and thai ihe fourth paragraph was thin: she hadn't supplied enough details lo support her ideas and convince her readers. Ling's readers confirmed her self-evaluation. Several, however, raised points that she had not considered, reflected in these comments by classmates: Comment 1 Why do you say (par. 2) that most people use invented screen names? I don't, and I krow other peopLe who don't either. Do you have evidence of how many people use invented names or why they do? Comment 2 I wouLd have an easier time agreeing with you about the Internet if you weren't quite so gung-ho. For instance, what about the dangers of the Internet, as when adults prey on children or men prey on women? In par. 3, you don't acknowledge that such things can and do happen. Also, is a bias-free world (par. 4) really such a sure thing? People will still meet in person, after all. At first Ling was tempted to resist ihese commenls because the writers seemed lo object to her ideas. But eventually she understood Instructor's Annotated Edition rev Sample revision 3C 55 thai the commenLs showed ways she could make the ideas convincing to more readers. The changes took some time, partly because Ling decided to conducL a survey of students in order to test her assumption about people's use of invented screen names. The following revised draft shows the survey results and Ling's other changes. Ling used the Track Changes function on her word processor, so that deletions are crossed out and additions are in blue. Marginal annotations highlight the main revisions. The Internet: Fragmentation or Community? Tjf-I r ? We hear att sorts of predictions about how the Internet will enrich our lives and promote equality, tolerance, and thus community in our society. But are these promises realistic? In her 1995 essay "Welcome to Cyberbia," M. Kadi argues that they are not. Instead, shelfH^Welcome to EybefbifiT-" written in 1995, M. Kadi predicts that the Internet will lead to more fragmentation, not community, m-society because users merely people just seek out others Wke-thefrtselves- with the same biases, needs, and concerns as their own. The point is an interesting one. Bbut Kadi fails to foresee that ttew the unique anonymity of Internet communication could actually build diversity into community by lowering the barriers of physical appearance. Internet communication can be anonymous on at least two levels. Anonymity on the Internet. It's one of the best thwgs about-technology. Most people who communicate online use an invented screen name-to avoid revealing-pefsenal details sueh-as-age, gender, and-ethnic baekgretmd. No one knows The people who communicate with you do not know your age. wWhether you're fat or thin or neat or sloppy. What kind of clothes you wear. (Maybe you're not wearing clothes at all}. Or anything else about physical appearance. People who know you pefse-rtally-édfrt even know whe-you are-wftb-afi inverrted-sereen name-.- If you use an invented screen name instead of your real name, readers don't even know whatever your name says about you, such as gender or ethnic background. Internet anonymity seems a popular option, judging by the numbers of invented user names seen in online forums. But I thought it would be a good idea to determine the extent of invented user names as well as the reasons for them, so I surveyed seventy-eight students with two questions: (1) Do you ever write with an invented user name when contributing to chat rooms, newsgroups, blogs, and so on? (2) If yes, why do you use an invented name: to protect your privacy, to avoid revealing personal Descriptive title names topic and forecasts approach. Expanded introduction draws readers into Ling's question and summarizes Kadi's essay. New transition relates paragraph to thesis statement and smoothes flow. Blanket assertion is deleted in favor of survey results added later. Addition clarifies use of invented screen names. Largest revision presents results of survey conducted to support use of invented screen names. rev 56 3C Drafting and revising Instructor's Annotated Edition information, or for some other reason? Fig. 1 shows that most of the students do use invented names online. And most do so to protect their privacy or to avoid revealing personal details. New pie graph presents survey results in an easy-to-read format. Do not use invented names (22%) Use invented names for other reasons (11%) Use invented names to avoid revealing personal details (30%) Use invented names to protect privacy (37%) Fig. 1. Use of invented screen names among seventy-eight Internet users. New paragraph summarizes survey results and adds examples. Revisions condense overly long example from Ling's experience. New paragraph acknowledges complexities that were previously ignored. Users of the Internet clearly value the anonymity it can give them. Twenty students said that they use invented names to mask personal details because they think the details might work against them. One said she is able to participate in a physics discussion list without fear of being ignored by the group's professional physicists. Another said he thinks he can contribute more freely to a political forum because no one knows he's African American. I learned the benefits of anonymity myself when I joinec a snowboarding forum using my full name and received hostile Wrth-invented-sefeen-names,- we-tan-mai