You did it! You submitted the first draft of your Rhetorical Analysis. You got some feedback from peers, you got some feedback from me. You have, no doubt, thought more about it (even a little bit!) since you turned it in.
Now it is time to start planning (and start doing) revision.
As with the Literacy Narrative assignment, I’m going to ask you to consider (but not require you to submit) a Revision Plan.
Here are those guidelines for formulating this plan:
- It’s about love!!!! Ask yourself: What do you love about this piece? What do you want to return to and work on more? Why? Choose “love” and not “well, this was bad” or “well, this was pretty good.” Instead, what did you enjoy working on most? What is the most exciting part of this text? Why? How do you build off of that? Or, what about this text, generally, interests you the most? There will always be moments where you’ll have to revise something you don’t want to ever look at again. Still, even for something you rather not look at again (which will happen to you), finding something that attracts you to it, something that can make it a positive experience, will both motivate you and also help you to identify its strength.
- Let yourself be guided. How can you let that excitement and energy guide you? What enhances that energy? What takes away from that energy?
- Hear out others (including yourself). Part of (but not ONLY) what should inform you is the feedback you have received previously: my comments on your draft, peer response feedback, your old notes as you were working on the draft, etc.
- Task list. Begin to develop some tasks that can assist you in addressing the above. (e.g., revise this paragraph, move this section up earlier and adjust it so it fits, add this supporting argument, do this analysis and see where it takes me, do more research for secondary sources). Consider what YOU want to do with the piece and the comments you received from others.
- Be specific. As you write out your tasks, you MUST be specific. Why are you doing this task? As in, what about your writing has led you to think you should do x to enhance the essay overall? How will you do this task? As in, what specifically do you have in mind as some potential changes that would work to address the “why” of the task you chose. For example: I will add more secondary sources to support the claim I make in paragraph 4, I need to show a more cohesive transition between section 3 and 4, my argument is too broad so I need to be more specific about the limits of my argument when I make the main argument early on, I want to incorporate my lessons on style to many of sentences that are a little harder to read.
- Be a planner. Finally, if helpful, begin to develop a schedule of when and how you will work on your revision. Revison (or any aspect of writing!) benefits from work that is spread out rather than work that happens all at once. A fresh mind is an asset. Backwards plan. “This is due 11/5, what do I need done by 10/24? By 10/27? By 11/2? Etc.”.
- Are there new constraints or affordances to consider? Are there new things you have to consider now? For instance, do you need to more closely consider the genre and medium you are writing in? (i.e., blog post on our course website, hyperlinking, paragraph length, structure/organization, potential use of images)
Eventually, I encourage you to address all 8 of the below questions, but, for now, just comment below with responses to 3 of the below questions or instructions.
- What do you love about this piece? What do you want to return to and work on more? Why? Choose “love” and not “well, this was bad” or “well, this was pretty good.” Instead, what did you enjoy working on most? What is the most exciting part of this text? Why? How do you build off of that? Or, what about this text, generally, interests you the most?
- What feedback will you incorporate do you think? Why?
- How will you enhance or add analysis to your draft?
- What might be a change to your thesis?
- What are some changes that you’ll make to make it fit the genre of the blog post through the medium of online writing?
- What about your word choice and sentence structure? How will you revise your style in a way that best fits what you want to do in your piece and in ways your audience would appreciate?
- Write out ALL of the specific tasks you will take based on: what you love, the feedback you got, and other considerations. Be SPECIFIC.
- What is your schedule for getting this done? Consult your writing schedule that you did for today!
After commenting below, click the button to continue the module.
1. One thing that I love about my piece is that it deals with a topic that I enjoy myself and that helped me write down my ideas much more easier. If theres one thing that needs to be fixed is that I need to add more evidence into my piece.
3. I did too much summarizing in my analysis and I will add more evidence in my final revision. The evidence will deal with my personal emotions and this will serve as great evidence.
4. One thing that I need to do with my thesis is to try to change it from a more research question and focus more on the episode and what the character were dealing with.
1. I chose to write about Apple’s 1984 ad because it was so creative. I want to dive into the minds of its creators to analyze the strategies they used to make it so powerful.
2. I think definitely I need to make my thesis more specific. After having a solid thesis, I will make sure that my body paragraphs are tailored to my thesis and are not redundant.
8. For my schedule, I have been writing for 30min to 1 hr every day. I think that working for hours in one setting would be exhausting, so this incremental schedule has helped me manage my stress level while keeping up the work.
1. What I love about this piece is my connection to it and how easy it came to talking about it. It is a movie that I grew up watching and as I got older I got a different meaning out of it
2. The feedback I want to incorporate in not rushing this background information or any information for the sake of getting to the analysis. I think that I wanted to stay on track but in doing that I could be leaving out useful information
3. Changes I will try to make in order to incorporate a blog post type style is to make it more personal. Whether it is relating it to my life or having moments where I am speaking directly to the audience (i.e “That’s crazy right!”)
1. I love how my piece connects to my previous writings, and how I was able to expand on said writing and to extract more information from it. The James Bond franchise is one of my favorites and I love how I was able to write about it in such detail; I enjoy how I get to give my own opinions on the movies.
2. I will incorporate how the film made me feel and how it is shown to the audience. Imagery and diction throughout the film will help me understand it better and come up with a more expressive/ advanced style of writing throughout my paper.
3. I will make sure to give more depth to my paper in order to enhance the analysis of the James Bond movie, Spectre. By extracting how the film makes the audience feel and by attempting to understand the producer’s reasoning for including certain ideas through the film, I will be able to analyze more throurougly– resulting in a better paper.
What feedback will you incorporate do you think? Why?
I think that I need to improve the way I connect my development paragraphs with my thesis. Maybe my thesis is too broad and not specific enough, it is something I would like to go back and revise.
What are some changes that you’ll make to make it fit the genre of the blog post through the medium of online writing?
In the event of revision, I was planning to make my paragraphs small -easier to diggest- as well as put some images in between the text to ease the understanding of the context to the reader.
What about your word choice and sentence structure? How will you revise your style in a way that best fits what you want to do in your piece and in ways your audience would appreciate?
When rereading I did notice that some of my questions were too overcharged and that sometimes I get too carried away with writing. I would have to find these heavy sentences and make them smaller and hence easier to understand.
3. One thing that I did a lot of in my first draft was summarizing what the author said in order to make my point. FIr me revision, I plan to go more in depth with that the author says (get more specific). This means that I’ll use more examples of what the author wrote and talk about how the techniques he used enhanced his writing as a whole.
4. In my first draft, my thesis kind of ended up being more argumentative than rhetorical. I acknowledged the authors argument, but then gave my own perspective. Instead, I think I need to make the thesis about how the author writes and how that enhances his argument.
8. My plan is to be done with my revisions by next Monday. I think this will require me to sit down for an extended period of time twice for me to finish everything I need. One good time for me to work would be Thursday night and I think the other time should be on Sunday.
1) One thing I love about my piece is the topic itself. When you enjoy what you are writing about, the writing tends to be much easier and flow way better.
2) Feedback I will take into consideration is definitely analyze vs summarize. I tend to veer off from the analysis and start summarizing which is not the point of this assignment. I am trying to get better.
4) I felt my thesis was quite vague or hard to understand. I will definitely go back and see if there is better way I can word my thesis to make it easier to understand.
One thing I love about the draft is that it focuses on a topic that I am passionate about thereby making it easy to write about it. More specifically, I wrote about passive racism and this topic become interesting because it is among the least discussed aspects of race relations.
I intend to restructure my thesis statement based on the feedback obtained so that it can explain how passive racism is brought out more clearly through the structure of the film “Get Out.”
I also intend to add on to the draft because in some places, I noticed that I combined several ideas in single paragraphs yet the ideas could have been separated to explain my points more clearly.
1. My draft right now is extremely rigid. I will try to make it more open in terms of the genre being a blog post. I will try to replace words that originally helped me structure my writing and make it more creative.
2. I think the topic of my paper is important specifically since it relates to current affair. I will focus on making my writing as a reflection or reporting of the speech. Often time after leaders make speeches writers reflect on them and their effectiveness through blog posts.
3. My goal is to complete my 1st draft today and work on the precision by breaking it into different sections I want to rewrite. I will divide my paper and work on a specific section during each writing session.
3. I will enhance my analysis through revision by being more detailed and specific where it is needed.
5. In order to really make it feel like a blog post I was thinking of adding more pictures and a link to the trailer of the movie. I will also try and fix up my tone to sound more casual.
8. I hope to revise and add more to my writing towards the end of the week and this weekend. I will work in my room on my laptop and take each paragraph at a time.
1. I tried a lot harder to create a more interesting variety of sentences in my paragraphs and use better transitional language in between them. I wanted to try as if I was narrating a video.
2. I’ll try to make connections between my thesis and how I structured it. Hopefully that leads to a better intro/conclusion.
8. I think it’s best if I spend multiple sessions rewriting and then I can come back to it later to see if I like it as a whole.