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.