REvision, REenVISiON

“Provocative Revision” ~ Toby Fulwiler

When it comes to revision, the concept is so tricky to me, to revise something to me means to modify, to slightly change, to make the paper/ idea better. And I would not be in the minority to think such a thing. Toby Fulwiler states, “Many college students, first year and graduate alike, assume that writing is essentially copying down what they’re already been thinking- well maybe with a little spell checking, editing a few awkward sentences, adding a transition or two, and throwing in a few supportive examples.” I guess revision was not really instilled in me as re-thinking concepts and ideas but just rearranging thoughts and fixing grammatical errors.

However as a writing tutor the author says that we must not leave the revision process to chance or up to the tutee, we must encourage it. It’s like playing a sport if you do not practice you will not get better. Revision when done clearly is one of things that will improve the student’s writing because the student learns to be more open to new ideas, or see a different way of looking at their topic that they had not thought of before.

He demonstrates four provocations of revision: limiting, adding, switching, and transforming. When revising a paper things to look for are generalizations, these usually make the argument weak therefore it is best to either limit or completely get rid of them. Limit unnecessary mention of time, place and action, this alteration can dramatically improve your paper. Revision also means adding more information and explanation and analysis not just looking at grammatical errors. This is something that is not known or practiced by most students. For example if you add dialogue it, “allows readers to see and hear a story in a dramatic rather than narrative way, increasing reader involvement and interest.” Adding interview questions and responses or quotes from an interview gives your writing a little more something.

Reviewing is about transforming ideas and making your argument better. This is can be done by following the guidelines above and sometimes by switching up the points of view and voice of your argument. For example when revising a research paper, make it more interesting, and keep an audience in mind when writing it. If you do not have fun writing your paper and you are not proud of your work odds are the reader will not enjoy the paper either because the effort was not there. Although the author does not talk about motivation and level of care taken and the amount of time and enough placed into your paper I think it is important to mention. If you do not care about your topic or your argument then why should your reader care? It seems pointless to not care about writing something and expect others to read it and care about what you have to say.

The author states, “When [tutors] discover writers locked into one tedious way of telling their stories, tutors can find out if there is any room in the assignments –or time in their lives- for experimentation and play.” Writing does not have to be a chore if you find something even if it’s a little section in a required paper for class that you can agree with and enjoy writing, do that portion and for the rest of the paper pay the same respect to the rest of the paper. Most professor give a board topic to write about, giving the student more freedom to writing whatever they chose as long as it relates to that topic so why not have fun writing about something as trivial as identity. There are so many realms to explore with this one topic, do what interests you.