Unsettling Drafts
Often students who come to composition class do not have much
experience with revision and do not understand it as a way to look at their
drafts in totally different ways. Too often they confuse revision with editing.
In addition, they see revision as punishment. They believe they are being asked
to do something over. I believe that composition has the potential to help
students conceive of writing in fundamentally different ways, and at the same
time open up their view of the world. I have written of this elsewhere in an
article entitled “Writing the Stories of Their
Lives.”
This activity is designed to help students to expand their ideas about
revision in a non-threatening way. On the day the papers (this could work
for rough or “final” drafts) are due, I ask them to put their
papers aside and as an exercise write to one of the following prompts (These
are only examples):
• Start the piece in an entirely different place
• Write about what happens after the piece
• Write the piece from a different point of view
• Write two new introductions
• Write two new conclusions
• Describe a place alluded to in the paper
• Add dialogue where you have only description of an event
• Write a dialogue with a friend in which you discuss your paper, telling why
you thought it was important, what you thought was important
• Describe a person mentioned in the paper
• Create an opening which starts in the midst of the action
• Rewrite your conclusion as the introduction, then write a new conclusion
• Create a dialogue representing two or more points of view on the issues
raised in the paper.
• Write the paper as a letter to a friend
• Take on the point of view of a character with only a minor role in the paper.
• Describe what happened before the events described in the paper
Emphasize to students that these in-class writings may or may not become
part of the paper. The idea is that they see a new angle, another
perspective. There may be bits in what they write that might be useful
additions to the papers, or this in-class writing may suggest a whole new
approach to the topic and lead to a whole new draft.