Revision Strategies

Memory Draft

A memory draft is a good place to start regarding revision. A memory draft is what is sounds like, try to recreate as much of your essay as you can from memory. You are looking to recreate your overall argument, outline, and sources, not your exact words. The point of this is to help you see where you might have holes in your argument, or things that don’t make sense. For example, you might mix up the order of your paragraphs in the memory draft, but the new order that you created might make a lot more logical sense than what you originally wrote. This is a way of stepping back from the words on the page and thinking about the whole picture of your essay.

Reverse Outline

A reverse outline is a similar method to a memory draft, but you should have your essay next to you. For this method, you will go through these steps:

You will go through each paragraph of your essay and create (or re-create) a detailed outline based on the essay you wrote.
For each paragraph you will want to write down the main point of that paragraph, what sources you used, and how it ties back to your thesis. Once you have your outline there are a few things to look out for:
1. Does each paragraph flow logically into the next one? Does the reader have all the necessary information in the necessary order? If there is information missing, you may need to add a paragraph.
2. Does each paragraph contain only one idea? Or are there any paragraphs that need to be split up into two?
3. Does each paragraph contribute to your overall argument? Perhaps there are interesting but unnecessary paragraphs that you could cut.

Highlighting Method/Diagramming a Paragraph

This method is good to use when you are happy with your overall structure, but you want to make sure each paragraph makes sense and works well by itself. For this method, you will highlight different parts of your paragraph in different colors.

Topic/Concluding Sentence
Evidence (quotes, paraphrase, or summary of your sources)
Analysis (To help differentiate, think about how evidence is someone else’s thoughts, and analysis is your own thoughts.)
Transition sentences or phrases

The most effective paragraphs will be mostly analysis. If you have too much of the evidence color, try thinking about ways to explain your source material and how to connect it to your thesis. If it is a research paper, you might have slightly more source material, but you should still have a good balance of analysis. Ask yourself why that source is important to your overall research question.

Exploding a Moment

Revision is not always about “fixing” something in your paper, it can also be used to take a good paper and make it really great! Exploding a moment is a way to do that. For this method, pick your favorite part of your paper and write about it for 5-10 minutes straight. Did you come up with any new ideas? Are things you hadn’t considered before? Try putting that new insight into your paper!

Grammar Revision

Revision is about so much more than looking at your grammar, and you should certainly start with the bigger concerns of argument and overall structure. However, as a last step it is important to go over your grammar by editing individual sentences. The best way to go about this is to read your paper aloud with a friend or a tutor. Read through each sentence aloud and look for phrases that sound awkward. Oftentimes even if you cannot name the grammar rule, you can tell if something sounds off when you say it out loud. This can also be where a friend or tutor is very useful, because they can help you see things that you might not see yourself. This part will take some time, but it makes for a polished essay that is easy to read, so it is worth the effort!