4/29: Revision Strategies

Peer review has begun! Over today (Thursday) and Monday, you should share your complete P3 draft with your peers and expect feedback. I'll also provide feedback in that same time-window, though it may take a bit, since this paper is long.

When doing peer review, try to get your comments back to your peers within 48 hours of them sharing their draft. Don't just wait until Monday night to do it all.

Once you've gotten feedback from your peers, from me, and (probably) from yourself, it's time to revise and finalize. The final version of P3 is due on Canvas on 5/9 at midnight. That's right, you have a ten days to revise, finish, and turn in your research paper.

(P2 grades will be coming out soon, as well.)

No quiz for today's lesson--this is really more just a revision tips article.

So, let's briefly talk about how to revise stuff:

P3: What Do We Know?

We know the following about the assignment:

The length is 2500-3000 words, with an absolute maximum of 3500 words.
It is worth 25% of your grade.
You don’t have a class post on Monday or next Thursday (5/6), so there’s at least 1 hour of “class time” that you can use to revise. Hopefully more than that, but at least 1 hour.
The paper needs to have a point it’s trying to get across to its audience.
It needs to be backed by some kind of research.
It needs to have proper citations and a works cited (not a full annotated bibliography–you don’t need the little summaries under the sources anymore.)

From this list, we can identify some objectives, at least in vague terms:

It should be pretty close to the target length, or it should be so good that Michael never checks the wordcount. That means it should be interesting or engaging and generally free of dumb errors, like a missing works cited or a ton of typos. It should have a title and use some quotes, though not so many that your voice gets lost and the paper stops being your paper. It should be structurally coherent and readable.

In other words, this paper needs to be cool, it needs to be pretty, and it needs to be yours.

Levels of Feedback

Feedback and changes you make in a draft fall into three “layers”. They are organized in the list below in increasing order of how hard they are to revise:

Cosmetic Layer: this includes things like typos, spelling, correct citations, font choices, and that sort of stuff.
Performance Layer: this includes things like the tone, the vocabulary choices, where and when you include quotes, paraphrasing, and your own voice, the general organization of the paper, paragraphing, and how readable and not-awkward your sentences are.
Ideas Layer: this includes the core ideas of your paper–your thesis, your key moves, your choices of evidence, which ideas you cover and in what level of depth, and who your audience is.

When you get draft feedback, understanding these layers can help you organize your time and identify things to revise.

Step 0: Editing Background Music

If you need Lo-Fi Beats to Revise To, might I recommend my own current choice.

However, be aware that when dealing with performance layer editing in Step 3--stuff like word choice, awkward sentences, rhythm--you may wish to turn off any music you're listening to. The music can actually distract you from "hearing" the sound of your writing. If the music isn't helping you focus, it isn't helping at all.

Step 1: Cosmetic Layer, First Pass

The first thing you do after getting draft feedback is probably fix typos, punctuation mistakes, or fill in missing citations and stuff. This is the technical, “grammar” stuff that you used to get points off for in high school. You should fix these things quickly, before moving on to other layers, even if some of this effort ends up getting wasted. It’s easy to get distracted by this surface-level stuff, so get it out of the way ASAP.

This is also a good time to build, organize, and double-check your works cited.

Step 2: Going Straight to the Idea Layer

You might not have gotten much feedback on this layer, but if your peers identified a point you need to change, expand, or re-do, this is the next step. I recommend labeling where the new/changed content will go in your draft with a comment, but write this new content in a fresh, separate document so you don’t get distracted. Once you’ve totally finalized the new content, and finished this revision process entirely, you can copy-paste the new stuff in.

This step may require you to quickly do some more research, so it’s a good idea to reserve two separate chunks of time to do this step: one for additional research, and a later one to write or expand new content. I recommend at least a lunch break in-between. Ideally, do these on adjacent days.

Step 3: Performance Layer Adjustments

You may wish to pause here, and wait for my draft feedback before moving on.

This is the most common step in college writing--not everybody is going to need idea-layer changes, but performance changes are very common. This is where a lot of revision time goes, but this step makes the biggest difference in reception (in the real world) and grades (in school).

This is where you make sure you’re striking a consistent or appropriate tone, engaging with your audience correctly, and presenting your point in a clear and coherent way.

Very likely, you had some “awkward sentences,” or possibly even “weird paragraphs.” This is the time to reorganize those. Mark those things in the draft, and in a fresh, separate document, write replacement sentences (or groups of sentences). Do not attempt to line-edit weird paragraphs and awkward sentences; replace them instead. The reason they were awkward is 100% because you were mildly confused while writing them. Now that the ideas are more clear, write new text. It is actually significantly faster to write new than to fiddle with the words in a fundamentally bad sentence.

Once you’ve done that, look at the organization of your whole paper. Are the steps clear, do they build on one another naturally (thus creating good transitions)? Does the intro paragraph reflect where the paper ended up? Does some stuff need to be rearranged? Are there any huge paragraphs to break up?

Finally, write a new intro, delete any extra or unnecessary fluff that you don’t love, and plug in the replacement text from this step and Step 2.

Step 4: Cosmetic Layer, Final Pass

Does your paper have a good title? Did you put your name on it? Did you put the two parts of my surname in the right order? Do you need to add anything to your citations, works cited, or quotes? Did the new stuff you write have any typos in it?

Importantly: do you use any useless, generalizing language, like “everybody always” or “in past times” or “in today’s world”? Replace these phrases with more precise language, since what you think is normal is not what everyone experiences as normal. This should be especially obvious right now. Don’t be a Generalizing Jerk.

Check again: is your works cited in alphabetical order by first item and does it contain all your sources?

Did you leave any notes-to-self or comments on the document? Delete those. Don’t just turn marginal commenting off. Delete or resolve comments.

Good? Done? Okay, save the file with a unique filename (don’t overwrite your draft), make sure it’s a PDF or .doc or .docx file, and save it. Email that document to yourself in case your laptop explodes.

Then turn it in on Canvas, in the assignment labeled P3 Final. (By 5/9, unless you like to live dangerously.)

Step 5: Celebrate

While this isn’t the last assignment in the course, it is the biggest, and you’re done (once you've completed the steps above anyway)! Go do something else for a while.

If you're still in the research mood, internalize and keep all the advice in this video, which feels like it was lifted from one of my lessons directly:

This whole YouTube channel is good, by the way. 100% of it.

Okay, seriously, go do something else. Learn to cook. Play video games. Study for that exam your professor inexplicably tried to cram in this week. Fold some warm laundry. Chill.