Congratulations!!!! You’ve made it! After twenty-five hours of researching, reading, and drafting labor, you are finally ready to write a final version of your paper.
You have been working towards this for weeks! By now, you should understand the amount of work that goes into a paper:
- Lots thinking alone and with peers, reflecting, free writing, brainstorming
- A tremendous amount of reading and rereading and rereading
- Again, more writing on reading
- Sharing work with peers, discussing work, getting feedback
- revising, reformulating, changing topics entirely, revising again, changing your question again, changing your argument AGAIN
- And if you’ve made it this far, then congratulate yourself. Even if you’re frustrated, the fact that you’ve made it this far shows that you have more resilience as a writer than you ever imagined.
Objective: To write a paper you are incredibly proud of! I want you to hand in a paper that you think represents your work at its best, a paper you’d like me to submit for an R&C award.
Audience: The English Department R&C Award judges.
Total Labor: ~8 hours
Audience: The English Department R&C Award judges.
Total Labor: ~8 hours
The final draft of your paper must meet the following criteria:
- 1,800-2,500 words (If possible, avoid single-space writing. 1.5 spacing is perfect)
- Have proper citations of quotes
- An introduction that lays out the problem/tension that interests you, and a complex argument
- A title that is catchy but also has the keywords of your paper in it
- Writing that is simple, elegant, and free of errors.
- PLEASE NOTE: Up until this point, I did not consider grammar, spelling, punctuation, etc. In this draft, all of that matters. That is part of the baseline default-B requirements.
- Log your hours carefully, because you will have to complete a full labor report on this final draft later.
PART I: READING, PLANNING, PREPARING
- (5 MINUTES): Read this document all the way through.
- (20 MINUTES): Review your notes from the peer review discussion and discussion with me (if we met). Write for fifteen to twenty minutes, reflecting on where you are right now, what you need to do next. What have you learned? What are you doing well? What do you need to work on? Where should you start your final draft process?
- (20 MINUTES): Answer the questions on the Argument Worksheet.
- (30 MINUTES though for some this will be more, but do not lose yourself in this section): Do whatever preparatory work you need to do. For each of you this is different at this point, but all of you need look back at your passages and push yourself to do more analysis. Analysis was very limited in these early drafts. So, that’s where you can start. Remember, the way to push yourself to analyze more is to ask Why? Why? Why? You can also find a few more passages that are relevant if you are reworking your question.
- (1 MINUTES): Open a blank document. Remember, you are not just tweaking your “more writing” assignment. You are writing a new draft.
PART II: DRAFTING
- I am not assigning labor times for this section, because your times will vary depending on what you focused on for your draft. You should be logging the time in your labor log. You may want to write how long it takes you to work on the introduction, body, and conclusion separately for future reference— especially those of you who are interested in careers or classes that will require writing. The more you know about your writing practices, the better you can manage your time.
- You should note that introductions often take a long time to write, and they are well worth the investment. If you can get your introduction (setting up of problem, contextualizing, and argument) to be just right— specific, focused, and interesting— then you will have a much smoother writing process the rest of the way through. Remember, the introduction serves as a map for the paper. Often, I will have a strong sense of what kind of problems the paper will have just by reading the introduction.
- INTRODUCTION
- Start by putting together the different answers to the questions on the worksheet.
- Set up the problem you are interested in addressing. You can do this by discussing a specific moment in the text (even if it’s one you will explore in more detail later), or by paraphrasing a problem the text presents.
- Contextualize the problem. You may find that you need to do this before setting up the problem. Play around with the order!
- Argument. Argument should come at the end of the introduction.
- BODY
- Remember, you are telling an intellectual story. You are developing an argument. You are trying to convince all of us that this is important.
- Build your paper slowly. Build your paper deliberately.
- Things to check for: Is each paragraph doing something different than the one that comes before it and the one that follows it?
- Do you have counterarguments? Put in a paragraph or two that does.
- Does each paragraph have a sentence that introduces us to the concept this paragraph is going to examine? (topic sentence)
- Does each paragraph have evidence, quote integration, and analysis.
- Remember the easiest way to unlock analysis is by asking “Why?” “Why is this observation important. Why is this moment in the story important?”
- CONCLUSION
- So what? Why is all of this important? Why should we read your paper?
- It’s OK if you repeat some points from your paper here, but your conclusion should not be a summary. Your conclusion should be where you tell us how knowing what you have taught us will fundamentally change the way we read this text. Think big! Be ambitious!
- If you’re too ambitious or thinking too big, I’ll let you know and we can scale it back for the last draft (if you choose the additional labor).
PART III: EDITING & REVISIONS
- (45-60 MINUTES) EDITING AND REVISIONS. Print your paper, and spend 45 minutes editing and revising. You must spend at least forty-five minutes revising. I will be collecting this and I want to see signs of your revision labor on them. Here is what you should be marking/editing:
- Read through the piece and do a basic line edit. Look for blatant errors: fragments, run-ons, misplaced commas, mistakes in punctuation. Fix them
- CITATIONS:
- Check that your quotes are properly cited.
- Check for quote integration variety. When you can split up the sentence and just use the most important words.
- Make sure that you are citing moments you paraphrase the text, as well.
- Focus on your thesis. Are all the words in it specific?
- Now read the paper backwards from the last sentence to the first sentence. Do any of the sentences sound confusing? Mark them so you can fix them at your computer.
- Go back and read your argument and the first sentence of each paragraph. Is it a good map of your paper?
- Do you notice places where your quotes are integrated in sloppy or uninteresting ways. Mark them.
- What about your title? Is your title interesting? Does it have the necessary keywords that your paper is engaging. Papers without titles or with vague titles are like introductions that lack specificity— they suggest that you don’t quite know what you’re talking about yet.
- (40 MINUTES) FINAL REVISION
- Spend time transferring all the markups on your paper from Step 5 to your paper. PRINT! AND STAPLE!
- Make sure you've met all the qualifications, which are listed at the top of this document.
On the day this is due, you must hand in the following:
Extensions are only granted before 24 hours of the deadline.
- 20-minute free-write, answers to the argument worksheet, and the preparatory work you’ve done.
- The draft that you’ve printed and edited in Step 5. It should have thorough markings on it.
- Your final paper, printed, and stapled (with your name on it).
- Email me a copy of your paper.
Extensions are only granted before 24 hours of the deadline.