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30 Things to Do With Your Essay in the Up Draft(s) (Assuming you've already completed the first draft and some initial revisions) 1. Consider your options: Does the essay have to be objective, deadly serious, crammed into five paragraphs? Is there anywhere you could "color outside the lines" a little? Is there another route you could take? (Ask!) 2. Touch base: Is your essay really doing what it's supposed to do to fulfill the assignment, to meet your audience's needs and your own purposes? Read the instructions or assignment information again. Are you aiming to inform, entertain, persuade your readers? Have you done that? Also, did you make the point you most wanted to make, hitting on the "home base" that first got you (mildly) interested in the topic? 3. Check your thesis: For most academic writing, there should be a single sentence (or two) which directly states an argument that someone in your audience could reasonably disagree with. Many readers expect this to fall at the end of the first paragraph (or second, in longer essays). You may need to be blunt to state your point. 4. Make ends meet: Does your thesis relate to the point you made in your final paragraph(s)? If not, what you wrote last may be your best thinking, so do a "conclusion transplant" and take your clearest argumentative sentence from the end to anchor your opening paragraph. (Don't forget to check the rest of the essay: all paragraphs should reflect this new main idea!) 5. Add an essay map or blueprint: Now that you know where you've gone, take time to help your readers plan their journey: at the start of the essay, mention the three main steps or the four reasons or the exact criteria or the most important effects which you intend to examine in your essay. Add a separate sentence, or use a semicolon to join two complete sentences together, or use a colon to introduce your list of main points. 6. Go for the gut: Grab your audience's attention by adding an emotion-generating statistic, example, story, quotation, or question to the beginning of your essay. Write an engaging, descriptive title. 7. Organize consciously: Reread to see if you've made "conscious" paragraphs, each one often a "mini-essay": each one should have "home" roots, focus on a single idea, not be overly long, make the relationship to your argument clear, have both details and analysis, and deliberately help your reader see parts and connections. 8. Be obvious: Add a sentence to the end of each paragraph summing up (and/or refuting) the arguments you just presented in that paragraph. Do not use this last sentence to introduce the next paragraph. (See also #9.) 9. Be more obvious: Add one more transition word—moreover, in addition, also, for example, of course, however—to each paragraph (check middles and starts of paragraphs) so your reader can't possibly get lost. 10. Be hyper-obvious: repeat key words and phrases from your thesis sentence(s) several times per paragraph. 11. Don't strike out: Don't write more than, say, three sentences of summary or general description without swinging your readers back to your argument, evidence, analysis, or main point connection. Get into the "For example…. Therefore…." part of your analysis. Generally, write more analysis than summary. Tap your inner three-year-old: keep asking (and answering) but why? but how? but how do you know? but who cares?
© The George Mason University Writing Center 2009 | wcenter@gmu.edu | writingcenter.gmu.edu
Robinson Hall, Fairfax: 703-993-1200 Enterprise Hall, Fairfax: 703-993-1824 Founders Hall, Arlington: 703-993-4491 Occoquan Building, Prince Wililam: 703-993-8451
12. Don't stint the support: Circle any adjectives you find in your rough draft—good, bad, effective, stupid, hot, fast, brilliant, exceptional—and think of a way to show them to your readers. Try to give a "one-time-only" example, a snapshot, rather than falling into a vague, "some people do some things sometimes" description. 13. Expand from the inside: If your essay isn't long enough, ask yourself, "What else can I show the readers?" Ask yourself Prof. Reid's favorite questions: Why? How so? In what way? For example? Get more facts, give an additional description, add another angle to the argument, make up another hypothetical example, define your terms, explain the background of the issue, describe exactly what you want your readers to see & why. 14. Get a second opinion: Snag a relative, a roommate, or a complete stranger to give your essay a quick read. Insist that s/he mark at least three places where your essay just might possibly need more clarification, explanation, or evidence (sometimes that's the only way to keep him/her from being too polite to be helpful). If there's anything that seems unclear to him or her, set your ego aside and really consider ways to improve it. 15. Go out in style: Does your conclusion actually conclude? in the most convincing, direct language possible? Hint: instead of only repeating your points, try to connect & extrapolate from them as you review them. 16. Don't go home alone: Reach out to your audience—what are they supposed to do with the information you've given them? Why is it important? What do you recommend? Answer their key question: So What?? 17. Go out on a limb: Push your conclusion a bit: what is the real "truth" about this topic? if you took it to extremes, traced out long-term implications, stretched it beyond manufacturers' recommended limits, what lies out beyond? what might shock or startle your readers into paying attention? into taking action? (And see #4!) 18. Make sandwiches: Quotation sandwiches, that is—for every quotation, make sure that you indicate who's speaking ("According to . . .") and then explain how that particular quotation helps you to prove your point (see #10 and #12). Don't leave any Unidentified Flying Quotations zooming around your essay. 19. Cut the fat: Pare any quotations to the minimum effective length (to avoid interrupting the flow of your own language too much)—sometimes you can smoothly paraphrase the idea just as clearly as the author can. 20. Cite it right: If it didn't pop outta your head to begin with, it isn't yours—statistics and long quotations are the obvious cases, but paraphrases and proposals and catchy phrases that originated in someone else's brain need to be given credit too (this helps your credibility!). Add a works cited list—using the right format. 21. Don't get caught short: Any sentence that begins with Which, Although, As, Being that, After, Since, Because, or For example, has a higher-than-average risk of being a sentence fragment. Read it out loud by itself to check—ask whether it needs additional words, or needs to be connected to the previous sentence. 22. Don't overstay your welcome: Any sentence that goes on for several lines (or has a comma in the exact middle) has a higher-than-average risk of being a run-on sentence. Scan your essay for sentences that get carried away with themselves. Break them up or add semi-colons where appropriate. Likewise, double-check any paragraph that goes on for over a page—can you find a good way to sort it into two paragraphs (see #6)? 23. Sing your own song: Where you are writing closest to your heart, or writing the most important part of the essay, use the words of your everyday language (not someone else's jargon) to connect to your reader. 24. Improvise with the tune: Vary your sentences: use long sentences to show connections, shorter ones for emphasis; write some starting subject-verb, some with introductory phrases.
© The George Mason University Writing Center 2009 | wcenter@gmu.edu | writingcenter.gmu.edu
Robinson Hall, Fairfax: 703-993-1200 Enterprise Hall, Fairfax: 703-993-1824 Founders Hall, Arlington: 703-993-4491 Occoquan Building, Prince Wililam: 703-993-8451
25. Enliven passion: Find the most momentous, crucial sentence of a page or paragraph, the idea you adore, and give it the best verb, adjective, adverb, and rhythm you can imagine. Use a $10 word when you need it. 26. Add word art: Can you toss a pun into the title? alliteration into the intro? a set of "threes" (people like threes: three bears, three wishes, three meals of the day, three reasons to believe your argument) into the conclusion? parallel sentence structures into key body paragraphs? a metaphor to make the middle of the essay come alive? an extravagant sentence near the conclusion? 27. Move out of solid state: Do a word-search for "to be" verbs such as "is," "are," "was," "were"—can you rewrite some of these sentences to show motion, surprise, activity, thought, progress? Where do you need "is"? 28. Assume its/it's wrong: How long can it take to look for all the its/it's or there/theirs—or whatever error you know you're susceptible to—in your essay, checking each one to be sure that you've got it right? Don't trust the spelling or grammar checker to catch all errors (or even to be right in saying "that's an error"). 29. Back up slowly: If typos or other errors are a weak spot for you, read your essay backwards, a sentence at a time, last sentence to first sentence. Or read every other line: don't let the sentence you meant to write obscure the errors you did write. 30. Listen to yourself: Read your essay out loud, slowly, dramatically, and with feeling: as if you were presenting it at a conference. Really listen to it. If it sounds wrong or awkward, it probably is wrong or awkward—you can catch a lot of rough spots this way. And if your tongue trips over a sentence or phrase, it's likely your reader's thoughts will trip over it, too—smooth it out.
Developed by and © Dr. Shelley Reid, Director of Composition, English Department, George Mason University Last updated 10/5/2009
© The George Mason University Writing Center 2009 | wcenter@gmu.edu | writingcenter.gmu.edu